Why Highly Focused Marketers use HubSpot

Is HubSpot worth the hype?  You're about to learn why your fellow marketers love this platform, and which features could help you get the results you want and grow your business better.

You've probably felt like this before:

You want to make informed decisions, but your data is spread out across too many platforms to keep track of.

Or adding content to your website is more time-consuming, challenging, or expensive than you expected.

Maybe you have leads slipping through the cracks because you simply don’t have the time or energy to nurture relationships with all of them.

You're not alone.

These are tough challenges that many marketers face, especially if you’re flying solo. While you may (understandably) feel frustrated, the good news is that running a business does not need to feel like running on a treadmill.  

As someone who previously worked for companies built on manual processes and spreadsheets, I’ve seen how the right tools and systems add clarity and kick business bottlenecks to the curb. It would be impossible to go over every option out there for marketing software, website services, or customer relationship management systems in one post. But, if you feel like you’re losing focus and precious time bouncing back and forth between platforms all day, you should seriously consider this one.

Meet HubSpot's CRM suite

The single source of truth you need to make data-driven decisions in your business.

What does that mean?

Simply that if you want to get found online, convert and nurture your leads, and gain valuable insights, you may have stumbled upon a gold mine. HubSpot lets you do all of this within the same tool. No more need to remember multiple logins or try to make sense of data from separate platforms.

Phew!

HubSpot also makes handoffs between marketing, sales, and service super smooth. Think centralized and accessible customer data, timely communication, and happy customers (which means more business - hello, higher conversion rates)!

And speaking of conversions, let’s not forget your most important, 24/7, all-star salesperson: your website. HubSpot’s CMS (Content Management System) is part of the CRM Suite and allows you to build and manage your website with the ease of its drag-and-drop editor and without any technical know-how.

While you can get all these perks working together seamlessly in the Suite, you can also customize your hubs: Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, CMS Hub, and the all-new Operations Hub are all available a la carte or at different tiers to fit your budget. 

Keep reading for the curated overview I put together just for you. :)

(Oh, and by the way, HubSpot is constantly evolving, so this is by no means an exhaustive list of features!)

Tier 1: HubSpot's Free Tools

(yes, really!)

The TLDR

This is a great option to consider if you’re just trying to simplify your tech stack, update your CRM, or get out of spreadsheet land.  And did I mention that it’s free??

Cost

FREE

What you get

HubSpot’s collection of free tools is powered by the CRM database itself.  You can manage your contacts and segment them into lists, view automatically imported company insights, create deals to manage sales, send marketing emails, see email health reports, build landing pages, set up conversational bots, and use other basic features, all in the same place and with no expiration date. :)

What you don’t get

The catch is that the free version does have limitations.  For example, you do get landing pages but won’t get access to the full CMS, so if you’re a blogger or content creator (or plan to be), you may want to consider CRM Suite Starter.  More on that in a moment.

My personal fav feature

Active lists.  While you only get five in the free version, it’s pretty awesome to set criteria and watch new contacts get added to your active list automatically.  For example, you can have an active list for all customers or prospects who filled out a specific form on one of your landing pages.

Tier 2: CRM Suite Starter

The TLDR

Lots of bang for your buck, especially if you want to spin up a quick website with basic marketing features.  You can find more tips on getting started with your site here.

Cost (at the time of this post):

Starts at $50/month

What you get

All of HubSpot’s free tools, PLUS:

1:1 technical support from HubSpot, and:

Marketing Hub Starter

• 1000 Marketing Contacts (unlimited free non-marketing contacts up to a limit of 15 million overall)
• Mobile Optimization for Content

Increased limits for:

• Custom Properties 
• Form Follow-up Emails 
• Number of Lists
• Number of Reports

….and more!

Sales Hub Starter

• Canned Snippets
• Conversation Routing
• Deal Pipelines
• Documents
• Email Scheduling
• Email tracking & notifications
• Goals
• Outgoing Calls
• Simple Deal Automation
• Stripe integration
• Task queues
• Quotes
  
  
  

Service Hub Starter

• Custom Bots
• Rep Productivity Reports
• Simple Ticket Automation
• Slack Integration
• Ticket Closed Reports
• Ticket Pipelines
• Time To Close Reports
  
  

CMS Hub Starter

• Advanced Menus
• App And Template Marketplace
• AMP Support For Blogs
• Blog
• Blog Import
• Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• Custom Domains
• Design Manager
• Drag And Drop Editor
• Mobile Optimization
• Multi-Langauge Content And Testing
• Premium Hosting
• Site Export
• SSL Certificate
• Subdomains
• Web Application Firewall (WAF)
• Website Pages
• Website Themes
• Website Traffic Analytics

Operations Hub Starter

• Custom Field Mappings (for third-party integrations)

What you don’t get

• A/B testing features
• Email Comparison Reporting
• CTAs and CTA testing
• Marketing Automation or Workflows
• Marketing Campaigns
• More than 15 total web pages
• Smart Content/Personalization

My personal fav feature

The CMS drag-and-drop editor.  I mean, how much fun is this?  I could play with it all day.

