Liz Moorehead
We knew one episode on HubSpot pricing wasnβt going to be enoughβand we were right. So this week, weβre back with part two of our HubHeroes pricing series, and this time, weβre diving into the real decision points that trip people up: the differences between Free, Starter, Pro, and Enterprise, what you actually get (and donβt get) at each level, and the traps businesses fall into when they donβt take the time to get clear on what they really need.
Itβs easy to assume that HubSpotβs tiered structure is simple. Itβs not. The jump between Starter and Proβboth in features and in costβis huge. The difference between a core seat and a paid seat? Confusing. And donβt even get us started on the number of ways you can accidentally overbuy or underutilize if you donβt know what to look for.
π Go Deeper: Wait, We've NEVER Done an Episode on HubSpot Landing Pages?
In this episode, we talk through the structure of the tiers even more deeply, the seat model, marketing contact limits, and what features really start to matter as your organization scales. We also go long on the hidden gotchas that come up when you try to piece together your own bundle or when you assume a tool like Marketing Hub Starter will give you access to core campaign or automation functionality (spoiler: it wonβt).
If youβre trying to make smart decisions about what HubSpot plan is right for your businessβor youβre managing a team and realizing you donβt even know what features you have access toβthis episode is your roadmap to getting a whole lot clearer.
Keywords
HubSpot, pricing, tiers, features, marketing, sales, service, enterprise, strategy, SaaS, HubSpot, pricing, discounts, add-ons, CRM, marketing, sales, transparency, user experience, mistakes
What We Cover
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How to Think About the Value of HubSpot Tiers: Starter isnβt just a cheaper version of Pro or Enterprise. We break down how each tier is built to reflect different kinds of teams and use casesβand why scaling into Pro and Enterprise isnβt always linear.
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Starter vs. Pro: What Are You Actually Paying For?: We go feature by feature through Marketing Hub Starter and Pro, exposing the critical capabilities Starter users missβlike campaign reporting, social tools, A/B testing, and custom reportingβand why they matter more than you think.
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The Core Seat Conundrum: Core seats sound straightforward, but they arenβt. We explain what a core seat actually gives you (and doesnβt), and why assuming all super admins can do everything is a fast path to confusion.
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When to Bundle and When to Stay Modular: Bundles look attractive on the pricing pageβbut are they actually right for your business? We discuss the hidden risks of bundling hubs you donβt need, and why a custom build isnβt always better.
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The Gaps That Catch People Off Guard: From not realizing AI credits are limited, to assuming βfreeβ users have more visibility than they actually do, we go over the pricing gaps that cause the most friction for new and existing HubSpot users.
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How Middleware Like Zapier Can Extend the Value of Starter: For technically savvy teams, Chad explains how tools like Make and Zapier can be used to work around Starterβs automation limitationsβwithout immediately jumping to Pro.
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What to Look for in the HubSpot Pricing Page (And Whatβs Missing): We dig into how HubSpot presents its pricing and seat models, where the information is buried, and why even seasoned users struggle to make sense of whatβs actually included.
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The Mindset Shift: Cost vs. Strategy: We close with a conversation about why the real starting point isnβt the priceβitβs your strategy. What are you trying to solve? Whoβs using it? What does success look like six months from now? Answer those first, and the right plan becomes a lot easier to find.
And so much more ...
Episode Transcript
George B. Thomas: [00:00:00] Do you remember when, like it would go on and we'd have to talk about Max or Devon working at like HubSpot? At least. At least there's not that anymore. So, Liz, how, how, how's, how you doing
Chad Hohn: So good.
Max Cohen: what? Wait, who's who'd you ask? How you doing, George?
Liz Moorehead: guys, are you okay? Do you need a hug? How are we this morning?
George B. Thomas: a Monday hug might be good.
Max Cohen: I just had, I just had a week long vacation 'cause the kids were off for April vacation. I got sick day one
Chad Hohn: Oh.
Max Cohen: and this is the first day I felt better since then.
George B. Thomas: well. I'm
Max Cohen: So I was literally sick for the entire.
Liz Moorehead: Yikes.
Max Cohen: So I'm not great, but yeah, just cool. Wish I could have enjoyed my vacation. Not sick, but yeah.
George B. Thomas: I feel like
Liz Moorehead: hi guys.
Max Cohen: Hi Liz.
Liz Moorehead: I know we're all overwhelmed with excitement, curiosity, energy. I can feel it in this room right now. But we are back for part two [00:01:00] of our conversation about HubSpot pricing. Now, for the listeners who joined us last week, you know that this week we're digging into tears, mistakes, best practices, but George, I wanna turn to you first. As I recall, there were some nuggets of wisdom you wanted to kick out of Max's brain first before we moved on to this rest of this conversation.
Max Cohen: Nuggets of wisdom about pricing.
