HubSpot

Our Thoughts on Hubspot

Hubspot are an extremely popular, yet massively over-priced, marketing automation tool aimed at small businesses.

In our recent analysis of the marketing automation industry, we found that Hubspot own a 41.6% share of the small business automation software market, positioning them ahead of Infusionsoft as the market leaders.

Despite having an exceptionally well-designed product that has proven its value to over 30,000 small businesses, we generally would not recommend Hubspot. Why? Because there are even better alternatives (e.g. ActiveCampaign) that cost 20x less.

While Hubspot’s starting price of $200/month may not seem like much, they’re notorious for price creep and lock-in contracts. While you may start by paying $200/mo, this can quickly end up in the thousands as you require additional contacts and features.

For comparison, where Hubspot charge $2,400/mo for 10k contacts (plus $5,000 for onboarding), Ontraport charge only $297/mo for 25k contacts (with no onboarding fee), and ActiveCampaign charge just $70/mo for 10k contacts. Ultimately, whether or not Hubspot is going to be right for you business depends on the size of your list today, and where you expect it to be in 1, 3, and 5 years time.

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Hubspot User Reviews

6.1 Users (5 votes)
Overall
Ease of Use
Customer Support

Write a Review
Go to Hubspot.com

Hubspot's Pros and Cons

Hubspot is one of the best designed and best marketed marketing automation tools, which explains why they have the highest number of customers among all marketing automation tools.

Pros

  • The platform is easy to use – Hubspot have a beautifully designed product. Given the complexity of marketing automation software, they have done a great job of making it intuitive for small business owners with little or no coding ability.
  • 7-day free trial – Most marketing automation tools do a pretty bad job of mitigating the customer’s up-front risk (high setup fees, no free trials, and long contracts). While Hubspot do require high setup fees and a contract, they are one of the only tools to offer a free trial.
  • Educating their users – Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Hubspot is the extent to which they invest in educating their customers. Their blog provides an exceptional place for business owners to learn about online marketing.
  • A place for all your tools – Hubspot is convenient in that it has everything in one place. While you could get 99% of Hubspot’s functionality for free (or cheap) elsewhere, it’s handy having it all in one place.

 

Cons

  • Requires a 12-month contract – Hubspot contracts are billed annually by default. Ultimately, marketing automation is something that you’re likely to use for many years, so this is not too big an issue. However, it would be preferable to have a rolling month-on-month contract.
  • No A/B testing in their basic or  PRO package – If you want to run split tests, you’re going to have to upgrade to their $2,400/month package. Given that A/B testing is one of their quickest and most effective ways to improve the performance of online campaigns, it seems odd that they wouldn’t offer this at lower levels to help small businesses generate better results (and additional revenue).
  • Very steep price creep – While Hubspot do have a $200/month package, marketing automation and CRM integration are only offered at their $800/month package, which includes only 1,000 contacts. As your requirements and contacts grow, so does this cost (quite rapidly).
  • Most tools offered by Hubspot are free elsewhere – Hubspot offers a well-designed set of tools, but there aren’t any silver bullets in there that couldn’t be found elsewhere for free or cheap.
  • Technical support is paid – Implementing Hubspot is fairly straight-forward, but if you do require ongoing technical support, you’ll have to pay for it.

Hubspot Integrations

Hubspot currently have 34 native integrations, including one with Zapier – which enables you to integrate Hubspot with the ~300 providers on there.

Below are some of Hubspot’s most popular integrations.

  • CRM
  • Marketing
  • eCommerce
  • Insight
  • Netsuite
  • ZohoCRM
  • Base CRM
  • Pipedrive
  • SugarCRM
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM
  • Salesforce
  • Wistia
  • SurveyMonkey
  • GoToWebinar
  • Eventbrite
  • Gravity Forms
  • WordPress
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Wufoo Forms
  • Uberflip
  • Magento
  • Shopify
  • ReadyTalk
  • GoChime
  • SnapEngage
  • RelateIQ
  • Invoca

User Interface Screenshots

  • analytics_tool
  • file-13142769-png
  • hubspot
Go to Hubspot.com

Hubspot's Pricing

Basic

from
$200 /mo
  • 100 Contacts
  • 3 Users
  • Blogging & Landing Pages
  • Email Marketing
  • Social Inbox
  • –

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Pro

from
$800 /mo
  • 1,000 contacts
  • Unlimited Users
  • Everything in basic, plus:
  • CRM Integration
  • Marketing Automation
  • Smart Content

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Enterprise

from
$2,400 /mo
  • 10,000 records
  • Unlimited Users
  • Everything in Pro, plus:
  • A/B Testing
  • Custom Events
  • Advanced Reporting

Go To Demo

Hubspot User Reviews

Write your review


The martech tools are spot on
Been using HubSpot for a few years now, it\'s grown fantastically well. With the new pricing, there\'s no cost for contacts as well. That\'s probably why it owns 40+% of the SME market.