Tier 3: CRM Suite Professional

The TLDR

One word: automation.  Yep, it’s a jump up in price from Starter, but you’ll be saving so much time, you might as well have hired a new team member.  In fact, it’s probably cheaper than adding to your headcount.

Cost (at the time of this post)

Starts at $1780/month

What you get

All of HubSpot’s free tools, every feature in Starter, PLUS:

Marketing hub Professional

• 2000 Marketing Contacts (unlimited free non-marketing contacts up to a limit of 15 million overall)
• A/B testing
• Ability to branch on a particular property in workflows
• Ability to create sub workflows
• Ability to delay actions in workflows
• Ability to send internal SMS
• Blog
• Calculated Fields 
• Campaigns and Campaign Reporting
• Content Strategy/Topic Cluster Tool
• CTAs and CTA testing
• Email Comparison Reporting
• Workflows
• SEO audit tool
• Smart content on landing pages and blogs
• Social Management and Scheduling
• Website Traffic Analytics

Sales hub Professional

• eSignatures and Quotes
• Forecasting
• Lead rotation
• Sales automation/sequences

service hub professional

• Knowledge base
• NPS, support, and custom surveys
• Ticket Automation

cms hub professional

• A/B testing on pages 
• Content staging
• More than 15 web pages
• Personalization and Smart Content

Operations Hub Professional

• Duplicate Management
• Programmable Automation
• Webhooks

What you don’t get

• Custom Behavioral Events
• Custom Objects
• Multiple Domains or Brands
• Multi-touch revenue attribution
• YouTube Analytics Integration

My personal fav feature:

This is a tough one since pro has so many time-saving features, but if I had to, I’d pick workflows.  You’ll never have to stress about leads getting lost in your pipeline again.  Now you can stay in touch with your prospects with simple email marketing automation.  For example, here’s a behind the scenes screenshot of one of our nurture workflows:

Tier 4: CRM Suite Enterprise

the TLDR

More of a special case, but if you’re nearing the 50,000 contact mark or have multiple brands within your business, this one’s worth looking at. 

Cost (at the time of this post)

Starts at $4,000/month

What you get

Everything in HubSpot CRM Suite Starter and Pro, PLUS:

Marketing hub enterprise

• 10,000 marketing contacts  (unlimited free non-marketing contacts up to a limit of 15 million overall)
• Adaptive Testing (automated A/B testing)
• Behavioral event triggers in reporting
• Custom Objects
• Multi-touch Revenue Attribution
• Partitioning and User Roles (customized permissions for team members based on role, region, and more)
• YouTube Analytics Integration

Sales hub enterprise

• Automatic Lead Scoring
• Conversational intelligence (automatic recording, transcription, and sales call analysis)
• Playbooks (document sales process/sales call data collection)
• Quote-based Workflows
• Recurring Revenue Tracking
• Salesforce Custom Objects Sync

Service hub enterprise

• Conversational intelligence
• Playbooks

CMS hub enterprise

• Adaptive Testing (automated A/B testing)
• Custom objects
• Memberships
• Multiple domains
• Multi-domain traffic reporting 
• The ability to build web apps

There’s no Enterprise level for Operations Hub (yet), but the Enterprise Suite includes all Operations Hub Pro features.

Even if you don’t necessarily need the other features in the Enterprise Suite, the price per marketing contact goes down around the 50,000 contact mark.  So if your business is really booming, upgrading could be a good move.

And while we’re talking about marketing contacts, one of the few irritants HubSpot has is its pricing structure for marketing contacts.  HubSpot charges for marketing contacts in various increments, depending on the plan (in Starter, for example, you can market to 1000 contacts at the $50/month price, but once you hit 1001 marketing contacts you’re bumped into the 2000 contacts range for an extra $50/month).  The catch is that once you pass the threshold you can’t downgrade to a lower number of contacts, even after you’ve cleaned up your database.  While this is an essential pitfall to avoid, it’s also a good reminder to keep your CRM clean and up to date!  You can read more about deduplicating your contacts in this post.

What you don’t get

Nothing!  Enterprise is the highest rung on the HubSpot ladder.

My personal fav feature

Multiple domains and website reporting.  This is a great feature if your business has more than one brand. 

A note to my fellow marketer

As a marketer, you know that your content and customer experience are a top priority.  And while HubSpot doesn’t do the work for you, there are tons of ways you can use it to improve your customer’s journey, lead generation, conversions, metrics, and more.  Not to mention all the precious resources you’ll save by simplifying your tech stack.  

Wouldn’t it be great to have the clarity, time, and traffic you need to actually hit your goals and grow your business?  You know it would.  Try it today.

(No thanks, I don’t need to grow)