HubSpot Pricing: Pros, Cons, and Where to Begin

There are a lot of things to consider before you invest in a platform like HubSpot, of course, such as the size of your company, your unique sales process, your buying cycles, and the amount of time and effort you can currently afford to spend on marketing activities. Thankfully, there are multiple packages available to you that are meant to ensure any company, within any budget, can take advantage of the HubSpot platform. 

If you sign up for HubSpot through an agency partner, however, then your HubSpot onboarding agency will help you with the onboarding process and expedite the time it takes to kickstart your HubSpot marketing efforts. This means that you can take advantage of everything HubSpot has to offer almost immediately.

This guide will help you sort out the details of HubSpot pricing* so you can select the best option for your business.

*Note: This blog post was updated in November 2019 to accurately reflect HubSpot’s pricing model. However, the price you pay for HubSpot’s software may differ from the prices listed here, as you may have to pay additional fees for more contacts, add-ons, or other services. Get in touch with us to get a more exact price quote!

Table of Contents

• HubSpot’s Free Tools
• HubSpot Marketing Hub
• HubSpot Sales Hub
• HubSpot Service Hub
• The HubSpot Agency Partner Program
• Where to Start with HubSpot

HubSpot’s Free Tools

HubSpot offers free versions of all their software. With it, you’ll get a free CRM, a free marketing hub, and a free sales hub. Here's a simple breakdown of the features each of these packages offer:

CRM Free:

• Reporting Dashboard
• Company Insights
• Deal Tracking
• Pipeline Management
• Email Tracking & Notifications
• Live Chat
• Prospect Tracking
• Meeting Scheduling

Marketing Hub Free:

• Email Marketing (2,000 email sends per calendar month)
• Forms
• Contact Management
• Contact Insights & Activity
• Facebook, Instagram, Google, and LinkedIn Ads
• Live Chat
• Traffic and Conversion Analytics

Sales Hub Free:

• Contact, Deal, & Task Management
• Email Tracking/Notifications
• Email Templates & Scheduling
• Document Sharing
• In-App Calling/Call Tracking
• Meeting Scheduling
• Gmail & Outlook Integration
• Live Chat 

Service Hub Free:

• All features of HubSpot CRM
• Ticketing
• Live Chat
• A Conversations Inbox
• Calling
• Ticket Creation Bots
• Team Email
• Email Templates
• Reporting (1 dashboard with 10 reports)
• Meeting Scheduling

These are great tools for individuals, small businesses that are just starting out, or anyone else who wants to give the HubSpot platform a try. 

Admittedly, the free tools are minimal—especially since there’s a cap on the number of contacts you can have before you need to pay for more. But still, it’s a decent integration if you like the CMS, blog, and email tool you’re already using. You’ll just have to recognize that this is meant to be an entry-point to help you find your footing before moving forward with a paid package. 

HubSpot Pricing: Marketing Hub

This is where the real magic starts to happen (it feels like magic to us, anyway).

The HubSpot Marketing Hub is your go-to place for inbound marketing. Before you select a HubSpot pricing package, identify precisely what you want to use HubSpot for.

If you think you’ll use all its features, advanced packages of the HubSpot Marketing Hub could be of huge value to your business. Some of the larger packages can get expensive, but it’s worth the cost if you’re serious about inbound marketing.

Additionally, when you sign up for HubSpot through an agency, you get more than just a marketing platform and toolset. You’ll also have a team of HubSpot and inbound marketing experts who can help answer questions, provide ongoing support, streamline the onboarding process, and implement your marketing plan(s) using HubSpot’s tools.

Marketing Hub Starter: Starting at $50/Month

If you tried the free version and liked it, then you may be ready to move up to Starter, which comes with a few more bells and whistles. The price starts at $50 a month for your first 1,000 contacts, but that price will go up by $50 for each additional 1,000 contacts you add.

What You Get:

• Everything from the free package, plus...
• HubSpot Branding Removed
• Custom Form Fields
• Email Marketing (5X the email send limit of the previous package) 

Small businesses, individuals, and anyone who’s starting inbound may choose to stick with this package for a little while. And since the super-affordable price is billed monthly, you can slide it into your regular budget without much difficulty.

