HubSpot Marketing Hub Reviews, Competitors and Pricing

Frank Welsch-Lehmann

Sales CRM Consultant at Taipan Consulting GmbH

Nov 29, 2023

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The solution is very stable and very reliable, and the onboarding process is well documented

Pros and Cons

"The tool is very stable and very reliable."

"The product is not cheap."

What is our primary use case?

The solution is used for generating leads as part of the inbound campaign.

What is most valuable?

The joint database shared between all the HubSpot modules is valuable.

What needs improvement?

The product is not cheap.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for more than four years.

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What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The tool is very stable and very reliable. No software is without glitches or errors. I rate the stability a ten out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Our customers are medium-sized businesses. The tool is scalable. We can scale it up to whatever level we want. I rate the scalability a ten out of ten.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is complex, but it is manageable. The onboarding process is well documented. The ease of setup depends on the environment. It is a SaaS solution. The initial deployment takes approximately three months.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

It is an upmarket solution, but it is not the most expensive tool. I rate the pricing a seven out of ten on a scale where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

The product is better than other alternatives.

What other advice do I have?

I recommend the product. Implementing a marketing automation solution must be well-planned and well-thought-through. Overall, I rate the tool a ten out of ten.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner

Last updated: Nov 29, 2023

reviewer2137596

Web Specialist and Marketing Expert at a manufacturing company with 10,001+ employees

Mar 31, 2023

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Unique and very user-friendly

Pros and Cons

"Very user-friendly."

"An expensive solution."

What is our primary use case?

We use this solution for analytics for our marketing campaigns and the basic CRM.
I'm a web and digital marketing expert. We are an industrial company and customers of HubSpot.

What is most valuable?

This product is unique and very user-friendly. It's very helpful for our needs.

What needs improvement?

This product is quite expensive.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using this solution for a few weeks.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable.

How was the initial setup?

We worked with an agency that assisted us with the implementation.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Licensing costs are expensive but it's worth the money. I believe we paid for a professional license.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We didn't evaluate any other options.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

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Anterpreet Kaur

Search Engine Optimization Specialist at SkipTheDishes

Oct 4, 2023

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A helpful platform providing connected tools and experiences

Pros and Cons

"HubSpot is a very helpful solution."

"The solution is not recommended for launching investment."

What is our primary use case?

The solution is used for website development and marketing automation.

What is most valuable?

HubSpot is a very helpful solution.

What needs improvement?

The solution is not recommended for launching investment.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using HubSpot Marketing Hub for three years.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable solution.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support was in-house and took 30 minutes to answer a question.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward.

What other advice do I have?

The solution can be rated a nine out of ten for lead and process testing and as a CRM.

It is a good platform if you want to use it to track your sales platform.

I rate the overall solution a six out of ten.

Disclosure: PeerSpot has made contact with the reviewer to validate that the person is a real user. The information in the posting is based upon a vendor-supplied case study, but the reviewer has confirmed the content's accuracy.

Last updated: Oct 4, 2023

it_user80121

Senior Business Analyst - CRM at Kumara Lloyd Associates

Jan 29, 2015

How to Improve Sales Using Hubspot

There is much hype around the “inbound marketing process” and a product called Hubspot. I wanted to find out how effective it was and what type of businesses might benefit from it. I took up Hubspot’s offer of a 30 day free trial to try it out in anger, using inbound marketing for my own business as a template for the trial.

What is Hubspot?

Hubspot is an inbound marketing tool for generating sales leads for a business.

The ‘inbound marketing business process’ was invented by Hubspot, so with Hubspot you are buying into the philosophy and business process alongside the software tool itself. The process is built on established web marketing techniques like blogs, search engine optimisation, social media and email marketing. Hubspot's process brings these techniques together to create a single methodology and tool to generate leads for your business.

Wikipedia definition: “Inbound marketing refers to marketing activities that bring visitors in, rather than marketers having to go out to get prospect's attention. Inbound marketing earns the attention of customers, makes the company easy to be found and draws customers to the website by producing interesting content.”

Hubspot helps you automate most of the elements connected with inbound marketing (web pages, free offers, contacts management, etc.) by bringing them together into a single integrated software tool. To some extent Hubspot is marketing eating itself. Once you sign up to their mailing list, you get bombarded with their inbound marking offers of free material on how to do inbound marketing!

How did I get on with the trial?

The trial proved to be a very useful exercise for testing various marketing ideas for promoting my company.

Most of Hubspot’s functions were available during the trial with the exception of being able to send emails. On line help was also promised in the software during the trial but although messages to technical support were answered, my more general questions were not (for example an offer to help me send the test emails).

What did I think about Hubspot as a marketing tool?

This might sound obvious, but Hubspot is only suitable for companies intending to have an inbound marketing strategy. You should only consider Hubspot of you are serious about using inbound marketing. You need to put in considerable amount of marketing effort to make it work. It did not seem to be easily adaptable to other marketing methods.

