Liz Moorehead
If you’ve ever tried to figure out which HubSpot plan is right for your business, you already know: it’s not straightforward. Between the different hubs, add-ons, seat types, platform tiers, contact limits, and AI credits, just getting to a clear answer can feel like a full-time job.
This week on HubHeroes, George, Chad, and I decided to face the confusion head-on and finally talk about what’s really behind the pricing page—and why so many businesses end up buying the wrong thing, using too little, or spending way more than they need to.
We walk through the current pricing structure HubSpot offers and explore how it’s evolved over the years. If you haven’t looked lately, you might be surprised at just how much has changed.
🔎 Go Deeper: Wait, We've NEVER Done an Episode on HubSpot Landing Pages?
We’re not just talking about the rise of Breeze tools and new AI-powered features. We’re talking about seat complexity, contact tiers, and the emergence of the Customer Platform split between individuals/small teams and businesses/enterprises. And yes, we get into all the ways this has made it harder for everyday users to understand what they’re actually getting, what they’re missing, and how to make an informed decision.
But this episode isn’t just a vent session about complexity. It’s also about clarity. We lay out the right starting questions businesses should be asking before they even get to the pricing page:
- What are you trying to solve for?
- Who’s going to be using the platform?
- What systems need to connect?
- What does success look like in six months?
And we share how to approach all of this with a mindset rooted in intentionality. Because HubSpot will absolutely grow with you, but only if you choose a path that’s built for where you’re actually headed.
Keywords
HubSpot, pricing, plans, seats, marketing, sales, service, complexity, strategy, growth, data hygiene, marketing tools, pricing tiers, HubSpot, customer platform, bundles, pricing decisions, CRM, integrations, intentionality
What We Cover
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Why HubSpot Pricing Is So Confusing Now: We open with a breakdown of how HubSpot’s platform has evolved—more hubs, more features, more tiers—and how that’s created a decision-making environment that overwhelms even experienced users.
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The Rise of Seat Complexity: George and Chad unpack how the introduction of view-only, core, sales, service, and partner seats has complicated not just billing, but team management, user permissions, and platform adoption.
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What’s Actually on the Pricing Page: George walks through the HubSpot pricing page in real time, pointing out where things are clear, where they aren’t, and what’s changed in how HubSpot presents its Customer Platform tiers. Spoiler: that “small team” vs. “enterprise” tab at the top? You’ve probably missed it.
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The Enormous Jumps Between Plans: We talk about the big—and often jarring—price jumps between Starter, Professional, and Enterprise plans, and what that means for businesses trying to scale their HubSpot usage without blowing their budgets.
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Marketing Contacts, Add-Ons, and AI Credits (Oh My): Contact-based pricing adds another layer of complexity. We discuss how marketing contacts, AI credits, and Breeze tools fit into the picture—and how to avoid unexpected charges.
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Starter Isn’t Just for Beginners Anymore: Chad explains how smaller teams with deep technical knowledge can stretch Starter way further than most people realize, especially when paired with middleware like Zapier or Make and a bit of API creativity.
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Why DIY Bundling Can Backfire: We cover the risks of trying to piece together your own hub combination without fully understanding what each one includes—and why some teams end up under-buying critical functionality by accident.
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The Questions You Should Ask Before You Ever Look at the Pricing Page: We end by sharing a framework for evaluating what you actually need from HubSpot before you get lost in the numbers. What are you trying to solve? Who will use it? What tools need to connect? What does success look like six months from now?
And so much more ...
Episode Transcript
Liz Moorehead: Hello fellow kids. How's it going?
Chad Hohn: Hello. Good. I got a new fidget toy. I dunno if you can hear it means
George B. Thomas: what is it? Is it
Liz Moorehead: Is that just a screwdriver?
Chad Hohn: Yeah, but the end spins at like mach 11.
George B. Thomas: That's fast, I think. I'm not sure.
Liz Moorehead: I'm not sure either.
George B. Thomas: I think it
Chad Hohn: I thought
Liz Moorehead: I think
Chad Hohn: to know.
George B. Thomas: you know what else is fast? The way HubSpot changes.
Chad Hohn: Yes.
