SCORE BREAKDOWN

User Interface

25/25

Cost

17/25

Differentiation

20/25

Effectiveness

20/25

HubSpot is an industry-leading proprietary suite of services that add value and benefit your inbound marketing needs. It’s a top of the line unified tool; however, there are many setbacks to consider.

Using HubSpot

The company has managed to develop a unified marketing platform that encapsulates content management, optimization, and direct interaction with visitors.

This platform is billed as a content optimization software (a.k.a. COS) named Marketing Hub. With Marketing Hub, HubSpot offers a website builder, a content management system, and marketing automation service built in an all-in-one software.

The website builder

The website builder and CMS are built on a “drag-and-drop” interface that promotes user friendly website building, design though templates, and management. HubSpot also allows for total website migration from external services.

HubSpot additionally offers granular data and analytics, a CRM, and social media management tools.

Learning a unique platform

The HubSpot COS is a totally unique user experience from other competing tools like WordPress. That means there is a potential for epidemic of learning disparities for certain users who may not be as technically-inclined as a consultant or marketer.

HubSpot, luckily, offers training seminars and how-to videos in addition to the knowledge base and generous customer support.

Pricing

Due to the Marketing Hub product being the flagship plan for HubSpot, the pricing is built around offering clients a boutique-style one-stop-shopping experience. The Marketing Hub plans begin with a free plan that offers basic analytics and inbound marketing tools. To get premium features, the various pricing options quickly escalate to pricey commitments beginning at $50 per month to $2,400 per month (billed annually). Prices are determined on the size of marketing databases, overall needs, and other variables.

Add-ons come at an additional charge. And when we mean add-ons, we refer to the HubSpot website builder at an additional $300 per month, sales reports at $200 per month, and advertising services at $100 per month. Other premium services are similarly priced.

WordPress vs HubSpot

HubSpot falls short to WordPress when it comes to pricing. Though HubSpot comes with all the tools to get started on inbound marketing, they can be effectively replicated by connecting much cheaper marketing automation tools to a (free) WordPress site.

Yes, HubSpot’s COS offers top of the line products in an all-in-one software setting; but it doesn’t do much to cater to small or medium-sized organizations. We note WordPress with prominence in this review because the platform can be implemented with add-ons that are also cheap, even free, to create a full-service marketing stack from various vendors.

Our Verdict

HubSpot’s COS has the goods to deliver for any organization that deploys it. There’s no denying that. However, the tool shouldn’t be used by organizations that can’t afford the costly commitments of retaining even the slightest of good customer service and user experience with HubSpot. WordPress, it’s landing page builders, and an effective CRM can all be deployed to create the same core functionality as Hubspot at a fraction of the price.