However, the Starter option doesn’t offer a whole lot more than the free version. You get a little insight into your leads and how they interact with your website, but no other capabilities. It has no blogging or email marketing app, so you’ll have to do those activities externally.

Marketing Hub Professional: Starting at $800/month with a one-time onboarding

When it comes down to it, the Professional Marketing Hub is probably the best choice for small-to-medium sized businesses that are serious about inbound marketing.

What You Get:

• Everything from the Starter package, plus…
• Marketing Automation
• Goal-Based Nurturing
• Mobile Optimization
• Salesforce Integration
• Google Search Console Integration
• Smart Content
• Phone Support
• Attribution Reporting
• Blog & Content Creation Tools
• SEO & Content Strategy
• A/B Testing
• Landing Pages and CTAs

This is the package we recommend to most of our clients. Starting at $800/month (billed annually), this package is affordable for most businesses and provides all the capabilities they’ll need to grow and evolve into the future.

All in all, this package lets you target your audience with unparalleled efficiency. Most of your inbound marketing is housed under one roof, making it easy to execute and analyze. While the professional package is still a financial commitment, it’s an investment that will be well worth the cost in the end.

Marketing Hub Enterprise: Starting at $3,200/month with a one-time onboarding fee

The Enterprise Marketing Hub is ideal for large businesses, corporations, and advanced marketing departments.

What You Get:

• Everything from the Professional package, plus…
• Custom Event reporting
• Predictive Lead Scoring
• Custom Event Triggers & Reporting
• Event-Based Segmentation
• Hierarchical Teams
• Single Sign-On
• Content Partitioning
• CMS Membership
• YouTube Integration
• Additional Domains
• Events API

This package adds a level of reporting that’s specifically helpful to big businesses. And with the addition of Events, this package is the ideal option for companies that rely on event planning and management as a large part of their outreach and sales. 

Despite the high price tag, this package will likely pay for itself year after year if your company has a dedicated marketing team. Even if you don’t, however, your company can also partner with a certified HubSpot agency to use it to your new toolset to its full capacity. 

You’re still going to need some serious bandwidth to take advantage of this level of software, though. As such, Enterprise is best suited to larger, more advanced marketing teams at big businesses.

HubSpot Pricing: Sales Hub

Like the Marketing Hub, HubSpot Sales Hub comes in four packages: Free, Starter, Professional, and Enterprise. HubSpot Sales Hub will also integrate seamlessly with HubSpot Marketing Hub, as marketing and sales are, ultimately, two parts of a whole. Sales Hub uses the same CRM as the marketing side, meaning your sales team will have access to all the same data as your marketing team.

When they reach out to a prospect, for example, they’ll already know what pages that prospect has viewed, what content they’ve read, and what lead intelligence the marketing team has gathered on them. That means there won’t be any confusion about when a lead becomes sales qualified, as the system will be able to score leads automatically. 

Working in tandem with Marketing Hub, Sales Hub is the perfect tool for aligning your sales and marketing teams.

Sales Hub Starter: Starting at $50/month and $50/month Per Additional User

The Starter package is ideal for sales teams at small-to-medium-sized businesses, especially those that are just starting out or have tried (and liked) the free version. It has all the features you need to conduct sales activities, but only includes one (1) paid user.

What You Get:

• Everything from the free package, plus…
• Email Sequences
• Goal Measuring
• Unlimited Email Tracking & Notifications
• 1,000 Email Templates
• Email & In-App Support
• Rep Productivity Performance
• Conversation Routing

Many small businesses can and will stay with this package for a long time. Like the Marketing Hub Starter, however, you won’t have access to sales automation or smart content. And if your team uses Salesforce, you’ll have to upgrade if you want to integrate it. 

Sales Hub Professional: Starting at $400/month, $80/month Per Additional User, with a one-time fee for a Quick Start Consultation

With the Sales Hub Professional package, you’ll have access to five (5) paid users and access to a suite of new features and more advanced versions of the tools from the Starter package.