George B. Thomas: gonna
Liz Moorehead: that was a
Chad Hohn: Like Mach 11,
Liz Moorehead: I understand. I've been out and you guys have had to pick up the slack. In my absence of making sure we stay on track, I do wanna say having listened to both of those episodes,
George B. Thomas: Hey.
Liz Moorehead: you guys kept it together.
George B. Thomas: Ooh, we
Liz Moorehead: I was so, I was so proud. I was so proud, but I'm back. I'm back and I'm very glad I'm back for this particular discussion because George, you've already kind of mentioned we're getting into the messy today.
We're getting into the messy with probably one of the most common and [00:01:00] deceptively innocuous questions that's thrown around in the HubSpot ecosystem, whether we're talking about right. Thank you innocuous. Hmm. Whether we're talking about folks who are not into HubSpot yet, people who have been with HubSpot for a really long time, everybody asks the same question at least once a year, and that is choosing the right HubSpot plan and how do I know which plan is right for me?
And of course the answer is our favorite two word sentence. It depends.
Chad Hohn: Ends.
George B. Thomas: depends.
Liz Moorehead: But the way it depends has gotten, um, a little complicated. Uh, it depends on goals, team size, growth stage. What hub are we talking about? Are, are How serious are you? Yeah. Like what, what are we doing here? So we want to break down as best [00:02:00] we can.
In what may become a multi-part series, we're gonna find out how to approach this question, this idea of choosing the right HubSpot plan without overspending or getting stuck with stuff that you don't need because. You also don't want to have people who under utilize also what they are paying for, right?
You either buy too much of stuff you don't need, or you buy the right stuff, and then you don't actually end up using it. And that's because there's absolutely no one size fits all approach in terms of how we answer this question. So the goal
George B. Thomas: there's another scenario, by the way, or you buy the stuff and realize, wait, that's not in what I bought.
Liz Moorehead: Oh, that I
Chad Hohn: Oh, I just spent how much.
George B. Thomas: And, and I don't have podcasting or, or remix. Wait, what? What do you mean? Marketing hub? Huh? Anyway,
Liz Moorehead: No, what you said there is perfect because the goal here is clarity, people clarity, not
Chad Hohn: clarity is kindness.
Liz Moorehead: Clarity is [00:03:00] kindness. So yes, this is going to be a complicated conversation, but I don't think anybody who saw this topic is shying away from this because oh my goodness, it's gonna get complicated.
But first, George, I wanna start with you and I wanna start with the big old orange sprocket elephant in the room. Can you just tell us why is choosing the right HubSpot plan so hard? What's, what's the deal?
George B. Thomas: well, well, first of all, let's just even take the, let's take the human out of it for a second, and I know that's weird for me to start with that. But like, listen, you have, um, hubs, right? So marketing hubs, sales hub, operations hub, commerce hub, um, service hub. Have I forgotten any? I think you got all the hubs and, and content hub.
Yep. Thank you. Uh, sales. I think I said that maybe I didn't, but see that's even the problem. Like I'm trying to list off the hubs and I can't even remember a guy who's
Liz Moorehead: Just used to be five certifications total. There just used to be [00:04:00] five certifications.
George B. Thomas: remember that. That feels like a lifetime ago. But here's the
Chad Hohn: It was a lifetime ago.
George B. Thomas: was, it, it was like three lifetimes ago. Um, it's, here's the thing. You've got all the hubs, right? Then you've got additional add-ons. And, and now you sit here and you go, well, we have all the hubs. Um, and also we have different tiers of the hubs. So do that math. By the way, do all the hubs times free starter, professional. like, just do that math real quick. You've got the additional add-ons. Then you've got, uh, ai, you breeze tools, and you've got like limits that you're supposed to be paying attention to that don't, people don't really pay attention to limits till they hit the limits. Like we've got multiple clients where they've hit like object limits and they're like, wait, what?
Why? Well, because anyway, and so like. If you think about the math and the choices and, and the clicks and, um, [00:05:00] it's, you're just paralyzed. And then how do you know, and by the way, this is very broad. Well, what's in, uh, let's say for example, HubSpot, uh, hub marketing hub starter, or free versus starter versus pro versus enterprise.