The martech tools are spot on. One of the issues is that it\'s too easy to edit, needs good practices to setup to stop it from becoming a frankensystem.
12th January 2022, 6:20 pm
Overall9
Ease of Use9
Customer Support9.5
0
0
A "freemium" model that constantly teases extra functionality for extra $$$$$
Hubspot undoubtedly has some great tools and some great functionality but as you get more experienced and want to do more things the price escalates out of proportion to the functionality meaning you are down the rabbit hold chasing ROI. If you're happy to carry Hubspot branding on your comms and keep your DB on Hubspots platform without rapid growth then the freemium model may work for you. If your business is growing at a rapid rate this is NOT the most cost effective solution.
22nd December 2021, 4:40 am
Overall6.5
Ease of Use7.5
Customer Support8
0
0
Hubspot disappointment
We are in Hubspot's startup program, with a discounted rate of about $650/month. The surprise is that the pages constructed using their templates are not acceptable. There are CSS errors and presentation problems that require us to pull engineers out of their normal workflow (billed at $150-225/hour) and get them to work on the spaghetti code offered by Hubspot.

We can't use any of their templates without intervention by either their tech support or our very busy engineers.

Here's an example from yesterday. A blog article template has social media sharing buttons above the main body of text. The buttons are out of alignment.

How are we supposed to be taken seriously by very demanding clientele if we can't get the basics right? In order to serve our customers, we need to demonstrate "best practices" in everything we do. Hubspot is a patchwork of less than excellent mechanisms cobbled together to satisfy small business marketing needs. Not a good match for us.

What Hubspot does extremely well is create content for their own marketing. They have high domain authority for marketing automation. They've got the wonderful high touch customer service during the trial period. But the actual day-to-day implementation is far less than expected.

To their credit, they also have managed to build partnerships and half competent integrations with other vendors in the marketing ecosystem. For example, when we talk to data suppliers like ZoomInfo or identity resolution vendors, integration with Hubspot is usually straightforward.

I'll add that navigation of their dashboard is far less than intuitive. One of our interns has spent 50+ hours learning Hubspot basics so she could show the rest of us how to us it. Don't let anyone tell you that the UX is seamless or friction free!

Unless things radically change we will bail out.

In sum, Hubspot is a clear case of overpromise and underdeliver. It's adequate but far from excellent.
20th February 2019, 12:52 pm
Overall2
Ease of Use3
Customer Support4
0
0
Great set of features but comes at a cost
Not sure the last person fully understands how email tracking works and this his problem is not a Hubspot issue.

Anyway, the CRM element is simply fantastic, we're about to commit to Marketing Basic but just wish it was a cost efficient as Sales Starter. The price hikes are slightly worrying but If you use that as a sanity stick then you will be OK - do you really need the extra features? really? really? If you do your probably a Marketing agency or a team and so the cost makes more sense. Support is amazing and we've used it for about 4 years.

In relation to contact pricing, my interpretation is the idea is inbound so not filing you Hubspot with 10,000's of contacts from old systems other sources and who probably don't know or care about you. If you were able to cost efficiently fill all those into Hubspot you wouldn't be using it in the way it was intended.
15th June 2018, 5:54 am
Overall8.5
Ease of Use9
Customer Support8.5
3
5
Not impressed
The most annoying part of just simply using the notifications when emails are read, is that you are penalized if some person reads the email 100 times... We have no control over that yet penalized and then can not see who reads the other emails past or present... Seems like they are focused on bleeding you dry instead of partnering and being a benefit. Do not recommend.
29th August 2017, 4:41 pm
Overall0.5
Ease of Use6
Customer Support1
17
8
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Alternatives to Hubspot

Ontraport is a significantly more affordable alternative to Hubspot. At $297 per month, with no setup fees and all features included, Ontraport is a great option for small businesses on a budget.

Our Review of Ontraport
Go to Ontraport.com

Infusionsoft is one of the best marketing automation platforms for companies with 2-25 members of staff. Aimed at small businesses, their pricing is slightly more affordable than Hubspot, with many of the same features.

Our Review of Infusionsoft
Go to Infusionsoft.com

ActiveCampaign logo

Starting at $9 per month, ActiveCampaign are by far the most cost-effective marketing automation tool out there, as well as being one of the best-designed products. We use them, and highly recommend them!

Our Review of ActiveCampaign
Go to ActiveCampaign.com

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