George B. Thomas: I just, I think, um, man, I'm trying to remember back then if there were like, some nuggets of wisdom.
Max Cohen: Well, don't you guys know my toxic trait?
George B. Thomas: what, uh, oh.
Max Cohen: My toxic trade is at HubSpot. I never concerned myself with what the product cost because I didn't want it to ruin it for me.
Chad Hohn: That's
Max Cohen: I didn't want to
Chad Hohn: oh, I have no good
Max Cohen: how much this costs. I just wanted to be able to talk about how awesome it was, and I always feared that if I knew how much the thing cost.
I mean, I have a general idea, but I mean, I had a general idea. I think I, I know now, but
Chad Hohn: That's[00:02:00]
Max Cohen: you know, um. Yeah. Mm. But I know about tears though.
Liz Moorehead: Jesus.
George B. Thomas: Oh.
Liz Moorehead: Okay. All right, everybody together? Are we here? Are we ready?
Max Cohen: we're so ready, Liz.
Liz Moorehead: ready. This. Okay,
Max Cohen: so ready to rock and roll.
Liz Moorehead: So Max, I would just be curious, what do you think of HubSpot's pricing structure? How do you feel about it?
Max Cohen: listen. Here's the deal. Regardless of how many dollars it actually is. This is what I love about it, and I'll tell the story that I've told many times, uh, to people, uh, in that why I think the way HubSpot packages its product, uh, makes a ton of sense, right? Uh, and I think it's because, uh, it's something that even still to this day, you can.
Start for free and grow into as you need it, but not buy what you don't need until you do need it. Right. And I think there's a very logical story a lot of people can follow. Right. [00:03:00] Uh, when most businesses start and they don't have a lot of money, they typically have a. A product, someone who sells it, and a list of people they wanna sell it to at a bare minimum, right?
Or a basic idea, right? And like that's really kind of all you need to step into the free HubSpot Sierra, right? You can get your contacts in there, you can get your companies in there. You can manage some deals and you can track the process of trying to sell some stuff to some people, right? Um. You know, oftentimes, uh, the, the lowest barrier of entry into like a paid product that HubSpot offers is what?
A sales hub, right? Sales hub seat here. Sales hub seat there, right? Uh, and you know, as people are starting to play with the tool. They start to go, oh, what do you mean? I'm kind of sick of sending the same email over and over again. Oh, I could do a template or I could do a sequence, or I could do the meeting scheduler or, or things like that.
Right. And that's like a really good way to kind of like step into your first like paid version of [00:04:00] HubSpot by getting that, you know, uh. Inaugural salesperson, uh, becoming a little bit more efficient in the way that they're initially contacting those, those those customers or that spreadsheet of people that you have, right?
Uh, but the problem is eventually that list dwindles down to nothing because those, the people either buy or they tell you to off and you realize, hey, uh, we need. More leads. So this is where you might look at the marketing hub, right? And maybe you bring in your first marketing hire, you get them, I don't know, the example I was always, always say is like writing blog posts, right?
But you get them creating content, you get them actually, uh, you know, marketing your stuff. Maybe you're setting up your social media presence for the first time and you wanna a way to manage that. Maybe you're trying to email folks and you know, you wanna have a, a better way of, of, of doing that, right? A lot of reasons.
See, last time I told this story, marketing content hub weren't different things, right? So it's. It's interesting to [00:05:00] think about how they kind of like weave in together, right? Um, but you know, you, you can work your way into that and then, you know, if your marketing team is pumping on all cylinders and you're creating a lot of, uh, demand for your product through those efforts, right?
And then you got your sales team being super efficient, the output of that is gonna be more customers, right? And when the salesperson is sick of fielding all those conversations and you start to bring on your first support hire. And you can start to dive into the, the, the service hub, right? And so I just like how.
Sure. They offer incentives for you to buy it all at once. But the, the truth of the matter is, is not every company is ready to do that, especially if they're just starting out. Right. So I do still love the fact that yes, it's one big happy platform and it all is one product technically, right? But you can ease your way into it as the business needs to, right?
Instead of taking on this giant burden of paying for all this stuff that you don't need right at the very beginning. Right? So that's way I think about it. I still love it. I love the whole hub. Model and how [00:06:00] everything is like compartmentalized and separate and kind of like you can step into it when you need it.
George B. Thomas: I mean, I get it. But as the guy on this podcast who said, I think we've hubbed ourself to death, um, because it's like CMS Hub and Marketing Hub and Sales Hub and Operations Hub. And Content Hub. And Hub. Hub, hub, hub, hub, like cheese out. But. But from a pricing standpoint, from a structuring what you get standpoint, which, which by the way, if you don't want to feel like you've hubbed yourself to death, then you just do customer platform and you know, you just start to rock and roll.
But, um, there's a lot that we could talk about when it comes to like, especially breaking it down to each tier and kind of the differences of like. Because, you know, you mentioned kind of growing with you Max, like free to starter to pro, to like that's a, there's a lot, like there's a lot in that.