Well, which one of those do I need? Okay. Well, well, our sales team's gonna use it too. Okay, well, what functionality is in. Free Starter, pro or Enterprise. Oh, oh. So which one of those do I need? And, and like it's this smorgasboard sort of, unless you just decide you want to go all in. 'cause by the way, I mentioned all the hubs I mentioned, uh, optional add-ons.
I mentioned the AI powered breeze tools. I mentioned limitation, but I didn't even mention that there's a customer platform. And, and by the way, I didn't even mention that there's a customer platform that when you go to the sales page, which we're probably gonna dive in a little bit today, when I say sales page, I mean pricing page.
There's a customer platform for individuals in small teams, and there's a customer platform for businesses and enterprises, [00:06:00] which, okay. Anyway, Liz, that's, that's just the tip of the iceberg of why this gets so complex and maybe convoluted and confusing. Forver mere mortal
Chad Hohn: say seats?
Liz Moorehead: Yeah.
George B. Thomas: didn't even mention seats.
Liz Moorehead: what, I wanna get into that in a second because here's the thing, what you've described. Is in some ways both representative of the increasing complexity of the platform as they brought up new hubs, as all like new features, new functionalities. But that's not the only big change that's occurred, I'd say within the past couple of years, especially when it comes to pricing.
Because George, correct me if I'm wrong, and Chad, you mentioned this, the seats thing, that was something I always thought for a really long time that they weren't going to do and people were kind of like, whoa. Hold on a second. So can you explain what it is and how that kind of factors into this big pricing Messy soup.
George B. Thomas: And, and Chad, if you wanna take the seats thing, 'cause I also wanna mention one thing that happened [00:07:00] before seats. That was like, oh, really? But, but go ahead, Chad.
Chad Hohn: Yeah. Well, with seats, I mean, like I remember. The most recent seat change, it's basically like everything comes with like beans for seats, like no seats for all of the features that matter, and you get read-only seats for everybody where they can't even edit records E even if they're like a super admin who's a seat, they can't do anything, so they at least need what they call like a core seat.
Whereas prior to that, I was kind of okay with the system where it's like, Hey, if you want the saucy sales features or the saucy service features, you need a seat for that. If you're like working in the tool, like the stuff that is the force multiplier for those humans, they need a seat. But super admins can at least administrate your portal without having to pay for it.
Right. If that makes sense. So then it's like. I dunno, the seat thing got a [00:08:00] little crazy and I don't remember what it was like before that. Like, I've only been through, I think, uh, three or four HubSpot UI changes, you know, or something like that. Uh, you know, now we're on the current new HubSpot UI change, but before that, I'm, I'm sure there was a different like.
Access methodology, seat methodology. But I mean, the thing like we're talking about like, oh, hey, was the, the tool has gotten more complex. I mean, at user request, I would say it's gotten more capable. We've all wanted more features, but that comes with the complexity of like, how do people, how do we as like, you know, apply what value is to this stuff we're building.
Like I get that. And that's really difficult to quantify as a SaaS company because like the thing can do X, Y, Z, but are people going to be extracting that value from it and how, what are the entry points for that value? And I don't know if [00:09:00] like seats are a great way to ascribe value to me,
George B. Thomas: Listen, listen back in the day, I remember the beautiful thing was you just had users and you could, you could, and users and permissions basically, and you could just. You could do things. You could see things and, and this latest round of seats. Um, 'cause by the way, as if what I said earlier wasn't confusing enough.
When you think about all the seats, uh, you mentioned Chad view only seats, right? But then we have core seats, we've got partner seats, we've got service hub seats, sales hub seats. And so which, which seat do you need for the human to do the thing? 'cause by the way, you can't just have a core seat. Give 'em super admin access like you used to be able to, and they can see and do all things.
There's literally things that they cannot see or do, even though they're a super admin. Let me just throw out sequences for a hot [00:10:00] second. Like, oh,
Chad Hohn: That
George B. Thomas: so, so now you have to have, so now you have to wait. My super admin needs to also have a paid seat
Chad Hohn: Right? Or like you have to bounce a seat around between people who need to edit all that. It's like, oh, who's got the seat right now? Does Billy have the seat?
George B. Thomas: Which is
Chad Hohn: to find your lost seat.
