HubSpot is a cloud-based CRM and marketing automation platform headquartered in the United States. Founded in 2006, the company primarily targets small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with 10 to 500 employees that want to consolidate inbound marketing, lead management, and CRM into a single system. HubSpot offers a free basic version as well as paid plans at the Starter, Professional, and Enterprise levels—each available separately for Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, Content Hub, and Operations Hub.

  • HubSpot offers a centralized solution for customer management and marketing planning , which tracks contact information, deal pipelines, activities, and campaigns

  • HubSpot’s pricing is modular and based on several combinable factors

  • HubSpot receives generally positive reviews on review platforms, but faces significant criticism regarding costs and support, among other issues

  • HubSpot operates servers in Germany, among other locations, but does not rule out the possibility that data may be transferred to other data centers in certain cases

Sales representatives with positive experiences with HubSpot

To give you a reliable picture of what people’s experiences with HubSpot are like, we analyzed real HubSpot reviews from Capterra and G2. While most customers highlight its user-friendliness, they are critical of HubSpot’s costs, sales practices, and scalability. Let’s take a closer look at how HubSpot users rate the software’s costs, advantages, and disadvantages.

  • Intuitive interface: Many reviews highlight the user-friendly interface, which allows for a quick start even without training.

  • All-in-One: HubSpot can handle nearly all CRM, marketing, and customer service processes, enabling a seamless integration of information flows and workflows.

  • Automation: Another frequently highlighted positive feature is the integrated automation tools that accelerate workflows.

  • Streamlined campaign creation: Users also positively highlight the email and landing page builders and the easy integration of various marketing channels.

  • Unsatisfactory support: Numerous users report in their HubSpot reviews about long support wait times and insufficient or generic responses. HubSpot is also accused of deliberately responding slowly to small accounts.

  • Lack of flexibility: In many HubSpot reviews, users criticize that while standard processes work well, custom pipelines or complex processes are difficult to implement or require an expensive Enterprise plan.

  • High Costs and Lack of Transparency: Many customers find the pricing to be overpriced and opaque. They criticize the fact that, despite expensive subscriptions, additional packages must still be purchased to use key features.

  • Aggressive Sales Tactics: Aggressive sales tactics are criticized in most negative HubSpot reviews. Many customers say they were pressured into signing a contract with discounts that were only valid for a short time. Others criticize that they were promised features during the sales call that they then had to pay extra for, or that contract and cancellation terms were not adequately communicated in advance.

  • Steep learning curve: While HubSpot offers an intuitive interface, many users report in their HubSpot reviews that it takes weeks or months to properly configure all settings and integrate various hubs, or that they have to purchase expensive training and integrations.

One of the most common points of criticism in user reviews is the high HubSpot costs and HubSpot’s pricing structure. If you take a look at the pricing table on HubSpot’s website, you’ll notice that prices are determined by four factors: the selected Hub, the plan, usage, and the number of user seats.

HubSpot costs should be calculated very carefully

HubSpot positions itself as a solution that includes all the necessary marketing, sales, support, and CRM software. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that, but users must assemble the package they need from various hubs. Each hub incurs additional costs. Although HubSpot makes these prices per individual Hub transparent, individual discounts and bundle pricing are common. Therefore, the price table does not indicate how much will actually be paid in the end, and price comparisons are difficult to make. Additional complexity arises from the fact that the Marketing Hub has a monthly fee, while the other Hubs are billed per user.

HubSpot offers each hub in four tiers: Free, Starter, Professional, and Enterprise. Costs vary significantly across these plans—from around €20 per month for the Starter plan to several thousand euros per month for the Enterprise plan. In particular, the large price jumps to the next tier are frequently criticized. For example: The cost for the Marketing Hub in the Professional plan is €792 per month, while in the Enterprise plan it jumps to €3,300 per month.