Max Cohen: There's a lot.
Chad Hohn: Last week [00:07:00] we were talking about the huge discrepancy between starter and pro, like as far as price goes, especially when you're at the, the tier, like the platform level, getting the whole shebang, which usually offers the best discounts. You know, they give you the best discount when you're getting the bundle.
Right. But yeah, that's like, I mean, you're at. 20 bucks a month if your bill annually or whatever, and then it's like 1450 a month. Boom. You know? That's a big boy jump, right?
Max Cohen: Yeah. And I think like too, like sure there's different features in different hubs, but I think also the um. I don't know how to like phrase this, but like between starter pro and enterprise, there's also sort of like a generalized vibe of like what that means, right? So like for me it's like starter is.
It's the taste, right? And if you got like a small team in that department, like that might be where you kind of start [00:08:00] with that. Right? And it's really kind of given you an idea of what it can do, but like there's limits on it and, and things like that. I feel like the, the breadth of functionality always comes in at pro, right?
And to me, the, the general sense that I get of most of the features in enterprise. And maybe this is like less true today, but this is, and I'm, I'm, and I'm just saying that, thinking that there's probably gonna be an example, even though I don't have one. Um, it always felt like the enterprise tools were really the stuff that would come in that's only relevant to larger scaling teams, right?
Like so for example, and right. And right now it ends up being like the breeding ground for new features before they get trickled down to pro. Right? Um. Or the one that you get when you have like a high contact level or something like that.
Chad Hohn: Mm-hmm.
Max Cohen: But, um, you know, and there are like those cheeky little features that they'll just [00:09:00] like tuck up into Enterprise to get people to like upgrade into it.
Right? I mean, custom Objects is a, is a huge one. And you know, we're on the, we're on the precipice of that not being a thing anymore, right. With, you
Chad Hohn: yeah, especially if we get those app defined objects
Max Cohen: Correct object library. Right. You're only gonna see object library get bigger. Right.
Chad Hohn: Yeah. Or partner objects would be nice too down the road someday. I think if you're a partner and you have a specific build,
Max Cohen: But, but like, you know, I, like I, I'll always refer back to things like SSO even though I think SSO just got pulled down to pro.
I might be crazy. Yeah, yeah. Like single sign on. I, maybe I might be wrong. Right. But like, when you look at something like SSO or playbooks, right. And even though playbooks did get pulled down, right. You know, those were things where it became, it was like more relevant when you had a. Scaling team because where those tools became relevant was really only when you had a lot of [00:10:00] people to deal with.
Right? So like single sign-on. That one's obvious, right? Like, you know, if you're, you're managing a lot of users and a lot of logins, like, you know, it just makes sense that you, you use SSL with playbooks, right? I mean, when those first started, like what was the whole. Point of those tools. It was like enablement at scale of people using the CRM, not like two people, right?
It was like when you had people joining, you know, your, your company and you wanted them to have easy resources on like how to run a call or how to do this or how to do that. Like playbooks helped with that. Um,
Chad Hohn: To get the data in consistently Super important across new hires, like how do you get people to do the same thing in the same way when it's just properties on the left hand side or whatever,
Max Cohen: Another really good example is Operations Hub Pro when they had data sets, right? Again, the real big thing with data sets is like enabling teams with the data that they actually need and what they need to do with reporting. Again, something that doesn't necessarily become super relevant until you have a bunch of different stakeholders, you know, trying to access.
[00:11:00] Data in a way that makes sense inside of your HubSpot reporting. Right. So like, again, I don't know if that tracks as much today just because of how much they've like dragged down to pro, even though like, you know, they've dragged it down to pro without having all the features. So like they still kind of give you like a reason to go to enterprise.
Right. But you know that that's the other kind of thing to think about.
George B. Thomas: always building reasons to get you to enterprise and not in a negative way, by the way, like for instance. Journeys, right? The new journeys, that's marketing enterprise, uh, only, right? Um, and, and I think you guys are having a conversation that's very interesting because it's like, um, it, you don't need it until it's relevant.
By the way, relevancy could be small team, large team. It, it doesn't matter. It's just till the things are relevant. I think that's one of the biggest things that I would hope people would do instead of just, many times we go to a pricing page and we just look at the price. Instead of looking at the things that we need that we might not get, for [00:12:00] instance, like if we, if we start this conversation where it's like, let's just take Marketing Hub, which by the way, we could dive into each and every one of the different hubs if we wanted to, but we'd be here for 27 episodes.
You know, if you need campaign reporting, um, starter is not gonna be for you because you can't do campaign reporting in the marketing starter. Or if you wanna do social media, it's not gonna be in the starter. Like you have to go to pro. To be able to get that campaign reporting, which by the way now is super powerful with the new campaign's goals and like the new dashboard and like the fact that the sales stuff is in there.