George B. Thomas: This is happening ladies and gentlemen. Like I, I was literally talking to a client. This would've been last week. They're like, oh, well, we realized Ellie isn't using that seat right now, so we're gonna give it the bill so Bill can do, those aren't their real names, by the way.
I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm protecting, uh, the guilty of having to play this game Anyway. We love, we love you HubSpot. I'm not trying to go negative, but like, listen, listen the answer to my, your first question and then add on this layer of like seats and which seat to have to know the thing that you need to do to have the hub that you have to have and like.
It's just complex. Chad, I'm sorry. Go ahead.
Chad Hohn: No, it's all, it's all [00:11:00] good. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm right there with you. You know, it's like the, uh, musical seats is kind of a whole thing, right? Um. I don't know. I mean, I guess all that to say like this, the seats thing has I, is there a better way? You know, but I'm sure they've been through a lot of ways of trying to like quantify value.
Like I don't, I don't like, like I was saying, I, I didn't mind so bad. If you want the, the force multipliers for that particular hub, you needed a seat. That makes sense. I, I really am grateful that they added the partner seat as a partner. Because like we used to have to tell our clients like, Hey, can you get one of each seat and let us play the magical musical seat dance between our team members?
You know? So that's really, I'm really grateful that they have that, uh, like it's not like I'm doing work in their portal outside of like editing the tools for their team to use, you know, so like grateful for that as a partner. [00:12:00] But yeah. I'll let you take it from here. George, I know you got a lot of things and, and I have a couple other pages like that I'd like to talk about later when it comes to the.
George B. Thomas: So, so here's the thing, Liz, I'll let you just know that I am armed with the pricing page, uh, at my fingertips. But I'll let you go with the next question and then we'll just go from there.
Liz Moorehead: Well, actually, let's go right into it because we need to talk about what are the basics of HubSpot pricing, and I think the pricing page, which in the show notes, I will include thorough screenshots of everything that we talk through in this episode so you can get some context around what we're looking at.
Um, I would love for you to take us through that as a means to answering it because theoretically, a company's pricing page.
George B. Thomas: Yeah.
Liz Moorehead: Is what should give you the basics of pricing.
George B. Thomas: Mm. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead: And George, that that sound of [00:13:00] heartburn makes me wonder.
George B. Thomas: Tums to Tums. Tums,
Liz Moorehead: wonder if there's like a delta or some sort of sort of distance between what are the actual basics of HubSpot pricing versus how they present the basics of HubSpot.
HubSpot pricing.
George B. Thomas: I, I mean, listen, usually when you go through a pricing page, it's like, uh, three boxes in a bonus. Fourth one, if you need enterprise features, like contact us,
Chad Hohn: us a ring.
George B. Thomas: that, that's the most pricing page. So here's, here's the thing. Like, and, and I know I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed. I don't know, maybe, maybe this is all me, maybe it's not.
Um, but when I think about pricing, first of all, we're gonna start with customer platform. 'cause if you go to the pricing page, you go to the very top customer platform, you would think, okay, that's a thing. No, actually that's multiple things because customer platform, you have customer platform for individuals in small teams.
And so if you go there, you see that like the free tools, so this is free [00:14:00] marketing tool. Free sales tool, free service tool, free content tool, free operations tool, free commerce tools. All the free tools. The, the freeness that you can get with, with up to two users. Guess what? $0. Okay, makes sense. It was free, it's zero, I get it.
Then you have the customer platform, starter customer platform, which is $15 a month slash per seat. Okay. And on this pricing, when you get there, it doesn't really tell you on starter how many seats you get. Now, if we bounce over to professional customer platform, we can see that it includes five seats, but I, an additional seats start at $45 a month, but I don't see on starter actually how many seats come with starters.
So now all sudden I'm confused. But of course this is like marketing Hub starter with includes a thousand marketing contacts. Okay, I'm hit the brakes. This is the other thing that I wanted to talk about that changed a while ago before seats is like, do you remember the good old days? Well, maybe they [00:15:00] weren't the good old days.
I mean, they were good anyway, when you could just put. Hang on, hang on ho inside of your HubSpot portal and, and, uh, not worry about if you're getting charged for them or not charged for them, because now you can have up to a thousand marketing contacts. That's what your bill is on. But you can have up to 1 billion contacts in your CRM as long as they're non-marketing contacts.