What You Get:

• Everything from the Starter package, plus…
• Teams
• Multiple Deal Pipelines
• Sales Automation
• Standard Contact Scoring
• Required Fields
• Products
• Workflow Extensions
• Phone Support
• Smart Send Times
• Quotes
• Salesforce Integration
• Stripe Integration
• Slack Integration

This package is the best choice for larger, more advanced sales teams. If you’re serious about inbound sales, this is the package you want. 

Sales Hub Enterprise: Starting at $1,200/month, $120/month Per Additional User, with a one-time onboarding fee 

Believe it or not, HubSpot didn’t always have a Sales Hub Enterprise package. Now that they do, though, you can get up to ten (10) paid users and all the sales tools your team could ever need.

What You Get:

• Everything from the Professional package, plus…
• Playbooks
• Goals
• Call Transcription
• Predictive Lead Scoring
• Quote-Based Workflows
• eSignature
• Recurring Revenue Tracking
• Hierarchical Teams & User Roles
• Single Sign-On
• Events API

This is the most comprehensive Sales Hub package HubSpot offers. With the wealth of features and functionalities that it provides you with, you can coach and enable at scale, close more deals at a faster rate than ever, and manage your growing team. The HubSpot pricing for this package may be intimidating, but if you can use all the tools it equips you with, then it’ll likely pay for itself.

HubSpot Pricing: Service Hub

The relationship between a business and its customers has undergone a massive transformation. Where businesses used to be responsible for driving customer relationships with outbound marketing tactics, the customer is now the one with the reigns. Not only do today’s customers have control, options, and expectations than ever, but they also don’t have the patience for clumsy bots, clunky sales scripts, or lengthy queues.

The most successful businesses out there right now have all come to the same conclusion: customer success and delight is the single most crucial tool in a company’s success. The happier your customers are, the more they’ll want to do business with you. And the longer a customer does business with you, the more likely they are to become an advocate for your brand and direct their peers to you.

This is why HubSpot Service Hub is so essential. With the tools that this product equips you with, you’ll not only be able to curate a frictionless customer experience, but you’ll also help customers learn to help themselves.

Service Hub Starter: Starting at $50/month and $50/month Per Additional User

With the Service Hub Starter package, you’ll have access to the HubSpot CRM, the service tools of the Free version, but only one (1) paid user.

What You Get:

• Everything from the free package, plus…
• Email Sequences & Scheduling
• Unlimited Email Tracking & Notifications
• Goals
• Conversation Routing

Like the other HubSpot Starter packages, this isn’t a dramatic upgrade from the Free services. However, for smaller businesses, this can be a great way to get your feet wet with a customer experience platform. If you’re expecting to stick with this package for a while, then you can purchase an annual plan and get an even lower price. 

Service Hub Professional: Starting at $400/month, $80/month Per Additional User, with a one-time onboarding fee

With the Service Hub Professional package, you’ll gain access to five (5) paid users and access to a suite of new and dynamic features that will make all the difference as you curate the ideal experience for your customers.

What You Get:

• Everything from the Starter package, plus…
• Multiple Ticket Pipelines
• Knowledge Base
• 1:1 Video Creation & Hosting
• NPS Surveys
• Customer Experience & Support Surveys
• Insight Dashboard
• Custom Reporting
• Ticket Status, Ticket Routing, & Task Automation
• Teams
• Slack & Salesforce Integration
• Phone Support
• Customer Feedback
• Sequence Queues
• Standard Contact Scoring
• Customer Service Automation
• Calculated Properties

If you’re looking for all the tools you need to revolutionize your customer experience and turn customers into promoters, then the Professional Package is what you’re looking for. Not only does it come with premium versions of all the Free and Starter kit tools, but as you can see above, it also comes with a comprehensive list of new features that can dramatically change the way you interact with your customers.

Service Hub Enterprise: Starting at $1,200/month, $120/month Per Additional User with a one-time onboarding fee

For larger businesses, corporations, and marketing departments, HubSpot Service Hub Enterprise is the all-in-one package that’ll help you leave no stone unturned. 