And, and we've done an episode on that, like you can go back and listen to like our, our kind of campaigns rant. But, but if we just continue to kind of think about that, like if you need presets, if you need custom reporting, if you need calculated properties, if you, you know, if you need like AB testing starters, not for you. So like you, you almost have to think
Max Cohen: What is Marketing Hub starter even today?
George B. Thomas: so marketing hub starter, it's literally like, if I look at this right, you, [00:13:00] it's gonna be, uh, you get email marketing, five x the marketing contacts you have, you get forms, you get simple marketing automation, uh, then you get the form, uh,
Chad Hohn: That's just after the form submission
Max Cohen: Yeah, that's, yeah. Send an email after the form gets filled out.
George B. Thomas: Email automations in there, some limited features around email health reporting, but again, limited, not, not full features, but limited features. Uh, obviously content. Limited to email only. Standard web analytics, dashboards, um, basic recommendations, you know, uh, yeah, you get, you get some, uh, ad targeting, some conversational bots with limited features.
Um, subdomains one, subdomain one country code, like, so there are some, like, there's some things.
Max Cohen: So it's marketing email without marketing workflows or without workflows, essentially.
George B. Thomas: yeah. Essentially, but so that's the thing. Like there's, if you look at the list of dashes, dashes, meaning you don't get [00:14:00] it, um, you quickly go, okay, well, starter is a great place to start, but how long can I actually live here before I am going to need things?
You know, like. That are, that are important? Like
Max Cohen: There's no social, like there's not even like one or one account. That's crazy. They should bring that down. I. Yeah, they should, they should bring that down to like allow one account or something.
George B. Thomas: Well, but how do you do that? I mean, well, we're
Max Cohen: that's easy. Like you can limit the amount of accounts you hook up. But yeah.
George B. Thomas: so then the other thing is like, again, that that just goes back to like the mass amount of like chasm that we talked about last week of like starter two Pro as far as a cost, but there's. But there's also a chasm of like what you get and what you don't get.
Chad Hohn: Mm-hmm.
Liz Moorehead: This is what I wanna start dialing into here because one of the promises of this week's episode is really to dig into the tiers. And what's interesting about what I'm hearing right now is maybe something that people have felt who have been in the HubSpot ecosystem. Some [00:15:00] time the differences and the the differences in the tiers Starter pro enterprise on its face still make a lot of sense, but it has gotten a little bit more complicated, and the difference in pricing between the tiers has become much greater.
And then when we add in this mix of what we were talking about last week with marketing contacts, now they're doing seat pricing. It's much more of kind of like. A complicated calculation to figure out what it is you're actually paying for and what it is you actually need.
George B. Thomas: yeah. I, I mean you, you, you almost have to go through this with like a, um. Fine tooth comb, if you will. Because like if you're an organization out there and you're like, Hey, we need something like a sandbox account. Alright, enterprise, no questions asked, like, it's not in pro, right? Or if you're like, uh, event visualizer or organize your teams like, um, [00:16:00] up to 300 teams in enterprise, right?
Like you, you kind of have to go and look at this from just a. And again, not to be that guy, but like, you know, when you go to market with sales, you have a strategy. When you go to, uh, market with like your content creation, all the, you have a strategy yet, are we taking time? Are people taking time to have a strategy on what they need to purchase based on what there is and isn't versus what they need and what they don't?
And sometimes, I don't know. People are taking the time to dig as far as like, um, for instance, there's ai, social inbox insights. Now that's literally on the pricing page, but guess what? Enterprise not, not pro. So like, and that's another place where we're starting to get a little bit of this chasm where a lot of the really high end AI powered stuff, because at the morning show that I do with like all the updates with Chris, Carolyn, and Casey, and [00:17:00] it's like.
A lot of the AI stuff, you'll see that it's dipping into the enterprise account versus like even a pro account. Some of it's in pro, don't get me wrong, um, but like is starter really gonna have much of that. And so why are most people buying, uh, HubSpot now? Right? Is is it because sales? Is it because marketing?
Is it because commerce? Is it because content? Is it because ai, like, like. Think of a world where the last two acquisitions of HubSpot, right? Frame and, um, what's the CPQ? Uh, cash. Cash flow. Like we gotta start to remember who's coming to our doors. The HubSpot doors. I, they're not my doors by the way. I just, I wish, I wish they were my dorm some days, but like, like there's just a lot that people have to like.
How many times are you talking about like brand add-ons or business units and you immediately know that that has to be like enterprise and, and there's just, yeah. Anyway.[00:18:00]
Max Cohen: A tool does a lot, man. And it does definitely feel like, um, whereas like sales and service, I think still to this day, like a lot of those tools seem like with Enterprise, it's like the most relevant ones are the ones that are only, or the, the ones that are, that the tools that are in enterprise are really mostly relevant to like larger teams, right?
