If you acquired HubSpot on the advice of a marketing agency, it is likely that this thought will come to mind: HubSpot is really expensive for what it is!
HubSpot is a great all-in-one tool that allows you to manage all of your company's marketing, customer follow-up and operations on a single platform.
So no, HubSpot is not expensive for what it is, and we will see together the different reasons that led you to this conclusion and how to fix it.
Summary
- The different reasons to think that HubSpot is too expensive
- Reason 1: HubSpot charges us based on contacts
- Reason 2: We pay for features we don't use
- Reason 3: It's cheaper elsewhere
- The causes of your dissatisfaction
- The different financial advantages of HubSpot
- Endnotes
The different reasons to think that HubSpot is too expensive
Reason 1: HubSpot charges us based on contacts
This is one of the reasons that comes up the most when talking about HubSpot and the good news is that this reason comes from a poor understanding of the tool and HubSpot's offer.
HubSpot does not charge us according to the number of contacts but according to the number of “Marketing Contact ”.
You can import the number of contacts you want without limit (I have worked on portals with more than 350,000 contacts). The limitation affects the number of prospects to contact over a given period.
Indeed, a “Marketing Contact” is a contact authorized to receive Marketing communications (emails, newsletters, WhatsApp, etc.). Non-Marketing contacts will not receive your communications but you will be able to collect and store all information concerning them.
But why does HubSpot make this Marketing/Non-Marketing distinction?
HubSpot is not a tool made for cold prospecting, it is a CRM focused on prospect support using an Inbound logic.
Through simple automations you can manage this Marketing and Non-Marketing contact flow in order to rotate your campaigns, “archive” leads that are no longer relevant and have real control over the reach and the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns.
Reason 2: We pay for features we don't use
This point is unfortunately true for many companies. Indeed, the way of grouping offers works in the following way.
HubSpot divides its offerings into “business lines”: Marketing, Sales, Service, Operations, CMS. and offers levels of functionality for each of these “Hubs”.
Often, we are tempted to take a global package with all Hubs to ensure that we have all the tools offered by the platform. The concern is that these packages are expensive and the functionalities of the components are sometimes duplicated. For example, to benefit from the “Workflow” automation tool, you can subscribe to Marketing Pro or Sales Pro. By taking both, you are technically paying twice for the same functionality.
The real concern behind its packages is that you have to acquire unwanted features to get the one you need.
We will see together a little further down why this is not a problem and on the contrary, how this offer can be perceived as an advantage in your business.
Reason 3: It's cheaper elsewhere
Why pay HubSpot when some tools do the same thing for less or even for free?
If you have come to this conclusion, it is certainly due to a misunderstanding of the tool and its features.
Acquiring HubSpot for the sole purpose of managing marketing campaigns is a mistake and this solution is really more expensive than using marketing campaign software like MailChimp or Brevo for example.
HubSpot is a comprehensive tool that delivers 4 main promises:
- Managing your prospect relationships: from their generation to their loyalty
- A measurement and reporting tool centralizing all your data: giving you a complete and precise analysis and understanding of your efforts
- Organization and management of all your operational processes
- Organization and management of your entire customer database
In terms of tools that can meet these four essential needs, there are only solutions that are sometimes more expensive than HubSpot, such as SalesForce for example, which also has disadvantages that we will detail a little further down.
The causes of your dissatisfaction
Now that we've nuanced the different reasons why we say HubSpot is too expensive, let's take a look at the two main causes for these thoughts.
HubSpot Agencies
In my opinion, the biggest concern when defining a HubSpot subscription contract.
If you are a company of a certain size, there is a good chance that you have set your sights on HubSpot following the recommendations of a HubSpot-certified marketing agency.
This agency accompanied you in setting up your portal and, actually, it is a good thing. HubSpot is certainly a tool that will be able to support you in all your growth needs.
However, if an agency recommends the acquisition of HubSpot, it means that it is a partner with the latter and therefore is rewarded by HubSpot when signing your contract.
Depending on the ethics and seriousness of this agency, it is possible that the latter simply wishes to increase its affiliate income by offering you an offer superior to your needs.
The second problematic point in my opinion is that a Marketing Agency, as its name suggests, will organize your HubSpot and its functionalities only to serve the actions that they will carry out for your business. Either way, you will only fully use your portal for the first reason listed above.
HubSpot's role in your business
As mentioned earlier, HubSpot is supposed to play the four roles listed above. Now that you are the proud owner of an ultra-complete portal, it is essential to review the operations and management of your business and see how HubSpot can optimize, scale and reduce the costs associated with their management.
As you revisit your vision for your HubSpot portal, you'll naturally start using all those features that you weren't using before.
The different financial advantages of HubSpot
Behind the high cost of a HubSpot subscription hides significant savings. Let's see what it is all about.
Software savings
HubSpot is an all-in-one tool, using all the features offered by your portal, you can easily meet 80% of your company's software needs. By eliminating the costs of the various tools currently used, there is a good chance that your software costs will be reduced.
In addition, centralizing all your actions on the same platform allows you to benefit from a wealth of data where each interaction of your prospects is pooled and related to each of your actions to maximize your possibilities and your Marketing performance.
In addition, there are methods using Workflows to circumvent certain limitations of your HubSpot pro subscription that I detail on this blog, such as: being able to perform automatic lead assignment without Sales pro or to split list without Marketing Entreprise.
Simple and inexpensive management
HubSpot's main strength compared to SalesForce is its intuitiveness, its ease of management and the wealth of documentation available on how to use HubSpot.
Indeed, one qualified person can independently manage all the actions and operations of your portal when an entire team would be needed to perform the same tasks on SalesForce.
Endnotes
These remarks and solutions were certainly theoretical but I hope they will have made you see your HubSpot portal from another eye.
If you would like to see how to maximize the use of your portal, I would be happy to discuss it with you.
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