HubSpot Marketing Hub Reviews

We use this solution as a central marketing automation tool, integrated with SFDC CRM. We are also using HubSpot CMS but will be moving off of this soon.

HubSpot has been very useful for a startup when we didn't have marketing ops expertise. It provides basic email automation tools, leads capture/scoring, and integrates with SFDC.  

Their blog platform and form capabilities are very easy to use and integrate within our web site.

API capabilities (including the performance) are minimal and the email workflow capabilities are too rigid, which results in very complicated workflow management.

We use it as a CRM and as a CMS.

It saves a lot of time. 

• Marketing module
• Contacts
• Reports.  

Analytics system could be better.

• Helping to create client websites
• Adding content
• Minor template tweaks
• Custom website and landing pages
• Blogs
• Templates
• Widgets
• Workflows
• Email

• Overall speed and ease of use.
• Sandbox environment allows for real-time examples to test and share with clients on the environment. 
• It allows us to shine with a deep understanding of the platform.
  

• Sandbox environment: Provides a great way to test new templates and create content in the environment, then share it with the client for real-time evaluation.
• Great file manager: Easy to work with, edit images, and organize files. 
• Design Manager: Ease of editing and creating templates after initial development.
• HubDB: Great for modules, tables, resources and beautiful dynamic pages

HubSpot is constantly working to improve and innovate. A downside to this is that sometimes it can be disorienting when they put out a new release/beta test without informing us. It can be a bit disorienting to have to figure out how to access and adjust things in a new layout unexpectedly. 

Customer support is helpful and responsive. 

Sales enablement, where it has been hard to manage leads and forgetting following up with clients, as we manage multiple geographies and managing data in a worksheet can be hard. 

It has eased managing the sales team and the sales journey right from setting up appointments. The best thing is the ease to customize per our needs. 

• Deals and closing
• Task reminders
• Call logs

We can choose the necessary stages as per the lead, and update it accordingly, then proceed it further.

They should integrate a bot, as it would be easier to get the status to the management team without logging into the CRM to get all the required details. I would recommend trying to use ElliQ, which is an excellent smart bot that can be used for automation.

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.

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.

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

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.

No.

I have not.

Customer Service:

10+

Technical Support:

10+

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

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

I implemented the solution myself.

Undetermined at this point.

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.

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

Easy to use. Great customer support.

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.              

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.

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.

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.

No issues.

It has not been an issue.

Customer Service:

Excellent.

Technical Support:

Excellent.

No.

In-house; myself.

Undetermined.

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

Yes. Eloqua, Marketo, Act-On

Great customer support and information of value on the site.

CMS, social media tool, and analytics reporting.

I work for a marketing agency. We use the platform for a number of our clients. We typically run our client blogs and their social media programs through HubSpot. For some clients, their websites and reporting also goes through HubSpot. We don't typically rely on the HubSpot CRM or sales tools. The tools we do use are very user-friendly and incredibly scalable while allowing for intelligent automation. Scalability is hugely important to our clients and for me. As the person executing the marketing plan, it's very helpful to a have such a breadth of functionality accessible at one central portal.

Most of HubSpot's shortcomings come in functionality that is stopped just shy of the finish line, so to speak. For example, the social calendar tool should have a multi-select drag-and-drop functionality. The social scheduling tool similarly should be able to handle more than 15 unique messages at a time. The LinkedIn API seems to be somehow limited, as the social inbox tool often fails to pick up interactions/conversations on LinkedIn and frequently cannot retrieve the names of those individuals interacting with user messaging.

That said, there are some real issues, especially in the analytics reporting, where unexplainable gaps tend to show up. For example, the discrepancy between the number of social clicks reported and the number of social-media-generated visits reported often cannot be explained by the usual suspects - clicks directing to third-party content, partially-loaded page bounces, filtering, double clicks, etc. In fact, I've encountered instances where the reported number of social media generated visits exceeded the reported number of social clicks which makes for a real head scratcher. HubSpot support is usually of little help in explaining these discrepancies.

Another example can be found in the page performance reporting tool. In this view, the user is presented with a list of pages and some information associated with those pages - information like publish date, views, CTA %, etc. The problem is the figures presented under the CTA % column almost never match up with the numbers found if you click through to the individual page's reporting environment and divide the number of CTA clicks by the number of page views. In running AdWords campaigns, we've also found enormous discrepancies between the AdWords and HubSpot reporting. For these and other reasons, we tend to prefer data from Google Analytics.