But then you look at Marketing Hub Enterprise and it's just like. Fancy bells and whistles are the ones that live in enterprise, right? Like they gate a lot of that stuff in there. But like, you can even see that too, like, you know, they kind of do that with some features in, in enter, like some weird ones in, in, in sales hub, right?
Like you guys remember the, the workflow action to be able to like enroll people in a sequence.
Chad Hohn: Oh yeah.
George B. Thomas: Yeah. Yeah.
Max Cohen: That's, that's enterprise only. Right? And I think part of me wants to believe that like, they were just so sick and tired of like hearing people complain that workflows couldn't do that. And, and knowing that everyone wanted to be able to have a workflow and roll someone into sequence, that they [00:19:00] were just like, all right, you, it's an enterprise.
Go buy it if you want it. Right. Um.
George B. Thomas: as soon as you enable that feature, you have to tell people that they might have to rethink the actual sequences that they're building
Max Cohen: Mm-hmm.
George B. Thomas: for enabling that action because it's. In somewhat ways going completely off of the original design of what everybody was teaching sequences to be.
Chad Hohn: It's supposed to be human
Max Cohen: Oh dude. It's,
Chad Hohn: to be actually from a person.
Max Cohen: we've, you've seen me yell a lot about that whole drama over the years. Um, but yeah. Uh, the one thing I'll say about the pricing though, George, right, is that. I don't think a lot of people know, like HubSpot has one of the best, most transparent pricing calculators of any SaaS company out there.
Like if you go to hubspot.com/pricing, they literally lay out. Everything. It's not like, [00:20:00] oh, top to sales to get pricing or anything like that. Like literally everything you can, you can look at the hubs piece by piece. You can look at the platforms. You can see how the pricing scales depending on the variables such as your seats and your contacts.
And it's not like buying a car where like you see that price online and then you go in and you find out like. Oh, well, that's the price. If you're, uh, if you're a, um, uh, qualify for these seven different things and you're a veteran and you're this, and you're all these other things that you wouldn't qualify for, and, and it ends up being $10,000 more, um, it's, it's the, the price only gets like lower from what you see on the website because
Chad Hohn: When you talk to sales, they try and wheel you a discount.
Max Cohen: they try to, they're, they're willing discounts, especially if you talk to 'em close to the end of the month, right? Um, so, you know, remember that like when you go to the HubSpot pricing calculator, like you're talking worst case scenario list, right? And then like plus whatever the onboarding is, [00:21:00] but then you see it what
George B. Thomas: maybe, uh, yeah, but listen, listen, listen, listen. Let, let's just, let's hit the brakes for a hot second because there's a couple things that I've historically seen, and by the way, the words that are coming outta my mouth here in the next couple minutes, I love HubSpot. I don't know where my life would be without HubSpot, but let's be honest, the good old.
Liz Moorehead: Oh
George B. Thomas: good old days are no longer the good old days, right? So like literally to get a discount, there is a mathematical equation of things that you have to know and pay attention to, to actually talk in a direct rep's language, to be able to even try to get a 0.5, 1%, 1.5% discount. Like the days of going out and just being like, yeah, give 'em a 40.
Or give 'em a 30, like those days are gone. Like you might be able to squeeze a little bit of juice outta that lemon, but it ain't nothing like it used to be when it [00:22:00] comes to trying to get people a discount. So, so yes. Can the price be lower? Yes. Is it massive amounts? Probably depends on how large the organization is, how much they're gonna come out of the wallet.
How quick. So like, just know that there's a rubrics around that. The other thing too is like. There's add-ons for a reason, and there's limits for a reason. And if you're an organization that, like you build a system and all of a sudden you hit the limits and you gotta start hacking or, or, uh, you know, upgrading to these add-ons, now all of a sudden the price can go, uh, larger than you thought.
And, and let's just talk about the amount of humans that I've helped where they weren't paying attention to their marketing contacts. They imported a list and all of a sudden Billy was sweating because he thought he was gonna lose his job because now all of a sudden it's like a thousand dollars more per like the bazillion contacts that got [00:23:00] imported as marketing con.
Like. So we gotta be careful, like, again, I love HubSpot, but it is designed in a way now with marketing contacts, seats add-ons, um, and limitations that. The price might be the price or the price might change. Real quick, real fast.
Chad Hohn: Yeah, I think that's, that's where, that's where that legal.hubspot.com page comes in. Right? That we, you know, were talking about last week that we didn't really review here. But if you go there and you see the HubSpot Products and Services catalog, like you'll, you'll be able to go down and see the add-ons and what the add-ons are, and like.
To us, you know, seasoned HubSpot people who've been in most, not all, obviously, because there's so many plot spots in HubSpot and new ones are coming out every five nanoseconds. But you know, us seasoned people, we understand what these words mean. But a prospective buyer who maybe. Is shopping [00:24:00] for a CRM, like a more powerful enterprise grade CRM from some sort of industry specific type CRM, which it doesn't have this kind of functionality or configurability, you know, they're gonna be like, oh, okay.
