If HubSpot’s price tag has you debating whether or not to use it, I don't blame you. There's a massive list of features and four different service offerings that vary in size and pricing. It can be a lot to take in.
In the beginning, the free option may look appealing. However, you are preparing to grow your business, and it won't be long until you need to upgrade to the paid tiers. That's why you need to choose a marketing automation solution that will help you scale. You have to figure out what you’re getting, whether or not it's what you need, and more importantly, if it’s worth the price.
HubSpot Marketing Pricing: What You Need to Know
At first glance, HubSpot isn't cheap. The monthly cost can be an instant turn off for a lot of people.
For the Marketing package alone, you are looking at starting costs that range up to $3,200 per month. Then if you consider using the HubSpot CMS to build your site, you will add $300 per month on top of that. And HubSpot isn’t the only inbound marketing software out there. You can find cheaper solutions.
However, for marketing teams that want to drive leads and conversions using the Inbound Marketing Methodology, HubSpot is the tool of choice because:
- It’s very straightforward to use.
- It comes with a ton of free training.
- It includes an extremely comprehensive and connected suite of tools.
- The platform was built to support inbound marketing — the methodology that HubSpot pioneered.
Once you get past the sticker shock, you start seeing the real value of HubSpot. HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing powerhouse solution compared to cobbling together a Frankenspot with other tools. To get a real comparison, you have to look deeper into each solution.
So, let’s dive into the four things that you need to know about HubSpot Marketing pricing so you can decide if it’s right for you.
1. Software Maintenance, Security, & Servers
This point is going to be a little more technical — but bear with me. These hidden costs are something that you really need to be aware of when it comes to choosing your marketing and website software provider.
You will build every blog, landing page, or website using a Content Management System (CMS). Whether it’s HubSpot, or WordPress, or something else, that CMS will give you and your marketing team the ability to make edits to your content, add new pages, add new images, and much more quickly without having to wait on a developer.
Because your site is running on software, there are some basic things to do all the time to make sure it’s safe, secure, and running smoothly. These include:
- Running regular backups and maintaining revision history on your changes.
- Applying security fixes to prevent your site from getting hacked.
- Maintaining the physical server that your site lives on to ensure that its hardware and internet connection is working properly to avoid downtime.
- Applying updates to the software to add new features and make it easier for your team to do amazing things for you.
- Securing an SSL Certificate and applying it for site ranking, visitor confidence, and security.
Using WordPress
If you use WordPress for your site pages, landing pages or blog pages, you have to take care of everything or hire someone to do it for you.
For example, you could hire a hosting company like WP Engine to host the site. They will manage the physical services, backups, and necessary security fixes. They won’t update premium WordPress plugins, and they won’t fix compatibility issues between plugins.
As your site traffic increases, you will also need to upgrade your hardware to bigger and more expensive packages, so your hosting cost will increase over time. This can have you paying $290+ per month depending on your package for hosting.
Plus, there’s also another huge drawback. These pages aren’t natively integrated into your marketing software or Customer Resource Management (CRM) tool.
Pro Tip: If you use HubSpot, they take care of all that for you.
You can build as many blog pages or landing pages that you want on the Marketing Professional or Enterprise packages. Then, if you have the CMS add-on, you can also build as many site pages as you want.
The only thing that affects your pricing is the number of leads in your free CRM.
That’s a very important distinction. Instead of charging more for generic website visitors like a hosting company would, HubSpot charges more for more leads in your database.
2. More Detailed Customer Insights
When it comes to customer insights, HubSpot is truly one-of-a-kind. You can get into your customer’s head by viewing all the data that it collects in the CRM.
You will have access to a wealth of data such as:
- Which pages and blog articles on your site they are viewing.
- The content offers on your site that they are consuming.
- Which emails they are opening and what (if anything) that they click on in them.
- The social posts and social channels they are engaging with you on.
Other marketing analytics tools will only show you general data like views and clicks. It’s really hard — if not impossible — to connect this data back to close the loop and know what assets are helping convert visitors into paying customers.
If you use a CRM to track your customers, it will include the customer information that you manually entered. Some of them may include the original lead source and let you know if they filled out a website form. But, they don’t tell you what they were doing before they filled out the form.
The HubSpot Difference
Do you remember how I said that HubSpot was a connected set of tools? This interconnectivity is how you can achieve such a wealth of data.
The CMS is directly connected to the CRM. So everything that happens on the site is immediately recorded in the CRM and connected to a visitor.
Initially, it connects the data to an anonymous visitor so it can track from the very first touch. After they fill out their first form, it connects all that data to this specific person. This allows you to see their full journey.
Pro Tip: 79% of website leads never convert into sales. Usually, a lack of nurturing is to blame. With HubSpot, you can nurture your leads with the best, most accurate data and gain ROI sooner.
Your marketing team can use this information to perfect the offers and content that actually drive sales. Plus, thanks to the viewing history, your sales team already knows what the lead is interested in before they even have their first interaction with them.
3. HubSpot Is a Growth Investment that Pays for Itself
If you want to build a remarkable brand that crushes your competition and continues to grow year-over-year, then HubSpot is a growth investment that will pay for itself.
Pro Tip: If you prep yourself to buy Hubspot by working on your marketing and website strategies before investing, then you can save a ton of money and reach positive ROI much sooner.
You need to devise a plan that utilizes every feature and tool that HubSpot offers to support your growth efforts. To build a good plan, you will need to:
- Build your buyer personas.
- Plan out your buyer journeys.
- Establish your content topics.
- Build content offers to convert visitors into leads.
- Devise sales strategies to nurture and close leads.
If you want to reach positive ROI faster, then you should also plan to hire an agency to help speed up the implementation time. There are a lot of moving parts to successful campaigns. Certified HubSpot agencies have the training and experience to navigate the tools faster and build campaigns that work.
4. Transform Your Team with Free Training
Any team will require continual training to be able to their job — but when it comes to marketing, it’s especially crucial.
Technology changes the landscape drastically over a short amount of time. New and better ways to connect with customers and automate routine processes are popping up every few months.
Look at the rise of Chat Bots as just one example. A few years ago, you might encounter one or two. Now they are everywhere.
HubSpot keeps up with everything and continually updates their training. Your team can stay on top of the latest trends and technologies, learn how to use the software, and even get certified in a variety of areas at no additional cost to you.
This is an unquantifiable benefit.
Pro Tip: Sell your sales team on inbound and HubSpot and see them win/close more than they ever have before.
Not only are you saving on training costs and materials, but your team is empowered to do their jobs better. Sales will get more context about leads and can follow up quickly.
Where Are You Going to Spend Your Budget?
The way we see it, you have two options.
Option #1 — You can pay for:
- On-the-job training and certifications through one or many different companies.
- A hosting company to host the site and do basic maintenance.
- A developer to do more advanced maintenance.
- An expert to connect the data so you can attempt to close the loop on your reporting and focus your marketing efforts.
- The inefficiencies of your sales and marketing as they make guesses on what works and what doesn’t.
OR Option #2 — You can just pay upfront for HubSpot and enjoy:
- Free training and certifications that are relevant and up-to-date.
- No hosting hassles.
- Integrated and comprehensive lead data.
- More leads.
- More sales.
- Empowered Employees.
The choice seems pretty clear. Plus, if you use a growth team (like us), you can save money on HubSpot at first. You can save up to 60% on HubSpot during your first year by using the guidance in our savings guide.
