I’m going to let you in on a little secret: At Keap, we hear from a lot of business automation and CRM users who left HubSpot. Why the switch? Well, for most of them it’s because they were eventually priced out.
HubSpot has an impressive suite of solutions, but it can get expensive fast. And if you’ve ever shopped their software, you might relate to the stress of the price tag.
So, after hearing this feedback about price, we thought we should do a deep dive to see what had so many small businesses looking for a HubSpot alternative. In this blog, we’ll explore HubSpot’s pricing structure and save you the hassle of gathering the details yourself. By the end, you’ll have everything you need to help your team decide if this software is the right fit for your serious small business or if you need to opt for an alternative.
What HubSpot has to offer
If you’ve ever taken a look through HubSpot’s website, you know they offer A LOT of software solutions. To summarize, their available “hubs” include marketing, sales, operations, service and content. That’s a lot, and it’s what makes them a tempting option for so many teams. 9 times out of 10, HubSpot has what businesses need, but it becomes a bit more complicated when pricing enters the picture (we’ll dive into that in the next section).
To soften the blow of pricing and cater toward entrepreneurs and startups, HubSpot offers free and starter packages. They even came out with a Small Business Bundle. Here’s the thing, these options are awesome at first glance, but they’re not exactly the right fit for all small businesses.
Debunking the Small Business Bundle
HubSpot’s Small Business Bundle comes at an insanely affordable price with users having the option to pay $20/month per seat (this price drops to $15/month per seat if they commit to an annual plan).
Tempting, right? But before you jump at this plan, you have to carefully consider if what it offers is enough for you because a lot of features are avalable, but there are limits associated with them. For example, you’ll get the starter version of their Marketing Hub, which includes “simple marketing automation.”
This caveat means you won’t be able to make extensive automations and you’ll be limited to “simple workflows for ad campaign creation & management, form conversions, and marketing email interactions,” as outlined on HubSpot’s website. Now, this HubSpot form doesn’t explicitly explain how detailed you can get with your automations. Users may have to get into the software and find out for themselves, which comes with its own set of problems.
Aside from the “simple marketing automation” limitations, you’ll also face restrictions on other features. A few additional examples include:
- Form automation: limited to 10 actions
- Email automation: limited to 10 automated actions
- Segmentation: limited to 50 active lists (otherwise have to make them inactive), 1,000 inactive lists and “additional limits”
So while the $20/month price is appealing, just remember that price reflects what you get. HubSpot doesn’t heavily discount any products. In fact, they’re known best for serving enterprise level businesses and their software comes with an enterprise-level pricetag. This shows that you’ll get what you pay for: A small dose of each hub. And when you need more, you’ll pay for it.
Considering all the factors, this bundle made up of HubSpot’s starter packs is the best fit for a solopreneur who is just starting their business.
Pro tip
When software shopping on HubSpot’s website, make sure you hover over everything! That’s how you will know what limitations are put on each package. Here’s what we mean:
HubSpot’s pricing structure: pay per “Hub”
HubSpot’s software pricing is similar to how they structure their support and services: You pick and choose from their different packages and then pay for each of them individually.
To give you an idea of the pricing, we took a look through their hubs, chose the four that most serious small businesses will need, and broke down the costs:
Marketing Hub:
- What is it? “AI-powered marketing software that helps you generate leads and automate marketing.”
- Pricing: If you transfer from Starter to Professional to get more features, you’ll go from $20/month to $890/month for 3 seats. If you choose to go for Enterprise, you’ll pay $3,600 each month for 5 seats.
- Increase from Starter to Professional: 4,350%
- Note: Marketing automation in this hub doesn’t include all automations. If you want to also automate other areas of your business, you’ll need the Operations Hub.
Sales Hub:
- What is it? “Easy-to-adopt sales software that leverages AI to build pipelines and close deals.” This incudes email templates and tracking, sales automation, call tracking, and HubSpot AI.
- Pricing: $100/month per seat for Professional ($150/month for each Enterprise seat).
- Increase from Starter to Professional: Starts at 400% increase, but this will go up if you need more than one seat.
Operations Hub:
- What is it? “Operations software that lets your team easily sync, clean, and curate customer data, and automate business processes.”
- Pricing: $800/month for Professional and $2,000/month for Enterprise. Each comes with just one user, so you’ll pay an additional fee for more seats.
- Increase from Starter to Professional: 3,900%
Grand total for serious small businesses who choose HubSpot
For a business that signs onboard for HubSpot’s Marketing, Sales and Operations hubs, the price will come to $1,990 per month or $23,880 annually (Marketing: $890/month + Sales: $300/month for 3 users + Operations: $800/month).
This might work for large enterprises, but for most serious small businesses, nearly $24k on software every year will be too much to stomach and it can significantly cut into their budget. On top of that, many small businesses may not even need all the features that come with Professional level of all these hubs, which means they’ll be paying for things they’re not using.
That’s why small to medium businesses need something that meets them in the middle in terms of price and feature set. Sounds like you? It may be time to consider a HubSpot alternative.
How HubSpot alternatives are priced
If you’re a small or medium sized company that’s serious about scaling, you don’t need endless hubs with features you won’t use. Instead, you need a software middle ground, a platform that isn’t too small or too large and is able grow with you.
We can’t speak for all software, but we can speak for our own, Keap — the small business CRM and automation platform built specifically for serious small to medium businesses. From end to end, including our pricing structure, our software caters toward these type of businesses, and it’s one of the HubSpot alternatives worth considering.
For starters, take a look at our price: $299/month ($249/month if paid annually). That price may go up if you’d like to add more users or contacts, but it’s still significantly less than HubSpot. In fact, our starting price is 85% less than HubSpot’s Starter package AND you won’t have to worry about huge price jumps just to access the features you need.
Plus, you’ll only pay a one-time fee between $1,500-$3,500 for a dedicated implementation team (including your very own Customer Success Manager, Implementation Strategy Manager, and Migration Specialist). If you go with HubSpot, you’ll pay approximately $10,500 for similar support. Read more about Keap and HubSpot’s service offerings on our blog.
Want more details? Check out Keap’s pricing page or schedule a free zero-pressure call with our team to ask questions and chat!