Marketing hub, and like, you know, some of these words it does, you don't even really know. What does that translate to in the user interface? What does that translate to in functionality? Let alone the seats and limits, but like, do I need that or like, oh, when I go to pro I get however many cus, you know, lists and custom properties.
But if I get multiple Pro, does that stack like it doesn't kinda always tell you exactly because it is a little bit convoluted for like people who've never really been there before. And I think there's, there's hidden prices in there, if that makes sense. Like just because of, not, not like intentionally at all, but because of like, you know, [00:25:00] new user inexperience, I suppose.
George B. Thomas: I would even say if you're not a new user, right? Like I had, I had the, uh, assignment last week that somebody wanted, uh, taught. What the difference between the seats, permissions, and features were based on the hubs inside of their portal. And so then all of a sudden, if you start to think about like.
Well, do they get five snippets? Uh, 50,000 snippets, 5,000 snippets? Like do they get 10,000 of this or 5,000 of that? And are, is it core or is it, is it like sales or is it service? And then by the way, one of the fundamental things is like, oh, I tried to give them a core and a sales seat. Oh my god. No. Like sales has core in it.
Like
Chad Hohn: Yeah.
George B. Thomas: lot of confusion. When you think of all these different layers, which by the [00:26:00] way, if, if you're listening to this and you have never gone to legal.hubspot.com/hubspot, product dash and dash service dash catalog pH, I feel like I should make a short link for that, like sidekick strategies.com/catalog or something.
I, I probably won't, but I probably should. But if, if you go that like this at least helps, but even this. Again, this is where, you know, I heard Max talk about transparency and the calculator. Even this, if you go to here and you search seats and you try to like make some type of like informed decision or create some type of presentation around what it actually means in a real world scenario in a port, it's difficult.
So Chad, you're talking about like people who are new to the ecosystem. I would even say those, those of us have been in the ecosystem for a while, are finding it like. Interesting to navigate all of the conversations and layers that need to happen. Um, and so I can totally understand where somebody [00:27:00] new comes and goes, customer platform.
Sure. Or they'll be like, or they'll hear these words, Hey, we can get it to you for a cheaper prices, you know, as customer pla, well, I don't need Service Hub. It doesn't matter. You get a better, okay, sure. And then you've purchased something that you're not gonna use. To which it's like, then why do you even have it?
Because that's gonna add complexity and like convoluted. Like somebody's gonna come up to you and be like, Hey, what's tickets? Because by the way, you bought it but you didn't hide it 'cause you knew you weren't gonna use it. So like,
Chad Hohn: Yeah.
George B. Thomas: here's the thing, like where I go with this, it's like how do you pay what you're supposed to pay for the things that you truly need and don't show anything to anybody that they don't need to like?
Really make this the most streamlined, optimized, possible product platform for the people. Hmm.
Max Cohen: Yeah, you know what? I think I'm gonna issue a rare retraction. Um,
Chad Hohn: Ooh.
George B. Thomas: oh[00:28:00]
Max Cohen: I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm really digging back through the, uh, the pricing page.
Chad Hohn: It's changed.
Max Cohen: It's definitely changed. I mean, so don't get me wrong, it has there, but what it doesn't ha it like it's got a lot and still compared to other platforms, I think is still the best, however.
It used to also include all those, like other weird add-ons, right? Like dedicated ip, um, transactional email. Like all these things, like it used to show like you, when you selected a certain tier, it would show any available upgrades that you could also get, right? Um, I also like, don't love, I don't love that in the marketing sections.
They don't mention core seats anywhere. Which is like kind of goofy to me. Um, you know, they don't explain like, I mean maybe they do explain seats or something somewhere, right? Um,
Chad Hohn: creating your own bundle, if you do create your own Bundu [00:29:00] Bundu and you're gonna make your own Bundu, then
Max Cohen: like you do a
Chad Hohn: all the add-on boys, right? Yeah.
George B. Thomas: listen.
Max Cohen: I don't see it.
George B. Thomas: a fun little testy test. Do control F and type in seats, and you'll see that on the entire pricing page at least. Well, let's go back to last week's, uh, conversation on the tab that I'm on for business and enterprise. If I do control F in seats, I see the word seats. Four times on the page.
Okay? And it's in small, like includes five seats, additional seat seats start at $45. By the way, I'm reading professional customer platform right now, uh, includes seven seats. Additional seats start at $75. Okay? But it doesn't say what kind of seats. It just says five seats or seven seats, right? And so like if I go over to for individuals in small teams.
I search for that seat. Guess what? It's, it's again four times, but it's just talking. It's not talking. There is [00:30:00] nowhere. HubSpot, I hope you're hearing this. There is nowhere for me that I know of for me to easily go and visually see and understand what I get, what I need.
