The Pros and Cons Of HubSpot: An Honest Review From A Very Avid User
I discovered HubSpot in 2014 and became instantly hooked. Being the Little Marketing Genius that I am 😉, the automation capabilities astounded me. I was equally impressed with how HubSpot marketed itself. All of the free content and thousands upon thousands of helpful blog posts. Yup, like I said, I was hooked.
Over time, I became a self-proclaimed expert on the HubSpot marketing platform. I achieved several certifications through the HubSpot Academy. I created countless campaigns for different companies that included email, social media messaging, blog posts, and workflow automations. The beauty of it all was being able to quickly and easily see the data and track the results of my efforts.
In September of 2016 I attended HubSpot’s Inbound conference for the first time. Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid! Being surrounded by thousands of marketers who loved HubSpot as much as I did was completely thrilling. I also got to experience HubSpot’s fun and progressive corporate culture firsthand. Man could these guys put on an event! Needless to say, my obsession sky-rocketed and I became even more entrenched in the platform in 2017.
Ok, so the point of this long-winded intro is to make it clear that I know what I’m talking about when it comes to HubSpot. For the past five years I’ve been using it religiously. I’m logged in on an average of five days per week. I’m still creating Inbound marketing campaigns, analyzing data, and keeping myself up to speed on the latest and greatest tech updates.
In this blog post, my intent is to give you my very honest opinion on HubSpot. The platform has gone through significant changes over the years and will probably continue to do so over the next several years. Today I’ll fill you in on the things that I currently love and the things that make me want to pull my hair out at times. Here goes!
😃The marketing platform is incredible.
To this day, I’m still amazed at the power of HubSpot’s marketing platform. The technology is just awesome. Putting together campaigns and tracking their success is where I find enormous value in HubSpot. The campaign management tool gives you a bird’s eye view of each and every one of your Inbound campaigns. Emails, social media posts, CTAs, blog posts, landing pages … the results associated with each component can be monitored and tracked along every step of the way.
From a usability standpoint, I’d say the interface and tools are pretty intuitive. If you’re brand new to HubSpot, I would definitely recommend taking some free courses from the HubSpot Academy. There’s plenty to choose from and you go at your own pace. The HubSpot Academy was my lifesaver when I first started using the platform.
🙁It’s pricey.
The best technology comes at a price. This is no surprise. That said, be prepared to pay a pretty penny for HubSpot. At this moment in time, the Professional version starts at $800 per month. Now if your jaw just dropped, don’t worry. There are lesser memberships available but they don’t give you all the bells and whistles you get with the Professional or Enterprise versions.
😃The resources just keep on coming.
I mentioned the HubSpot Academy earlier in this post but that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the helpful resources HubSpot makes available to people.
When you’re logged into your portal, there’s a section called the Learning Center and in it, you’ll find a plethora of valuable tutorials and content. Topics include:
Sales Enablement
Contact Management
Website Design
Email Marketing
Inbound Sales
Marketing Automation
Social Media
SEO
Lead Generation
There’s everything your little heart could possibly desire when it comes learning about Inbound and the HubSpot platform.
Then there’s the HubSpot blog. It’s AWESOME. Even if you never plan on buying HubSpot, you should subscribe to their blog. The content is fresh and incredibly useful, guaranteed!
🙁The initial support for set-up is so-so.
I have mixed feelings on HubSpot’s account reps. When you first purchase HubSpot, you’ll be assigned a specific person who will help get your platform set up and ready for use. However, from what I’ve experienced, these folks typically know only the very basics about HubSpot. I would HIGHLY recommend familiarizing yourself with HubSpot or dedicating an employee to it if you’re making the investment. The HubSpot account reps will only cover the basics of setting you up. Putting the platform to work for your company is entirely on you. However, like I said before, their training tools are phenomenal and they definitely provide you with everything you need to become an expert!
😃The Help Desk offers very decent service and turnaround.
I’ve emailed HubSpot’s Support Team numerous times over the years regarding issues or questions I’ve had and the response time has been pretty good. And off the top of my head, I can’t think of one issue I submitted that didn’t get resolved.
🙁The glitches have increased.
It’s my opinion that HubSpot has gotten extremely glitchy. There are days I literally have to log out and take a break due to pure frustration over things not working properly. I find most of the glitches to be on the data entry side of things. For example, just the other day I was trying to log a meeting on somebody’s contact record. When I clicked on the calendar button to choose the date of my meeting, the calendar would pop up and then suddenly disappear. It was incredibly aggravating. Things similar to this seem to happen more and more these days.
😃Let me tell you about lists and workflows...
I freaking LOVE making lists in HubSpot. I’m a list-making geek. 🤓You can literally group contacts together by any criteria you can possibly imagine. You have endless possibilities when it comes to creating HubSpot lists!
And then there’s workflows … probably my all-time favorite thing in HubSpot. Using workflows, you can trigger any number of things to happen automatically behind the scenes. For example, if a contact in the LMG database visited our Website Design page more than three times, I can set up a workflow to send them a follow-up email. If a contact lives in a certain zip code, I can use a workflow to assign them to a particular list. Honestly, you can do just about anything with workflows. It’s very cool.
🙁The Design Manager is not user-friendly.
HubSpot’s Design Manager allows you create custom templates and designs for your landing pages, emails, and blog. If you’re not versed in code, DO NOT attempt to play around in here. It’s very easy to accidentally screw something up and it can be very difficult to figure out how to fix it.
The conclusion: IF …
You’re looking to launch an Inbound marketing strategy AND
You can afford at least $800/month AND
You or someone on your team will make the investment to learn HubSpot
THEN GO FOR IT!
HubSpot is an amazing platform that can offer you limitless advantages in the game of Inbound Marketing. No, the system isn’t perfect but I personally love it and I still highly recommend it to this day.
Happy HubSpotting!
PUMP THE BRAKES!
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