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Customer success software helps businesses reduce churn, improve customer retention, and increase customer lifetime value by giving teams a complete view of every customer relationship. The best platforms combine customer health monitoring, onboarding, automation, reporting, and CRM software to help businesses proactively support customers throughout the customer lifecycle. If you're comparing CRM solutions, our guide to Best Artificial Intelligence CRM Software explains how AI-powered CRM platforms support sales, marketing, and customer success.
In this guide, we compare leading customer success platforms, including HubSpot Customer Success Management, Gainsight, ChurnZero, Totango, and Planhat, to help you choose the solution that best fits your business.
Many businesses invest heavily in acquiring new customers but struggle to keep them engaged after the sale. When customer information is spread across spreadsheets, support tools, emails, and separate CRM systems, it becomes difficult to identify accounts that need attention before they churn. Customer success software solves this challenge by giving teams better visibility into customer health, adoption, renewals, and growth opportunities.
One of the platforms in this comparison is HubSpot Customer Success Management, which is available as part of HubSpot Service Hub. It brings together customer health scores, customer lifecycle management, product usage insights, workflows, and reporting in a single workspace that connects with HubSpot CRM. Throughout this guide, you'll see how it compares with other customer success platforms and where each solution fits best.
Quick Rundown
Customer success software helps businesses monitor customer health, improve onboarding, reduce churn, and build stronger long-term customer relationships. Each platform takes a different approach depending on the size of your business and the complexity of your customer success program.
• HubSpot Customer Success Management — Connects customer health, lifecycle management, CRM, workflows, and reporting in a unified workspace within the Service Hub.
• Gainsight — Enterprise-focused platform for managing customer health, renewals, and large customer portfolios.
• ChurnZero — Designed for SaaS and subscription businesses that want to improve product adoption and reduce churn.
• Totango — Flexible platform for customer lifecycle management, onboarding, and health monitoring.
• Planhat — Combines customer success with account management and revenue insights for recurring revenue businesses.
Why Customer Success Software Matters
Winning a customer is only the beginning. Sustainable growth depends on helping customers achieve value long after the initial purchase. Recent customer retention research continues to show that retaining existing customers is generally more cost-effective than constantly acquiring new ones, making customer success an important growth strategy.
Organizations that invest in customer success are generally better positioned to improve retention, encourage renewals, and identify expansion opportunities throughout the customer lifecycle.
Without dedicated customer success software, customer information often becomes scattered across spreadsheets, support systems, CRM records, and email conversations. Teams spend valuable time searching for information instead of helping customers solve problems, adopt new features, or prepare for renewals.
Modern customer success platforms centralize customer data, making it easier to monitor customer health, automate repetitive tasks, and identify at-risk accounts before problems become serious. When customer success is connected with customer support, marketing automation, and CRM software, every team works from the same information to deliver a more consistent customer experience.
What to Look for in Customer Success Software
Not every customer success platform offers the same capabilities. Before choosing a solution, consider how it fits your existing processes and future growth plans.
Look for platforms that include customer health scoring, customer lifecycle tracking, workflow automation, CRM integration, reporting, renewal management, and collaboration features. Businesses that also want to connect customer success with sales, marketing, and support may benefit from an integrated platform rather than maintaining several separate applications.
Best Customer Success Software Compared
Customer Success Platforms to Consider
HubSpot Customer Success Management
HubSpot Customer Success Management is available within HubSpot Service Hub and is designed to help customer success teams proactively manage customer relationships. It combines customer health scores, renewal tracking, product usage insights, workflows, and reporting with HubSpot CRM, giving teams a complete view of every customer account. Because it shares data with HubSpot's sales, marketing, and support tools, businesses can manage the entire customer journey from acquisition through renewal without relying on multiple disconnected systems.
Gainsight
Gainsight is an enterprise customer success platform built for organizations managing large customer portfolios. It provides advanced customer health scoring, success plans, renewal management, and analytics that help teams monitor customer relationships at scale. Its extensive feature set makes it a strong choice for enterprises with dedicated customer success departments.
ChurnZero
ChurnZero focuses on helping subscription and SaaS businesses improve customer retention and product adoption. The platform includes customer health monitoring, automated customer journeys, engagement tools, and in-app communication that help teams identify customers who may need additional support before renewal periods.
Totango
Totango is a flexible customer success platform that supports onboarding, lifecycle management, customer health monitoring, and workflow automation. It allows businesses to create customized success programs for different customer segments while tracking progress through configurable dashboards.
Planhat
Planhat combines customer success with account management and revenue insights. Teams can monitor customer health, product usage, renewals, and expansion opportunities while using reporting tools to better understand long-term account performance. It is often used by businesses that closely align customer success with revenue operations.