Chad Hohn: Yeah. What does a seat
George B. Thomas: core sales. So like, is it marketing automation?
Is it 5,000, uh, versus five? Is it like, what, what, how can I easily see, not as a partner, but as a somebody who might come by the platform exactly what the flip a sales seat is or a service seat is, and it just could be better.
Max Cohen: I mean, I'm pretty sure there's knowledge based articles on it, but it's not like they're linking to 'em from those pricing pages. Right? 'cause they just want you to click talk to sales. Um, I mean, what I will say. Hey, sure. Do I wish the pricing calculator was, uh, more in depth than it was before. Yes. But like also that catalog page has like literally everything in it, right?
Chad Hohn: Oh yeah, but it's just, imagine navigating
Max Cohen: Yeah, yeah. It's [00:31:00] brutal. It's not, it's not super accessible. Right? But, but they could have hit it behind a button that says, talk to sales. What I mean, so you still gotta give 'em credit for that, right? Like that they, they put everything out on one big thing that you can go find it and look it up and it's not like, it's like insanely difficult.
There's just a lot of shit you can buy in there, right? Um,
Chad Hohn: it's because of how feature rich it is. Like I understand that like you build something you gotta get paid for when people use it. Like I totally understand that, right? Like it's a business
Max Cohen: Yeah. And I mean, that's the, the, the downside of it having a billion and a half features is that they're all gonna cost money and you gotta. Somehow figure out, I mean, you know what, you know, here's the other thing, right? Maybe the product just got too damn complicated for them to build a pricing calculator for it. That's very possible. They were probably like, alright, now we're gonna do this. Core seats thing. They're like, fuck that. We just got done doing like the, doing the, sorry, doing contact pricing, [00:32:00] right? Like, and all the
Liz Moorehead: doing great. We're doing
Max Cohen: know, core seats. That's enough. Let's just tell him to.
George B. Thomas: so, I know we only have a few minutes left, Liz and, and Holy Conversations today, but Max, you know I love you, right? Boo, before I, before I spit these words outta my
Chad Hohn: Ooh.
Liz Moorehead: Earlier you were talking about how much you still loved HubSpot. This is becoming a very emotional.
George B. Thomas: if you go to the Googles, the source as my friend Marcus Sheridan would say of sort all knowledge, source, truth and light, uh, Google.
And you type HubSpot seats. Okay. There is one knowledge article that shows up at the top called Manage Seats. I'll get back to that. Then all of a sudden it's community, community, red Pandas. Hey, uh, Moby, love You and the team I. HubSpot core seats for HubSpot, standard Hub. Then there's, uh, BBD Boom. There's some videos.
There's Hub Gym. There's, uh, upcoming changes to HubSpot's pricing, which was like a HubSpot, uh, news release. Then it goes to [00:33:00] legal.hubspot.com. The thing that we were just talking about that I already said, and then we're at page two, which page two means nothing else exists. If I go over to manage seats, their explanation.
Sales Hub, seat Sales Hub Professional, or Enterprise provides your user with access to use advanced features for Sales Hub Professional or Enterprise. Thanks. Service Hub, seat Service Hub Professional or Enterprise provides your user with access to use advanced features for Service Hub professional or thanks.
Okay. Then there's a link later down to the pricing model. But it's before you get started, it's add and remove paid seats. Um, so it's literally like the management side of it. Transfer a core seat. Uh, what else do we got on here? That's it. Transfer a core seat. Uh, assign an add and remove sales hub, service hub seats, uh, and, and assign core view only seats basically is, so this the, the one knowledge article that actually shows up on the search result doesn't even go into [00:34:00] like, I want something that'd be like.
And FYI. Here's what advanced features means. Here's the list of what it can do
Chad Hohn: Yeah. George, click on images in your Google
George B. Thomas: clients. Hang on, gimme one second, then I'll shut up. I've run into clients where, 'cause by the way, well, I'm a super admin. I used to be able to see everything sweet. Now that we have sales seats, you can't see sequence analytics as a super admin unless you have a sales seat.
Like this is the. I'm done.
Chad Hohn: Well, I was just gonna say click on images and, uh, in, in your same Google search. And the only helpful infographics are not from HubSpot, and the only thing from knowledge HubSpot is like screenshots of the ui.
George B. Thomas: Oh man.
Max Cohen: Good Lord.
George B. Thomas: So, so like,
Chad Hohn: or like people trying to explain it, right? Like the red pandas has a helpful, oh, view only core sales and service and [00:35:00] different types, you know, little pictures of chairs and everything. It's great.