However on the premise that you are serious about inbound marketing, you should seriously consider it due to the increased efficiency it can bring you.

What did you like about it?

I found it very simple to use. Help and tips of how to get the best out of the tool were close to hand. Web pages, landing pages, calls to action and emails were very easy to set up, edit to experiment with and update without the need for specialist website editing skills (a big productivity gain).

All the major elements of inbound marketing were integrated together in one place. This saved time over dealing with all the inbound marketing activities separately. This frees you to experiment to develop the best ways attracting new customers and improve your content.

Being able to control all you branding in the same place also gives you better control over it.

Finally I liked the ability to easily measure your overall marketing success and test the outcomes of different marketing and advertising tactics. Thus you can determine your marketing cost per lead generated and thus fully justify your marketing expenditure.

What was disappointing?

To get the most from the tool, you will need to transfer your web site into Hubspot. This is a big ask for many organisations who have other stakeholders using their website (like recruitment and investor relations). You will also need to pay Hubspot at extra cost to transfer your website. It is possible to run your website separately from Hubspot and tools are in place to help you do this, but it results in more work for you and is less neat in terms of reporting.

It is expensive! The basic package will set your back approximately £2,100 in the first year. Functionality is limited to 100 contacts in the database and useful CRM integration and automation is not available in this package. Although this package is enough to get you started, I would anticipate that most companies would end up using the professional package costing £8,200 in the first year.

You can however measure your success with Hubspot and thus easily justify this expenditure against the additional sales you will gain! You also need to consider the additional cost in light of your overall marketing budget. Other marketing expenditure may no longer be needed to gain the same level of awareness and number of leads thus offsetting the cost.

What was average?

The standard reports I would only rate as average. I had difficulty setting up “tracking URLs” to appear correctly - I eventually worked it out but it was very complicated!

The web publishing tool was nothing special either. As we do not use Facebook, we already publish on LinkedIn and Twitter at the same time and I find LinkedIn better for this. Larger marketing teams would however benefit from being able to monitor all of their social media interactions from different people on different social networks all in one place.

I found the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) keywords report good for finding and improving my keywords. However I still needed Google Ads, to help me find additional suitable keywords - Hubspot did not work for me in isolation.

Conclusions

The main benefit I found from Hubspot is that it makes inbound marketing much more efficient. However to get to this point you need to:

a) Establish that inbound marketing process is suitable for your own business

b) Seriously invest in social media and website marketing for it to be worth the money in terms of improved productivity (expenditure inclusive of cost of staff time of more than £10,000 a year)

For my own company, our web presence is not yet mature enough to make an immediate return on our investment from the functionality on offer. Most of the tools in Hubspot are available elsewhere cheaper (e.g. Mailchimp, Google Analytics, Jimdo, etc.) which will enable us to develop our web presence using inbound marketing without having to buy Hubspot. There will however come a time when the time saving offered by having all these things linked together within one tool will justify us moving over to Hubspot.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

AbhisekPattojoshi

Senior Manager Product Strategy at a security firm with 501-1,000 employees

May 12, 2021

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Reliable and user-friendly with great dashboards

Pros and Cons

"It's my understanding that the initial setup is a straightforward process."

"It would be ideal if there was a way to forward a notification or create notifications for non-HubSpot users."

What is our primary use case?

On our website, we have lots of forms and LinkedIn ads that we run. We basically have lots of forms. We sync our HubSpot so that whatever form fields are being entered, whenever users want to download any assets, that automatically syncs in HubSpot, and HubSpot tells us, who has downloaded a certain asset.

What is most valuable?

I have only used one feature so far, which is this form field. When I say form field, it is like syncing HubSpot form fields with website form fields. That is the only one that I have used. Therefore, that is most valuable to me so far.

It has been an excellent, awesome product to work with.

It's my understanding that the initial setup is a straightforward process.

The solution is extremely reliable.

The solution is very user-friendly.

The dashboard is great.

What needs improvement?

As of now, given my 15, 20 days of experience, I have never faced any kind of single pain points with HubSpot.

It would be ideal if there was a way to forward a notification or create notifications for non-HubSpot users. For example, on my team, if there is one person not using the product, it would be nice if I could still create a HubSpot notification for them.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used the solution for 12 months. However, I've used it only for 15 to 20 days in the last five or six months.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable. It's one of the most reliable solutions I have used. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. The performance is good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

From my side, I have not attempted to scale the solution. I can't speak to how scalable it is. I don't have enough experience to comment directly.

We have three or more individuals using the solution on our side.

How extensively the solution will be used, and if it will be expanded, is part of a management team decision. I can't speak to their plans in that regard.

How are customer service and technical support?

I've been in touch with technical support and I have been very happy with them. I'd rate them at a nine out of ten. They are helpful and responsive. They're excellent.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I did not previously use a different tool.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was done a long while back by the marketing operations team. It was very straightforward at that time, as far as I know. However, I was not directly a part of the process.