How HubSpot Customer Success Management Supports Customer Success Teams
Unlike traditional customer success tools that require several integrations to provide a complete customer view, HubSpot Customer Success Management brings customer health, lifecycle data, CRM records, product usage insights, and workflows together in one workspace. Available within HubSpot Service Hub, it helps customer success managers understand which accounts need attention, which customers are ready for expansion, and where proactive outreach can reduce churn.
Because the workspace connects directly with HubSpot CRM, every customer interaction becomes part of a shared timeline. Customer success managers can collaborate with sales, customer support, and marketing teams without switching between multiple applications, creating a more connected customer experience.
Customer Success Workspace
The Customer Success Workspace serves as the central hub for managing customer relationships after the sale. Instead of opening separate dashboards for CRM records, customer health, support history, and renewals, teams can access everything from one place.
The workspace highlights customer health changes, upcoming renewals, product adoption, and recent customer activity, allowing managers to quickly prioritize the accounts that require immediate attention. This helps teams spend less time gathering information and more time working directly with customers.
Customer Health Scores
Customer health scores help teams understand how customers are engaging with their products and services over time. Rather than relying on intuition alone, businesses can use health indicators to identify customers that may require additional support or education.
Health scores can be built using signals such as product usage, customer engagement, support history, lifecycle stage, and other business metrics. Monitoring these indicators regularly allows customer success teams to identify risks earlier and respond before renewal discussions begin.
Customer Lifecycle Management
Customer relationships change over time, from onboarding and adoption to renewal and expansion. HubSpot Customer Success Management provides visibility into every stage of the customer lifecycle so teams understand where each customer is and what actions should happen next.
Having lifecycle information alongside CRM records makes it easier to coordinate customer success activities with sales and customer support, reducing manual tracking and improving consistency across teams.
Product Usage Insights
Understanding how customers use your product is essential for identifying both opportunities and risks. By syncing product usage data with customer records, teams gain better visibility into adoption trends and customer engagement.
Declining product activity may indicate that a customer needs additional training or support, while increasing usage can highlight opportunities for expansion or cross-selling. Instead of waiting until renewal conversations, customer success managers can use these insights to engage customers throughout the relationship.
Renewal Pipeline Management
Renewals are one of the most important responsibilities for customer success teams. HubSpot Customer Success Management helps organize renewal opportunities alongside customer health information, making it easier to prioritize accounts and plan proactive outreach.
Viewing renewals together with customer activity and support history provides additional context for customer conversations and helps teams identify accounts that may benefit from earlier engagement.
Customer Success Reporting
Effective customer success programs rely on accurate reporting. HubSpot provides reports that help businesses monitor customer health trends, renewal pipelines, product adoption, support activity, and customer engagement across their portfolio.
Teams can customize reports based on their priorities and pin frequently used dashboards within the Customer Success Workspace. This allows managers to begin each day with actionable insights instead of manually collecting information from multiple systems.
Workflow Automation
Automation helps customer success teams spend more time building customer relationships and less time completing repetitive administrative work.
Businesses can create workflows that notify managers when customer health declines, assign follow-up tasks after onboarding, trigger renewal reminders, or alert internal teams when important customer milestones occur. Because these workflows connect directly with CRM data, customer activities remain synchronized across departments.
HubSpot's Breeze AI adds intelligence to customer success workflows. Rather than manually reviewing health scores, Breeze AI can surface at-risk accounts automatically, recommend the next best action for each customer, and flag renewal risks before they become churn conversations.
Real-World Example: Proactively Managing Customer Health
Imagine a SaaS company managing 800 subscription customers across several regions.
Without customer success software, account managers rely on spreadsheets and periodic check-ins to identify customers who may need help. Product usage data lives in one application, support tickets in another, and renewal dates inside the CRM. Important warning signs are often missed until customers begin discussing cancellation.
After implementing HubSpot Customer Success Management, customer health scores automatically reflect changes in product usage and engagement. Managers receive alerts when health scores decline, review account activity within the Customer Success Workspace, and schedule proactive outreach before renewal discussions begin. At the same time, accounts showing increased product adoption become candidates for expansion conversations.
Rather than reacting to customer churn, the team uses customer data to strengthen relationships throughout the customer lifecycle.
Connecting Customer Success Across the Business
Customer success works best when every customer-facing team shares the same information.
Because HubSpot Customer Success Management connects with HubSpot CRM, customer support, and HubSpot Marketing Hub, marketing, sales, and customer success teams all work from a unified customer record. This connected approach becomes even more valuable when businesses implement effective CRM integrations that streamline sales workflow, helping every customer-facing team work from the same data.
For example, marketing teams can see which educational content customers engage with after onboarding, sales teams can review customer health before discussing renewals or upsells, and customer success managers can access support history before scheduling strategic reviews. This connected approach supports better collaboration while creating a continuous loop marketing strategy (a cycle where customer insights from post-sale activity inform future acquisition and engagement efforts) where customer insights help improve future engagement across the business.