George B. Thomas: Yes. So,
Liz Moorehead: So as we wrap up today's conversation. Because we have hit time. Even if we end up having to do a third episode about this, we could decide about that later. I do want to bring some center of gravity to you. Crazy cats. Okay. If someone were to ask each of you and Chad, we're gonna start with you. Just so you know, I'm coming to you first. Somebody says, what is the one mistake I can't make when it comes to managing my HubSpot pricing? Because we talked in the last episode. A bit about you can end up under buying overbuying.
Under utilizing, over utilizing, there are a lot of things that can go wrong, particularly with an ecosystem of pricing that is much more complex. So if there is one mistake you would tell people they should not make, what should it be?
Chad Hohn: Don't buy more than you need. Like that is, I think, really important because it gets a lot harder to make the value [00:36:00] proposition to leadership when you're not using one third or two thirds of the stuff you bought because you just got the bundle and they are really happy to sell you more stuff. Mid contract.
Give you a discount for it. Like at least in my experience, maybe not as much anymore as George George maybe was saying, but like you could just extend that contract, get a little upgrade when you run into that paywall that you literally can't find any reasonable way to work around, and you want to bring that thing natively into HubSpot, except always by Operations Hub Pro.
Max Cohen: Base dude base. That is actually
Chad Hohn: love Ops Pro, but
Max Cohen: That is so
Chad Hohn: I won't work in your portal unless you have Ops Pro. Get outta here.
Max Cohen: ops hub,
Liz Moorehead: Standards.
Max Cohen: Um, yeah, I'd say, you know, if you're first time HubSpot buyers, if you're, if you're in a situation where you're buying anything above starter, right? [00:37:00] Uh, talk to an existing user. Right. Like ask them, Hey, is there anything you wish you bought?
Is there anything you regret buying? Things like that. Um, just 'cause those people will, without a doubt, have probably figured it out by now. Um, if there's anything they wish they either bought differently or negotiated differently or, or stuff that they got that they don't use, right. Um, talk to someone who's using it.
Don't. And, and, and, and here's the thing. Can you ask your HubSpot sales rep for a referral? Uh, sure. I think it's probably much more effective if you go enter the HubSpot, uh, LinkedIn sphere and say, Hey, hashtag HubSpot community, we're looking to buy this for the first time. Would anyone wanna like, give us their thoughts on whatever?
And you'll get. A billion people. Oh yeah. I could help you up. Half of them might, might be partners trying to sell you something. Right. But like, you can figure out who the users are versus the partners. And even p people who are partners, they just like talking about it. So they'd [00:38:00] probably give you some free advice.
Right. So, you know, don't, don't they asking for the, like, customer referrals is like, kind of a goofy thing because they're, you know, they're, they're. They're probably giving you a referral from someone who's probably gonna get like a discount on their account if like you do a referral call and they end up like purchasing.
Right. So it's just be careful of that.
George B. Thomas: Yeah. Um. Do your, do your due diligence. This is, this is one place not to just
Chad Hohn: Yeah.
George B. Thomas: a, a, a, what is it? A women of prayer or whatever like, um, and really where my brain goes in, by the way, I don't care if it's me. I really don't care if it's me or anybody else. But this is actually one place where I would say lean into the partner community.
Like, like Max kind of alluded to, like the LinkedIn, you know, asking questions like yes, ask all the questions. Um, I'll even say this, if you're listening to this, you're [00:39:00] probably already a HubSpot user, but if you're going through this process and you're actually listening to this and you haven't purchased HubSpot, you might just take the pricing page, all the information from it, the legal page, put it in ai.
Explain to your AI assistant exactly what your business is, what you do, what you think, your strategy, and just see what it starts to spit out of like, what you need, don't you, you don't need, or, or get together with a team of humans. By the way, uh, this might be a great time where you get like, uh, sales, marketing and everybody together and be like, here's the things we can do and can't do.
What does every single human need from this platform? I dunno. I just wish it was easier and I'm sorry that it isn't
Max Cohen: At least it can do a lot though.
George B. Thomas: Oh,
Chad Hohn: It's amazing. The tool is
George B. Thomas: doubt,
Max Cohen: It's a trade off. You know what I mean? Super complex product that can do everything under the sun is gonna have super complex pricing like I.
Chad Hohn: Yeah. It's, it's an [00:40:00] amazing tool. Like nobody should ever think that we don't love HubSpot because it's like we literally just
Max Cohen: at straws here.
Chad Hohn: week. I. Talk about it because we like it and wanna help the community, right?
George B. Thomas: Without a doubt. Without a doubt.
Liz Moorehead: We just have lots of feelings
Chad Hohn: yes, we do.
George B. Thomas: Just a couple.
Liz Moorehead: That's okay guys. Just a couple, at least seven. That's fine. That's fine. Well, on that note guys, I hope you have a great week and until next week, someone wanna say something qui to take us out, or are we just gonna end this like a bunch of normies that feels wrong?
Chad Hohn: Bye-bye.
George B. Thomas: Oh wow. Really, Chad.