Another factor contributing to a lack of transparency and often catching many customers off guard is that HubSpot imposes limits on certain features in the standard plans, e.g., for marketing contacts in the Marketing Hub, the calling feature in the Sales Hub, scalable content production in the Content Hub, or AI and API usage in general. Once the limit is reached, additional packages must be purchased.

Since March 2024, HubSpot has been based on a seat model: Each user needs a license that defines their access. Core Seats grant full access to all subscribed Hubs, including AI features, while View-only Seats are available for free and without limits but offer read-only access. A paid Core Seat is required for active employees. As teams grow, costs add up quickly. And while limiting employees to View-only Seats may save costs, it simultaneously restricts the team’s ability to collaborate within the system.

Onboarding – the hidden HubSpot costs #

Although HubSpot offers an intuitive interface and provides users with extensive free support through its HubSpot Academy, the company charges for some aspects of implementation. Starting with the Professional plan, there is a mandatory, one-time onboarding fee of approximately 1,000–6,000 euros, depending on the Hub and plan. Alternatively, customers can book onboarding sessions with certified HubSpot partners, though these are not any cheaper.

HubSpot’s opaque pricing and lack of scalability are therefore a major point of criticism. At this point, we’d like to use a concrete example to illustrate the costs you can expect.

Let’s consider the following scenario: A medium-sized company signs up for the Marketing Hub Professional and the Sales Hub Professional with 5 licenses. The Marketing Hub includes 2,000 marketing contacts and 3 user licenses, but the customer needs 3,000 contacts and also 5 licenses. HubSpot only offers additional marketing contact quotas in packages of 5,000. In addition, HubSpot charges for the mandatory onboarding.

In the first year, the bill looks as follows (all prices are from the HubSpot website):

Cost / Month Total Cost / Year
Marketing Hub Professional €792 €9,504
5 Sales Hub Professional licenses €500 €6,000
2 additional licenses for Marketing Hub €90 €1,080
5,000 additional marketing contacts €250 €3,000
One-time mandatory onboarding €4,470
Total €24,054

Since HubSpot’s Professional and Enterprise plans are only available as annual subscriptions, the company in this hypothetical example incurs costs of nearly €24,000 in the first year alone. With the same setup, costs in subsequent years amount to approximately €20,000 annually. And even with the Starter plan, this example results in an annual bill of €6,000. This is a massive investment that can only be justified if it is based on an all-around positive HubSpot experience or if there is no equivalent alternative.

However, these high costs may not be necessary at the outset, as HubSpot also offers a free plan with significantly reduced features. That said, this plan is not a true alternative.

The free plan includes a basic CRM, simple email marketing options, forms, and a limited dashboard without complex statistics. Automations, custom reporting, AI features, or pipelines are not included and are only available after upgrading to a paid plan. While it is possible to use HubSpot for free, the free version is essentially only suitable for testing or very simple processes.

HubSpot training at an SME

AI features are now an important component of powerful CRM and marketing solutions. HubSpot is no exception, and the U.S. company responded to this trend early on, introducing its first AI features for content creation in early 2024. With Breeze, HubSpot now offers a complete AI suite for content creation, lead scoring, data enrichment, and process automation.

Experiences with HubSpot Breeze have also been mixed, though it should be noted that the feature has only been mentioned in a few HubSpot reviews so far.

  • Helpful for data maintenance and data enrichment

  • Breeze Intelligence delivers good results when enriching lead data

  • Does not measure up to other LLMs for more complex applications and content creation

  • Rapidly rising costs due to credit-based billing with automatic upgrades

  • Not included with the same features in all plans

  • Some features must be purchased as add-ons

HubSpot offers a special program called “HubSpot for Startups” and specifically targets tomorrow’s SMEs with very high discounts. However, the discounts are subject to conditions and, depending on the program, apply only for the first year or on a tiered basis for the first three years. But is such a complex and expensive tool even suitable for startups? In our view, the answer is clear: HubSpot is an attractive solution at best in the very early stages—and even then, it’s a double-edged sword.