What about the implementation team?

Our marketing operations team handled the implementation.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I don't manage the licensing. I'm not sure how it works. I can't speak to the exact costs or how the license is structured.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I did not evaluate other options before choosing this product.

What other advice do I have?

I'm just a customer and an end-user.

I'm not sure which version of the solution I'm currently using. I share a license. I can't recall the license number.

Even though I have worked only worked with the solution for a short time, I would recommend HubSpot to be used, as they are very reliable. They are very responsive and the solution does most of the things for you. It is the best solution that I have worked with.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Hybrid Cloud

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Microsoft Azure

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

KaranSharma1

Marketing manager at Wowtickets

Aug 22, 2023

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Provides good enterprise features and helps in scaling businesses

Pros and Cons

"The product has the most valuable enterprise features."

"HubSpot Marketing Hub’s user interface could be more accessible for a regular user to understand."

What is our primary use case?

We use HubSpot Marketing Hub for brand awareness and marketing campaigns.

What is most valuable?

The product has the most valuable enterprise features. It is a complete enterprise solution with useful tools and technology.

What needs improvement?

HubSpot Marketing Hub’s user interface could be more accessible for a regular user to understand.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using HubSpot Marketing Hub for seven years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is a stable product. I rate its stability a seven or eight out of ten.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It is a scalable platform. We get many sales leads using it. I rate its scalability a seven out of ten.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support services are good. I can easily reach them in case of queries.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup process is easy. It takes two months to complete.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

HubSpot Marketing Hub is less expensive than Salesforce. However, it is a complete product from a business perspective.

What other advice do I have?

It is a unique platform for scaling businesses by reaching large audiences in a very short span. With the help of a segmentation feature, we can reach the right audience at the right time. We can identify the right opportunity to increase sales.

I rate HubSpot Marketing Hub an eight out of ten.

If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

Last updated: Aug 22, 2023

it_user235464

Apr 28, 2018

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Great for content curation and dissemination

Pros and Cons

"We are now able to manage and measure content (blogs, CTAs, and landing pages)."

"Increase the CRM size for sole proprietors before increasing the fee."

What is our primary use case?

I continue to use HubSpot for content curation and dissemination. I have written more than 500 blog posts on marketing, employee, and customer engagement, and also more than 1000 articles on the state of different aspects of IT. I have a lot of information on the value of various constituencies. As such, that is what I am using HubSpot to do at least three times a day.

The analytics enable me to see which content is driving the most page views and click-throughs.

How has it helped my organization?

We are now able to manage and measure content (blogs, CTAs, and landing pages). HubSpot serves as my Content Management Network for more than 500 of my own articles and gives me access to those that I have written for DZone.

What is most valuable?

Content creation and dissemination. I love that I am able to access the 500 plus blog posts on my site, as well as the more than 800 articles I have written for DZone.com.

What needs improvement?

Increase the CRM size for sole proprietors before increasing the fee. As an employee working to get some consulting projects, in addition to my full-time work, I am not in a position to accumulate a large number of MQLs. These are unlikely to nurture into SQLs given their geography.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

It has not been an issue.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Excellent.

Technical Support:

Excellent.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

No.

What about the implementation team?

In-house; myself.

What was our ROI?

Undetermined.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Have sufficient content before signing up for the 30-day trial.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Yes. Eloqua, Marketo, Act-On

What other advice do I have?

Great customer support and information of value on the site.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.

it_user235464

Jun 4, 2018

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Collected all of our digital content and allowed us to repurpose and share with other relevant content over time.

What is our primary use case?

I use HubSpot to aggregate all of my content, create calls to action and landing pages, to generate leads for my consulting practice. As a research analyst and marketing strategist, I use HubSpot to disseminate my content across my social media channels and to keep me up to date on comments so I can respond in a timely manner.

How has it helped my organization?

Collected all of our digital content and allowed us to repurpose and share with other relevant content over time. Able to put together lead nurturing programs based on personas to move MQLs to SQLs and trials to customers.

I am able to continue to share information of value with several different personas depending on the content I am sharing.

What is most valuable?

Content management and dissemination since we are always creating more content. Lead management and nurturing customized for target personas.

What needs improvement?

I am not in a position to afford the CRM at this point. I would like to get to a point where I can justify using it.

For how long have I used the solution?

More than five years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

I have not.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

10+

Technical Support:

10+

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

No, I have not found a solution that meets my needs better than HubSpot.

How was the initial setup?

Very straightforward and CSRs were very helpful any time I have a question.

What about the implementation team?

I implemented the solution myself.

What was our ROI?

Undetermined at this point.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

Take the 30-day free trial with HubSpot and any other vendor. Some marketing automation solutions are better for lead scoring and lead management, but I have not found a better solution for someone using content marketing as their primary lead generation strategy.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Eloqua, Marketo, Act-On, Silverpop, Adobe, Pardot

What other advice do I have?

Easy to use. Great customer support.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.