Another feature leaving tremendous room for improvement is the keyword tool. This provides data on keyword difficulty and search volume that is frankly not very reliable, often contradicting more authoritative tools such as MOZ and Keyword Planner, as well as basic intuition.

Over two years.

For a web application, HubSpot runs fairly heavy, which can cause stability issues on the side of the user (due to processing issues). While effectively the same, it should be noted that when these problems occur, they are not technically issues with the stability of the platform.

No.

Fair, a seven out of 10.

As an agency, we have to work with many CMS, marketing automation, and social media tools. In these capacities, I find that HubSpot tends to provide for a superior user experience while allowing for a more effective, scalable digital marketing program. In terms of analytics and SEO, HubSpot offers a subpar solution. As a CRM, HubSpot is infinitely more user-friendly than Salesforce but considerably less robust in its offering.

In my experience, this depends more on the DNS you use than on HubSpot. I've been part of extremely smooth and easy setups and extremely difficult setups.

The Pro package should be adequate for most operations.

As an agency, we don't chose the solutions employed; our clients do.

I'd offer my strong endorsement. This is a very powerful tool that gets better each year.

The most important features are email marketing and lead scoring. We attend a lot of trade shows, host webinars, etc., so email marketing is a key part of our inbound marketing strategy.

Lead scoring helps us track our leads when we’re determining which ones are hotter and should be followed up. It allows marketing to pass more qualified leads to sales, so that the sales team can prioritize.

Before using HubSpot, we weren’t able to track our database activity as much. We were using MailChimp, which is a great beginner tool for email marketing and marketing automation. However, HubSpot is your all-in-one inbound platform. It allows us to track visitors' web views, download history, and more. Since using HubSpot, we’ve at least doubled our leads generated.

Sometimes the product can be glitchy in the email marketing and landing page creation and I find myself having to refresh the page. It’s not often and it usually fixes itself, but it can be frustrating if you need to turn something around quickly

For example, when building a new email or landing page, sometimes when I insert something like an image or Call-to-Action, it won’t show up - it’s blank. I have to try multiple times and usually have to refresh and/or leave the page entirely and come back to it later. .

I also wish there were more capabilities with the new Lead Flow tool. I believe they are working on some upgrades since it’s still a new product as of today.

We have used the solution since August, 2015.

We didn't really have any stability issues, but I’ve encountered some glitches that usually fix themselves. Overall, it’s a very reliable platform and their support is very helpful and responsive if you have any issues.

We didn't have any scalability issues. That’s the best part about HubSpot. It allows you to scale your business.

We have multiple users in HubSpot for various reasons. I manage the email marketing piece and lead scoring, where our web person manages landing page creation and SEO reports. As we add more people to our team and grow our business, it’s very easy to manage.

I would rate the technical support as 10/10. I’ve never had a problem they couldn’t fix.

Usually, most issues are fixed within a day or two. I’ve had some larger scale technical problems, but their team is very thorough and even if it takes a week or so, they figure it out and get it right.

We previously used MailChimp, but we needed a more all-in-one platform. MailChimp was only offering email marketing services and we needed to add lead scoring, landing page creation, SEO, reporting, etc.

The initial setup was a big task, but HubSpot sets you up with an on-boarding specialist for your first three months. This is in addition to your customer success rep. They really focus on getting you started.

My on-boarding specialist was awesome. She really helped get me set up and she guided me through all the tools. We met on a weekly basis and I took action items away each week. She answered any questions I had when executing, and was very helpful.

It’s a costly product and it takes a little while to get set up. We didn’t see leads increase until about six months into using the product, but we’ve been increasing ever since. While it isn’t a cheap tool, we definitely see the value it brings.

We looked at Marketo. HubSpot seemed to be a more user-friendly interface, incorporated more of what we needed, and in the end, it was more affordable.

Take advantage of the free trial to take a look at the product. Once you start, really take advantage of your on-boarding specialist and ask a million questions.

HubSpot is a really robust tool, so there are a lot of features. Try to master one at a time (email marketing first, landing pages second, etc.).

HubSpot has a lot of great sources. Their online academy has video tutorials and example projects for you to master tools. They also offer certifications so you can take a test to check your knowledge. It’s a great way to study up and learn things about tools you might not have known existed.

There’s also a yearly conference called Inbound, which I attended as a new HubSpot user. It was really helpful in learning all about the product/service, making connections both at HubSpot and with other marketers to bounce around ideas.

I’ve also attended local trainings in my city which have been really helpful. I encourage everyone to go to at least one. The classes are usually 10-20 people, so you can really focus on what you need.