So that adds a layer of complexity because now all of a sudden you've gotta play the game of watching like how many. how many humans are in my database and before next billing cycle, because now I need to make sure, and that shouldn't be the reason for data cleanliness. Your, your marketing context bill should not be the reason for your data hygiene preferences, right? Anyway. And by the way, here's the thing with all the tools that you have on the sales side of it, like you can literally do marketing without actually using marketing tools. You can use the sales tools to [00:16:00] do the marketing. It's about messaging. It's about communication. Anyway, so,
Chad Hohn: George, I have a question. Do you remember the last iteration of seats before this where when they're like, Hey, on pro you get five seats? Well, they say You get five seats here, but that's like three core seats. One sales and one, one service. But before it was like, oh, you get five sales seats and five service seats, which I know not everybody needed.
So I'm sure they were getting some level of objection, like, oh, can I show those back? But it's like. The same prices it was before. Just get no seats,
George B. Thomas: yeah. So, yes, yes. And. By the way, I can barely remember what I had for lunch yesterday, let alone the pre seats. But here's the thing. Here's, here's what gets me, right? So now on the professional customer platform, and remember folks, we're still under the four individuals and small teams. We're not even to the business and enterprise piece yet.
Now, two things. [00:17:00] One here, this you get 2000 marketing contacts. Beautiful, okay? But listen to this for a second and tell me where your brain goes. Liz. I wanna know where your brain goes. Chad, I wanna know where your brain goes.
Chad Hohn: Where does it
George B. Thomas: Starter customer platform starts at $15. That's a bargain at twice the price.
The next available option, $1,300.
Liz Moorehead: A.
George B. Thomas: Uh
Chad Hohn: Yeah.
George B. Thomas: uh.
Chad Hohn: Yeah.
George B. Thomas: Okay. So put that in your back pocket and think about, I'm sitting here, I'm trying to make a decision, and I can do free, I can do 15 bucks a month, or I can spend 1300 a month. Now immediately, what are you gonna do? You're gonna try to dig in deeper and see like, what do all of those, what, what, what's the difference?
And you can scroll down and you can start to easily see like the far right hand [00:18:00] side of like. Customer support form fields and contact management and like what do you get in Service Hub and what do you get in Content Hub And you, so you can see all the things and you get, you get a, you get a lot of, lot, lot of good things.
But again, that's just for individuals and small teams. If I go over to businesses Enterprise, I've, I've got two choices here by the way. Okay. And I'm gonna flip back and forth here in a hot second. I've got the professional customer platform, 1300 a month. Okay, so the top tier, if I'm an individual or a small team, ' cause I can't even see Enterprise, by the way, on that tab.
I can only see pro. But if, wait, you mean there's not a small team or an individual that might actually wanna buy enterprise features? That's weird, but, but if I flip over to the business and enterprises, now I see professional customer platform for 1300 or. Enterprise for $4,700 now. Now I want you to think about this.
$0, [00:19:00] $15, $1,300 or $4,700 Is it just me? Or do the, do those feel like some extremely large gaps?
Liz Moorehead: Yeah, that's. That's ha And that always freaks me out when I see that in any type of platform because it's like, am I even getting anything at the lower end to begin with? And like, there's no, like, stepping up. I, I, it just gives me a lot of friction because it's not like, well, what are they hiding? It's like, well, am I even getting anything of value?
What am I actually even paying for to test things out? I don't know. Chad, what do you think?
Chad Hohn: Well, I, I was like, you're sitting there talking about the, for businesses enter enterprises and for individuals and small teams and on the customer platform bundle, and I'm just sitting here thinking like, what is he? I don't even see the, you know, and I didn't even realize those were buttons at the top [00:20:00] that I was on, that I could switch between those two, let alone free tools.
Shows me the first part of that when you're on individuals and small teams. Then like you can, you know, we, we have the old create a bundler. That's also something don't even
George B. Thomas: even get me started on that because A as if like, anyway.
Chad Hohn: Yeah. I think the hard part is like, I know the value of the pro tiers, right? And I know that the bundles are usually the best way to like. You get everything and you know, you're not gonna be like running into any paywalls at that tier. Like I understand that. Um, 'cause like, here's another hard thing is, okay, well if I want to go make my own Bunda do, um, and bundle up.
