HubSpot vs. DealCloud: Which CRM Is Right for Your Private Equity Firm?

Private equity firms run on relationships, timing, and data precision. The right CRM can streamline deal flow, ecosystem relationships, and reporting—critical advantages in today’s market.

Indeed, the stakes are particularly high right now. According to McKinsey & Company’s Global Private Markets Review 2025, fundraising for traditional commingled vehicles fell 24% in 2024, marking the third straight annual decline. In a deeply competitive market, efficiency and visibility are critical.

Two of the most prominent CRM platforms for private equity are Intapp DealCloud (“DealCloud”) and HubSpot. DealCloud is known for its finance-first, highly tailored capabilities, while HubSpot has gained traction with PE firms seeking a user-friendly, flexible platform that can scale with evolving needs.

Let’s explore how they compare.

Key Takeaways

1. Scale Helps Determine Platform Choice: HubSpot suits small-to-mid-sized PE firms; DealCloud may be more suited to larger, institutional firms with complex needs.

2. HubSpot Enables Faster Implementation: Intuitive setup and minimal training deliver quick time-to-value for lean PE teams.

3. DealCloud Offers PE-Specific Depth: Purpose-built features include relationship intelligence and SEC compliance—at the cost of complexity.

4. Core Trade-Off: Usability vs. Specialization: HubSpot prioritizes ease of use and faster time-to-value; DealCloud provides specialized functionality at a higher cost and complexity.

5. Hypha Helps Maximize HubSpot for PE Value Creation: Strategic implementation expertise ensures your CRM directly supports portfolio growth and investment returns.
   
   

Why HubSpot Is a Strong Fit for Small & Mid-Sized PE Firms

For emerging and mid-market private equity firms, the priority is often speed, flexibility, and return on effort. These firms need tools that support core functions, such as sourcing deals, managing portfolio data, maintaining LP relationships, and driving fundraising outcomes—without the heavy lift of a complex enterprise implementation. HubSpot fits that profile.

Here’s how it helps private equity teams move faster and stay focused, without the drag of heavy systems or steep learning curves.

Streamlined Onboarding & Quick Adoption

HubSpot’s intuitive interface enables investment teams to begin tracking deals, managing LP conversations, and logging activity almost immediately. The cloud-based setup and minimal training requirement make it easy to roll out across lean teams—accelerating time to value.

Additionally, for fast, self-guided learning, the HubSpot Academy offers easy tutorials covering every core function.

Marketing Automation for LP & Deal Communications

Fundraising and deal sourcing both depend on timely, personalized communication. HubSpot’s built-in marketing automation helps firms schedule and track outreach to LPs, intermediaries, founders, and advisors. From quarterly newsletters to targeted sourcing campaigns, firms can automate and measure what was once time-consuming and manual follow-up.

Cost-Effective & Flexible for Growing Firms

With transparent pricing and no long-term lock-ins, HubSpot lets firms start small and scale capabilities as their processes evolve. This is especially beneficial for firms testing new sourcing strategies, growing their LP base, or launching initial funds with limited operating budgets. For example, teams can easily deploy site-wide forms to capture inbound interest or use workflow automations to route deals and trigger timely LP follow-ups.

Adaptable to PE-Specific Workflows

Through custom properties and objects, HubSpot can be tailored to reflect a firm’s unique deal funnel, investor reporting cadence, or even portfolio-monitoring KPIs. For example, firms can track active and historical touchpoints by fund, LP, or portfolio company executive—all within a centralized dashboard. Some also use custom objects to manage contracts, other fund documents, or ongoing portfolio initiatives—extending visibility across teams.

Connected Ecosystem to Support Operational Visibility

HubSpot integrates seamlessly with platforms already familiar to private equity professionals, such as Outlook, Gmail, Slack, DocuSign, and PitchBook. This lets teams work within the tools they know while unifying deal data, communication, and LP engagement—enabling a more connected, data-informed approach to value creation.

HubSpot’s marketplace also includes hundreds of other apps, many with native or low-lift integrations, enabling firms to expand HubSpot’s functionality without complex custom builds. If your firm uses a mix of tools and wants a CRM that plays nicely with others, HubSpot’s open ecosystem makes it easy to build a connected workflow.

When DealCloud May Be the Better Option

DealCloud is explicitly designed for the financial services industry. For larger private equity firms—particularly those with complex compliance requirements, multiple fund vehicles, and institutional LP bases—DealCloud offers a feature set that can align closely with the needs of sophisticated investment teams.

Purpose-Built for Financial Services

DealCloud includes advanced deal tracking, investor relationship management, and fund-level reporting that aligns with private equity workflows out of the box. Depending on needs, this level of specificity can reduce the need for custom development or workaround solutions.

Deep Relationship Intelligence

For firms that rely heavily on personal networks—bankers, founders, LPs—DealCloud offers tools to map and score relationships across the organization. This functionality helps firms identify warm paths to targets and evaluate sourcing efficacy over time.

Compliance & Regulatory Support

DealCloud includes features that support SEC compliance, including audit logs, access controls, and documentation trails. While HubSpot is secure and SOC 2 compliant, it does not offer PE-specific compliance features natively.

Advanced Reporting Capabilities

DealCloud enables users to build custom dashboards aligned with firm-specific performance metrics across industry sectors, deal stages, or portfolio segments. 

However, this power comes with complexity. The platform typically requires more training and admin oversight to maintain, and even routine updates or changes often depend on internal specialists or external support.

This can slow teams down and increase the total cost of ownership, especially for lean or fast-moving firms.

The Trade-Off: Usability vs. Specialization

Ultimately, the choice between HubSpot and DealCloud comes down to trade-offs: broad usability versus targeted specialization.

HubSpot delivers speed, simplicity, and versatility, making it ideal for firms that need to streamline workflows, improve LP communication, and scale their sourcing efforts without overextending internal resources. It offers faster time to value, lower total cost of ownership, and broad accessibility across teams—making it especially appealing to leaner firms focused on quick ROI.

DealCloud, by contrast, offers a deeply specialized experience suited to firms with more complex needs—multiple funds, layered investor structures, and compliance oversight. The platform’s richness is valuable, but often more than smaller firms require (or want to manage). That depth comes with trade-offs: longer onboarding cycles, more training, and ongoing admin effort to maintain and adapt the system.

Making the Right Choice for Your Firm

Choosing a CRM is as much about organizational fit as it is about features. What works for your firm today may not be the system you need three years from now.

For many private equity teams, HubSpot offers the right balance of capability, accessibility, and flexibility to build operational discipline without introducing complexity. As the firm matures, it can continue to build on HubSpot—or transition to a platform like DealCloud if more specialized features become necessary and cost effective.

Either way, investing in a CRM is a move toward stronger visibility, better relationship management, and more strategic deal execution.

Unlocking HubSpot’s Value With Hypha

At Hypha, we recognize that CRM implementation is only valuable when it drives measurable performance. As a strategic partner to private equity firms, we bring together deep HubSpot technical expertise and firsthand knowledge of PE value creation strategies.

We work with PE firms and their portfolio companies to implement standardized HubSpot frameworks that accelerate growth, streamline operations, and enhance transparency. Whether you’re developing LP communication workflows, deploying cross-portfolio analytics, or enabling consistent sales processes across portcos, we ensure that HubSpot directly supports your investment thesis.

Our services go beyond CRM setup to include performance benchmarking, enablement, and strategic optimization. When your CRM infrastructure empowers rather than inhibits growth, your portfolio companies stay focused—and you gain the oversight needed to drive returns.

Interested in exploring how HubSpot can power value creation across your portfolio? Contact our team to start the conversation.