Even for newly founded companies, the Free plan essentially offers too few features to work productively without using additional tools. As a result, these startups also fail to benefit from the clear advantages of a centralized CRM and marketing solution. And while the Starter plan is still affordable for small teams with few marketing contacts, the problems begin as soon as the startup scales. Monthly fees quickly add up to four-figure amounts (even with HubSpot’s conditional startup discounts, it’s still several hundred euros). The cumbersome migration to a more affordable tool then consumes valuable resources. For company founders and startups , there are significantly better and more affordable solutions, such as scalable and customizable no-code tools .

HubSpot operates servers in AWS data centers in the US, Canada, Australia, and Germany and automatically stores its customers’ data in the respective regional data center with the corresponding legally required data protection settings. Only data from Free users is stored exclusively in the US. European customers’ data is automatically stored in Germany. However, as a U.S. company, HubSpot is subject to the U.S. Cloud Act. Additionally, the company reserves the right to transfer data to other data centers in certain cases. For companies with high data protection requirements, a very careful review is therefore recommended—or switching to a provider with exclusively European hosting or an on-premises solution, such as SeaTable .

HubSpot Cloud and Data Protection

Conclusion: HubSpot Experience – Strong for Getting Started, Expensive as You Grow #

The numerous reviews from HubSpot users on Capterra and G2 paint a fairly clear picture of Hubspot: The tool impresses with an intuitive interface, a free version, and robust automation for standard inbound processes. Getting started is quick and requires little technical effort. However, it can take weeks or months until all processes are set up and employees have fully mastered the tool. As soon as you scale up and need more contacts, users, or possibly custom processes, things become problematic. Costs and complexity rise disproportionately, and reporting, flexibility, and support regularly reach their limits, especially for SMEs.

If you’re looking for an alternative to HubSpot that offers more flexibility at lower and transparent costs, you should consider SeaTable. The AI no-code platform allows you to customize CRM, campaign management, and reporting, and offers numerous templates for a quick start—including for CRM and marketing. And all of this without tiered pricing, without complex hub combinations, and with GDPR-compliant hosting. Instead of adapting to predefined structures, with SeaTable you build a system that truly fits your processes.

FAQs – User Experiences with HubSpot #

How do users rate their HubSpot implementation experiences?

How users rate the implementation depends heavily on the complexity of the setup. Generally, the onboarding process is described as smooth, and HubSpot’s documentation is praised. However, many reviews recommend hiring an integrator as soon as multiple hubs need to be set up or data needs to be migrated.

When should you consider switching from HubSpot to another system?

At the latest when HubSpot’s licensing fees are no longer proportional to the return on investment, you regularly have to create workarounds for specific processes, or your hub structure reaches a level of complexity that hinders effective work.

Why are many reviews critical of HubSpot's pricing?

HubSpot’s pricing structure, which is based on contact-based costs, paid add-ons, hub combinations, and seats, is opaque and can cause costs to rise rapidly. Additionally, the price jumps between subscription tiers are significant.

Is HubSpot suitable for small teams?

Yes, HubSpot is a good fit for small teams if you’re satisfied with limited features. With its “HubSpot for Startups” program, HubSpot even specifically targets young companies in the growth phase. However, as soon as small teams scale up, the tool usually becomes too expensive and too complex.

What alternatives are there to HubSpot?

There are numerous powerful alternatives to HubSpot on the market, such as Salesforce or Pipedrive. If you’re looking for a solution with a similar feature set and more flexibility at a lower cost, no-code solutions like SeaTable are a good option.

Can HubSpot be canceled on a monthly basis?

The cancellation period for HubSpot depends on the plan you choose. While Starter plans can be canceled monthly, plans starting with the Professional tier typically require a one-year commitment.

TAGS: Customer Relationship Management Marketing Planning Tools & Plugins