Yeah.
Liz Moorehead: for the Bunda dos personally. That's.
Chad Hohn: dude. But yeah, I gotta bundle it up and I get [00:21:00] like, you know. Sales Pro, but, or maybe like Marketing Pro, but then I can't do like, you know, multiple meeting links or something. Right. Or like I can't do, uh, any data transformations in like the workflows. 'cause I don't have ops hub. 'cause I don't know that Ops Hub is responsible for those things and like, why would I pay.
800 bucks a month for Ops Hub. When I'm building my own bundle, when I have no clue what, what, uh, things, it unblocks right When I'm not, when I'm a customer who doesn't know what the tool is. So, I mean, I know they, like a lot of customers rely on partners to help them understand what they need, but man, it's like you really gotta have some history in your brain.
To understand what they're gonna need, based on what they're gonna try to do, and then they just have to [00:22:00] trust you, that you're telling them that they don't need more than they need.
George B. Thomas: The amount of education that it now takes
Chad Hohn: Mm-hmm.
George B. Thomas: to understand hub, like you remember the good old days when you could watch like a HubSpot versus Salesforce versus like Zoho video on YouTube and go, oh, it's definitely HubSpot. Like the amount of education that it takes to now understand if this is a viable solution, other than if you just hear somebody tell you that that's what you should have and you're like, okay, I trust that human, let me go do it.
Like if you're doing your due diligence, there's a lot of due diligence that needs to happen now. And, and here's what I find funny because you, you brought it up, Chad. I wasn't even sure if I was gonna jump into this, create a bundle. Uh, craziness is now I can select a bunch of different check boxes. I can add the number of marketing contacts I need, not even really understanding what marketing contacts are or when or why I would use them, but I can put a number in there and, and then I can then, then. Then I get the easy decision of, well, do I need a hundred [00:23:00] Breeze Intelligence credits? Do I need a thousand Breeze Intelligence credits? Do I
Chad Hohn: Let alone the, all the add-ons are
George B. Thomas: Do I need, do I need API limit increase. Like, I don't know what, what the, is an F what? What is an A ap? What? What? Uh oh.
Anyway, like, I don't know, do I. I don't know if I do and I'll, I digress again. HubSpot, we love you, don't get me wrong. Like, like I've been using HubSpot since 2012. I've helped hundreds and thousands of people like use HubSpot better. But when we, when we sit down to have this conversation around this page, around this conversation, like I feel like I need to take a double dose of my heart pills this morning.
Liz Moorehead: Okay, so I'm gonna be perfectly honest. We're definitely gonna be going into a part two with this because it's clear that we have a bit of a sprocket shape, hornet's nest here [00:24:00] when it comes to pricing. And I think we're gonna need to have a more substantive part two conversation around.
Examples of what that might look like, mistakes, best practices, but I would like to at least set the table for those more tactical parts of this discussion by asking, okay, so we're all sitting here with this pricing page that may create more questions than it actually answers. For those of us who have been with HubSpot for a really long time.
It has gotten more complicated, not only just in what is offered, but just in the ways you need to think about it. Like the fact that we're constantly having to quantify the value of a seat. Now every time we have to think about our billing cycle or our contacts and whether or not they're marketing contacts, they're regular contacts and all these different things.
So when we think high level. How should businesses actually begin to approach this decision? What are the key questions [00:25:00] organizations should be asking themselves maybe before they even get into that pricing page and start creating more confusion?
George B. Thomas: Chad, I'll let you go first. What, what
Chad Hohn: Yeah, I was, I would say like what is your end goal here with your CRM? Like what is your. Desired outcome because it'll help us like pick and choose the stuff that you need as somebody who is like either a partner or even the HubSpot sales team or whomever. Like basically you're gonna just need to know what your organizational goals are for moving to HubSpot or getting onto HubSpot in the first place, like.
If you already have a CRM as well, that's a very important consideration. What CRM are you moving off of? And do you wanna migrate data or is your goal to like import some contacts and start fresh? Right? That's a very, very key consideration. Um, depending on what you're on, it very well may make sense [00:26:00] to just migrate in some humans into your contacts page, maybe some current sales opportunities and just, I.