Step-by-Step: How to Use HubSpot Customer Success Management
Getting the most value from customer success software requires more than tracking customer accounts. Here's how businesses can use HubSpot Customer Success Management to build a proactive customer success program.
Step 1: Connect Your Customer and CRM Data
Start by connecting your customer records in HubSpot CRM. If available, sync product usage data so customer success managers can view engagement, account activity, and customer history from a single workspace.
Step 2: Configure Customer Health Scores
Define the metrics that indicate customer health for your business. These may include product usage, support interactions, onboarding progress, survey responses, or lifecycle stage. Health scores help teams quickly identify customers who may require additional attention.
Step 3: Organize Customers in the Customer Success Workspace
Use the Customer Success Workspace to manage your portfolio of accounts. The workspace brings together customer health, lifecycle information, renewals, product usage, and CRM records so teams can prioritize daily activities more efficiently.
Step 4: Monitor Product Adoption and Customer Engagement
Review product usage trends and customer activity regularly. Customers with declining engagement may benefit from additional training or proactive outreach, while highly engaged customers may present expansion opportunities.
Step 5: Automate Follow-Up Workflows
Create workflows that notify customer success managers when health scores change, assign onboarding tasks, trigger renewal reminders, or alert internal teams when important customer milestones are reached.
Step 6: Review Customer Success Reports
Track customer health trends, renewal opportunities, support activity, and adoption metrics through dashboards and reports. Reviewing these insights regularly helps customer success teams improve long-term retention strategies.
Step 7: Continuously Improve Customer Relationships
Customer success is an ongoing process. Use reporting, health scores, customer feedback, and collaboration between sales, marketing, and support teams to continually improve the customer experience and identify opportunities for growth.
HubSpot Customer Success Management vs Other Platforms
While each platform supports customer success, their approaches differ. Gainsight emphasizes enterprise customer success operations, ChurnZero focuses on SaaS engagement and retention, Totango offers flexible lifecycle management, and Planhat combines customer success with revenue operations. HubSpot Customer Success Management stands out by bringing customer success together with CRM, marketing, customer support, and automation within a connected platform.
Pricing Comparison
Pricing varies by platform and business requirements.
When comparing pricing, consider more than the monthly subscription cost. Implementation time, required integrations, training, and ongoing maintenance can significantly affect the total cost of ownership.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is customer success software?
Customer success software helps businesses manage customer relationships after the sale by tracking customer health, onboarding progress, product adoption, renewal opportunities, and customer engagement. Industry research also shows that personalization, customer experience, and digital innovation are becoming increasingly important drivers of long-term customer loyalty and retention.
The goal is to improve customer retention, reduce churn, and increase customer lifetime value.
What is HubSpot Customer Success Management?
HubSpot Customer Success Management is a customer success solution available within HubSpot Service Hub. It helps teams monitor customer health, manage renewals, track product adoption, prioritize outreach, and collaborate using data stored in HubSpot CRM.
Does HubSpot Customer Success Management Include Customer Health Scores?
Yes. Customer health scores help businesses monitor account health using configurable metrics such as product usage, customer engagement, lifecycle stage, and support activity. These insights help teams identify potential risks before renewals.
Can HubSpot Customer Success Management Work with HubSpot CRM?
Yes. It connects directly with HubSpot CRM, allowing customer success managers to access customer history, sales activity, support interactions, and lifecycle information from one workspace.
Which Businesses Benefit Most from Customer Success Software?
Customer success software is valuable for SaaS companies, subscription businesses, B2B service providers, technology companies, and organizations that manage long-term customer relationships. Any business focused on improving retention and customer lifetime value can benefit from a structured customer success program.
What Features Should You Look for in Customer Success Software?
Important features include customer health scoring, customer lifecycle management, workflow automation, CRM integration, product usage insights, reporting, renewal management, and collaboration tools that help customer success teams work more efficiently.
Final Thoughts
Customer success software has become an important part of building long-term customer relationships. It also complements modern sales strategies, where improving lead quality and nurturing customers after the sale are equally important. Our guide to How AI and Automation Are Transforming Sales Lead Generation explores how businesses can connect customer acquisition with long-term customer success.
Rather than waiting for customers to raise concerns, businesses can use customer health data, lifecycle insights, and automation to identify risks early, improve product adoption, and create more consistent customer experiences.
The platforms in this comparison each serve different business needs. Gainsight offers advanced enterprise capabilities, ChurnZero focuses on SaaS customer engagement, Totango emphasizes flexible lifecycle management, and Planhat combines customer success with revenue insights. HubSpot Customer Success Management provides a connected approach by bringing customer success, HubSpot CRM, customer support, reporting, and automation together within a single workspace.
If you're evaluating customer success software, check out HubSpot Customer Success Management to see how customer health scores, lifecycle tracking, product usage insights, and automated workflows can support your customer retention strategy and help your team deliver greater value throughout the customer lifecycle.