What You Get:

• Everything from the Professional package, plus…
• Playbooks
• Call Transcription
• Hierarchical Teams
• User Roles
• Single Sign-On
• Webhooks
• Events API

While the annual bill can seem intimidating, the Service Hub Enterprise package is an investment that will equip you with everything you’ll need for a long time to come. Not only does Enterprise dramatically expand on all the features of the Professional package, but it also takes it one step further by adding new tools and features. These can make all the difference as you continue to curate the most positive customer experience possible.

The HubSpot Agency Partner Program

If you plan on working with a marketing agency and you’re interested in HubSpot, look no further than the HubSpot Agency Partner Program (yeah, we’re in there. Right here).

To become an agency partner, an agency must be certified by HubSpot itself. Certification is more than just watching a few videos and taking a test, however. The agency must demonstrate that they know how to use HubSpot’s tools effectively by meeting specific goals, such as conversion and traffic rates.

Once the agency is partner certified, they must take multiple tests to achieve certifications in specific areas. These include content marketing, email marketing services, growth-driven web design, sales enablement, and more.  And since HubSpot is adding new certifications all the time, there are always opportunities to learn something new.

When looking for agencies in HubSpot’s database, you can view their certifications—although most agencies post these certifications on their website as well. Seeing these can help you choose which agency will work best for you. For example, if you need to beef up your content, look for an agency that’s certified in content marketing and contextual marketing.

Once you’re on board, your agency can take the reins and start using the HubSpot platform to build and execute your campaigns. Your agency acts as your HubSpot consultant, replacing many of the add-on and premium service features available when you purchase a package directly.

Here are some of the unique benefits of hiring a HubSpot Agency:

• You get a measurable ROI
• Your business gets cost-efficient marketing
• You get access to the latest marketing technology
• They’ll help you create an inbound marketing strategy from scratch
• Your inbound marketing campaigns will get up and running faster
• They’ll run your inbound marketing campaigns from start to finish
• They’ll align their marketing efforts with your sales team’s goals
• You can delegate tasks instead of giving your team more work
• You’re free to spend time on other critical projects
• Your team doesn't need to learn HubSpot top-to-bottom
• You get a certified team of experts working for you
• You get a team of consultants who can answer all your questions

Is HubSpot Worth It?

HubSpot can be a great solution for any company in search of a platform packed with tools for sales, marketing, customer service, and more. It’s also possible to opt for single service solutions or create a bundle of different services at various pricing tiers.

Overall, pricing may fall into either category on your list of HubSpot pros and cons, depending on the services and tiers you’re interested in. While the Starter versions of each of HubSpot’s solutions are all priced relatively similarly, each hub’s cost and even pricing model can vary as you move into higher level subscriptions.

Here’s an example to demonstrate:

• HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing (Starter): $15/mo/seat
• HubSpot CMS pricing (Professional): $800/mo
• HubSpot Service Hub pricing (Starter): $15/mo/seat
• HubSpot CRM pricing (Professional): $90/mo/seat

For many companies considering investing in a HubSpot service, pricing often takes a back seat to more specific questions like “How much does the HubSpot CRM cost compared to the value it offers at the tier we need?”

Where to Start with HubSpot

To start, we recommend you reach out to a HubSpot agency partner and discuss your HubSpot marketing goals. They’ll be able to tell you whether HubSpot is a good fit for your business, and can even set up a free demonstration with a HubSpot representative.

And if your growing company is in need of all three packages, then HubSpot has a bundle that does just that! With Growth Suite, you can get all the marketing, sales, and customer service software your business needs at a 25% discount from the standalone prices.

There are three bundles you can choose from, each of them with a different set of tools and features:

• Starter Growth Suite: Contains the HubSpot CRM and Starter packages for Marketing, Sales, and Service. Pricing starts at approximately $100 a month.

• Professional Growth Suite: Contains the HubSpot CRM and Professional packages for Marketing, Sales, and Service. Pricing starts at approximately $1,200 a month.

• Enterprise Growth Suite: Contains the HubSpot CRM and Enterprise packages for Marketing, Sales, and Service. Pricing starts at approximately $4,200 a month.

Based on your goals and the size of your business, your HubSpot partner agency will recommend which product or bundle is best suited for your needs. 

If you have any questions regarding HubSpot pricing, the packages they offer, or the tools each package provides, then please reach out to us today! Good luck, and happy HubSpotting!