You, maybe you don't trust the data in the old system anyway, so why bring it over and then make your HubSpot data You can't trust, you know, right off the get go. 'cause you are like, oh, I can't report on this 'cause you know, I didn't, you don't have the data points or you weren't tracking 'em accurately, or people weren't using your old system.
So very much, what's your desired outcome and what's you, is data migration involved and what's your data migration strategy? If so,
George B. Thomas: So
Chad Hohn: think those are some key components.
George B. Thomas: I think, I think the two things that I hear you saying is, what the fuck are we trying to solve? And what the fuck do we need to connect, like, like the, those two pieces. Right. Um, here, I'm, I'm gonna give you my bonus pro tip. Don't start with how much does it cost, even though this entire conversation so far has been the pricing page and how much it's cost.
Don't start with that.
Chad Hohn: Mm-hmm.
George B. Thomas: Because here's what I'll say [00:27:00] is HubSpot will grow with you like that. This is where I need to get into the positive side of you can start smaller and you can, HubSpot will grow with you. Now, you, as we've said earlier, the gaps that you have to jump to grow. Can be quite large if you're talking about jumping customer platform only.
But you can jump from like sales starter to Sales Pro and it's not all that crazy. Right? Or you can, well, anything, marketing is a little bit of a jump if I'm being completely honest and transparent. But, but some of the other hubs, you can make some jumps and it's not terrible. But here's the other things that I wanna make sure we hit on because Chad, you said basically what are we trying to solve and what do we need to connect Is, is some things you can think about.
I would say this too, who's gonna be using it? Because based on who's gonna be using it and what functionality they need, now you know what hubs you need, but you also know what seats you need. And so again, depending if it's not mar, if you're not if, 'cause the days where [00:28:00] everybody who came into HubSpot were marketers. If you're buying HubSpot because you're gonna build your website on it for a sales team. You need content hub. And sales hub, by the way, is a real thing that I've seen people purchase. Like then you, why are, why are, do, do you need marketing context? Maybe, maybe not. Like depending on what processes. So here's the other thing that I'll say, right?
Who's gonna be using it and what does success look like with it? So if you think about those four things that we just mentioned, what are we trying to solve? Who's gonna use it? What do we need to connect? And what does success look like that helps you or should help you define, and here's the pieces of the puzzle that we need.
Therefore it gets us to the cost that we have to pay. That's where my brain
Chad Hohn: Mm-hmm. Well, here's another thing to consider too, is like starter by itself is a pretty powerful little cookie. What you don't get is automation, but if you wanna [00:29:00] get a little lost in the sauce, you could use a little bit of, uh, you know, HubSpot, uh, like middleware action, right? For example, we really with like make.com or also like even just getting, uh, like, I don't know, so like make.com or, or Zapier, both now even have access to custom objects and they're getting more extensible and.
If you really wanna get nerdy with it, like, I mean, things are so much more accessible to learn how to utilize the HubSpot API than ever before if you're a novice. Um, with private app tokens being simple to generate and doing a little bit of, you know, AI help me out whatnots. Like you can actually start to make API calls.
So even if Zapier or make, don't natively have the block that you need to like do the thing in HubSpot because you can use HubSpot to HubSpot actions. Like that's the thing. You can just HubSpot's the [00:30:00] trigger or a webhook is the trigger. And um. It goes back into HubSpot, so you can really extend that starter pretty far with simple automations through an automation platform.
Um, and, you know, learn how to use the HubSpot API for its gaps as well.
George B. Thomas: And here's the thing that you just sparked in my brain too, because I don't know if everybody listening to this knows the fact that HubSpot seems to be going in a very interesting and different direction as well. If you, um, and, and by the way, if you're listening to or watching this, and you're not using HubSpot yet.
Um, let me know. I can share the, well, we'll share the screenshot so it's on the show notes. But by the way, if, if you have deeper conversations, let I or Chad know, we can help walk you through some of this complexity that we're talking about. But, but Chad, if, if people are watching or listening to this and they are HubSpot users, I want 'em to go to product updates, uh, right hand side panel, and I want 'em to type this Zapier, [00:31:00] Z-A-P-I-E-R, and then it's like the colon semicolon, the two dot thing.
Quick account creation. ' cause there it's literally baked into HubSpot where you can like, listen here, here, here. What is it? Getting teams onboarded to Zapier and leveraging best in class automation has never been easier. With quick account creation, users can get started with a new Zapier account and begin building, using and exploring Zaps without ever leaving the HubSpot platform.
Now if that doesn't tell you. Somebody like, Hey, you can get starter, and in your starter you can create a quick Zapier account to do some things that bridge the gap that George was complaining about earlier from a price standpoint to actually do some automated stuff. Right. Anyway, I digress. I digress.
Chad Hohn: Oh, that's great, man. I mean, that's exactly, that's exactly the, the way you can, you know, extend the ledge a little bit. 'cause I mean, the price discrepancy, especially like, you [00:32:00] know, you're not using HubSpot yet, like, or you are, you are just wanting to get your first starter account. Like, I mean, then you look at that price discrepancy.
Wow, baby, that's a lot. You know, I would say the people who are interested. In a $25 starter are usually the people. uh, usually would be the people who already know how to use more advanced HubSpot hubs. And, uh, they're the people who like know the value that they will use later after their extended past starter.
Right.
George B. Thomas: So just, just so everybody knows, a little, little side tangent, Chad giggled and said, George, I, if you, if you're listening to this episode, I did share a screen because. As my brain just works in a funky way. Liz said, it's kind of like a sprocket, uh, bee, hornet's nest.
Liz Moorehead: Sp orange sprocket shaped towards that. And then you made that beautiful thing come
George B. Thomas: So I made that thing come to life in ai.
Liz Moorehead: a screenshot.
George B. Thomas: [00:33:00] No, I'm gonna send it. I'll send it to you. I'll
Liz Moorehead: Okay.
George B. Thomas: it to you for the show notes. Um, I literally created a orange sprocket, hornet's nest, uh, based on, but I couldn't let it go. Anyway, again, I digress. Let's, let's continue on.
Liz Moorehead: I love it. Well, guys, we've actually come to the end of the road of what is now actually just part one because what we're gonna be setting the table for is next week we're gonna be doing a deeper dive into. What the actual differences are between free starter pro and enterprise. We're going to have a more substantive discussion around that.
Maybe get a little bit more hub specific. We're gonna talk about some real world use cases and we're gonna talk about some of the most common mistakes we've seen where, where we touched upon like overbuying, under utilizing, things like that. But George, we've had a very detailed discussion today already.
So if you had one thing from this episode you wanted our listeners to walk away with, what would it be and why?[00:34:00]
George B. Thomas: I, I would say this is a place where you have. Have to take your time. And the word that is coming to mind right now is intentionality. Right? Thi this literally could be, and I I am not a spreadsheet guy, but this might be the, the, um, the purpose and plan might be a spreadsheet. And, and let me explain what I mean by that.
Because, uh, we live in a world where you don't need to be just a mere mortal human. You can augment yourself. It would be very interesting for you to take a transcript of this show and maybe a transcript of the next episode and throw it into ai, right? Liz is doing it right now. You can just tell that she's literally doing it right now.
Liz Moorehead: Literally typing that. Not even kidding.
George B. Thomas: Take, take the transcript of like the next show, this show. Um, go and get the HubSpot pricing page and throw it in ai. Uh, and, and what I'm saying is you might [00:35:00] literally say, here are the humans we need. Here's the functionality we need. Here's the goal we're trying to achieve, based on all of your knowledge.
Um. Give me the best use case of what I need from a HubSpot portal. Now, I am not saying that you don't still do your due diligence, but at least giving you a good starting point to then know what due diligence you need to do. And also, if you showed up with that spreadsheet at a partner's doorstep, it, it's a better beginning than nothing. So. I, I think that part of why we love to create content at this point is because we know people can reverse engineer it with whatever AI tool they're using, whether it be our clone or chat GPT or clot or whatever to get places faster. And so that, but, but, but my big thing is intentionality and understanding the rubrics that we hopefully started to unlock in your brain today around this conversation.
Liz Moorehead: I love that.
Chad Hohn: Love it
Liz Moorehead: Well, guys, [00:36:00] I guess until next week.
Chad Hohn: Till next week.
George B. Thomas: Till next week.
