HubSpot is well-known among business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketing professionals. As an all-in-one solution for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service, it checks a lot of boxes, but you may not recognize the full extent of what it has to offer.
In this post, we'll dive into the biggest HubSpot pros and cons, breaking down its capabilities, the most significant limitations, and how it might support your company's goals. With this knowledge in hand, you can make a more informed decision as to whether HubSpot is the right platform for your eCommerce business.
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What Is HubSpot?
HubSpot is a cloud-based software-as-a-service company that offers a full stack of marketing, sales, and customer support software for your online store. With more than 238,000 users, it's also one of the most popular business platforms available.
The Early Days of HubSpot's Inbound Marketing
Founded in 2006, HubSpot was the brainchild of two MIT graduate students. The Boston-based entrepreneurs created this platform to help businesses grow by enhancing their inbound marketing efforts.
HubSpot initially featured only the Marketing Hub, which has since remained its flagship product. Internet marketing was still in its infancy at the time of HubSpot’s development, but a fundamental shift was taking hold in the industry. More specifically, businesses were desperate for better tools that would handle some of their most tedious and frustrating tasks. Sales teams were getting tired of cold calling that went nowhere. Likewise, marketing teams were feeling increasingly discouraged as their promotional messages seemed to disappear into a black hole.
HubSpot co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah recognized these pain points and wanted to address them. In 2010, they published a book called “Inbound Marketing.” It explained how to grow your business through inbound marketing methodology.
Taking a New Approach
Much has changed at HubSpot since its relatively humble beginnings. The company went public in mid-2014 and has continued to grow since then. Most importantly, it has seized the opportunity to expand its service offerings—keeping its customers, and their customers, as the main focus.
At the same time, Halligan and Shah's new methodology for marketing strategies directly addressed the frustrations brewing in sales and marketing teams. Their approach focuses on attracting the right visitors, converting them into leads, closing deals, and continuing to delight customers.
As part of this philosophy, HubSpot's focus shifted from the traditional sales funnel to a new concept: the flywheel. While the funnel treats customers as an afterthought, the flywheel keeps them at the center of all activity.
All of HubSpot’s products align with specific portions of the flywheel—attract, engage, delight, and grow—while connecting teams that work together to serve the customer. Ultimately, the flywheel creates a collaborative relationship between customer service, marketing, and sales.
HubSpot Tools
With four main tools, HubSpot for eCommerce can improve your B2B and B2C marketing strategies, sales, and service. You can use each of these tools separately, but they're most powerful when you put them together.
Marketing Hub
The HubSpot features in Marketing Hub pull together all of the information, content generation support, and communication channels you need to connect with leads and convert them into customers. Among other things, these features handle email marketing, analytics tracking, and ad management. The Marketing Hub also helps businesses use Google Ads, blogs, forms, and social media more effectively.
Another key aspect of this hub is the option to automate important promotional efforts. These tasks include email marketing, lead scoring, and follow-up communications. Add that to chatbot, newsletter, and website builders, and you have a comprehensive marketing solution.
Sales Hub
Some eCommerce businesses question the difference between the Marketing Hub vs. Sales Hub and ask if they really need both. While each tool supports your inbound marketing efforts, the Sales Hub concentrates on automating sales tasks, organizing leads and contacts, and keeping track of deals in progress. The Marketing Hub, on the other hand, focuses more heavily on developing and running inbound marketing campaigns.
As a result, the Sales Hub has extensive capabilities that make it a valuable addition to your company's tool chest (even if you already use the Marketing Hub). It enables users to connect one-on-one with prospects and generate leads with sequences, meetings, playbooks, and pipeline management. The Sales Hub also offers CRM integration for a streamlined sales experience.
Service Hub
According to a 2022 study, 86 percent of loyal customers will quit buying products from a brand if they have two or three bad interactions with customer service staff. Nearly half of the survey respondents said that they stopped purchasing from companies in the past year because of poor customer service experiences.
HubSpot's Service Hub aims to improve these experiences and help strengthen your customer retention efforts. Although it's one of the more recent additions to HubSpot's offerings, it provides robust features for customer service teams.
Among other things, you can use this tool for ticketing and customer support. It offers a shared inbox that pulls together multiple communication channels in a single location. The Service Hub also directly benefits shoppers. Its AI-powered Breeze Customer Agent ensures that they can get answers to their questions at any hour of the day. The customer portal makes it easy for people to review their service tickets.
CRM & CMS
HubSpot's customer relationship management (CRM) and content management system (CMS) software support content development and customer tracking. The CMS helps you create, optimize, and publish content, while the CRM allows you to see exactly how shoppers are interacting with your business. The tools also integrate so that you can share data between them to build a more effective website.
HubSpot Pros and Cons for eCommerce
As with any other software or online tool, there are pros and cons to using HubSpot for eCommerce. We outlined them below to help you determine if the platform is a good fit for your business.
Marketing Hub
Pro: The Marketing Hub is arguably HubSpot’s most powerful tool. With the platform's automation features, three staff members can accomplish as much as a team of 15. Creating a more efficient marketing machine with less effort is at the core of HubSpot’s system. Automated lead nurturing is a big part of that effort, allowing your marketing team to generate more leads and convert them more consistently without increasing their manual workload.
Con: Setting up marketing automation with HubSpot is an investment. You can configure a simple auto-responder for newsletter sign-ups in 20 minutes, but a proper marketing plan for nurturing leads takes more hours, effort, and energy to establish. It’s often a time-intensive and complex process, particularly for businesses that are new to marketing automation.
Sales Hub
Pro: When deciding whether HubSpot will work for your business, don't think about Marketing Hub vs. Sales Hub—the two go hand-in-hand. Sales Hub can improve sales alignment with your marketing campaigns, and it provides a complete view of customer interactions across all touchpoints, granting you a deeper understanding of the buyer’s journey and how you can improve it.
Con: Because of its straightforward, user-friendly design, the HubSpot framework is ideal for small and medium-sized businesses. However, enterprise-level sales teams may discover limitations when managing large teams or complex workflows.
Service Hub
Pro: The addition of the Service Hub to HubSpot's tech stack has been the biggest rollout since its inception. This tool has made it easier than ever for eCommerce businesses to combine all aspects of their marketing strategies in one place, which is a major advantage in this list of HubSpot pros and cons.
The Service Hub features a help desk with ticketing, shared inboxes (making it easier for employees to cooperate), and a chatbot that automates support and routes tickets. Best of all, this activity is stored in contact records, which reveal the full context of each customer’s relationship with your business.
Con: If your customer service team has more complex needs, HubSpot may not fit the bill. For instance, if you need help with returns management, you may need to look into custom integrations for Service Hub or consider alternative options.
HubSpot CMS
Pro: HubSpot released its CMS product in 2018 and gave businesses the option to purchase it separately or as an add-on to any Hub tier. The CMS is an excellent solution for small sites that want to leverage the power of personalization in an easy-to-use and intuitive content management platform. If you’re already using HubSpot tools, it’s a no-brainer to consider also using the CMS.
Con: When listing HubSpot CMS pros and cons, you'll quickly notice that the upsides far outweigh the downsides. It offers everything you need to build a basic site out of the box, including free SSL authentication. One drawback is that it has limited language support, which may be problematic for some multinational businesses with complex content needs.
CRM
Pro: There are many ways to empower your sales team, and you may be weighing the strengths of Salesforce vs. HubSpot. While both offer compelling features, an examination of HubSpot pros and cons reveals it's the one tool that gives you the full picture of shoppers’ interactions with your website, marketing materials, and sales team.
HubSpot contact records hold all the information you need about each customer's history. This allows for quick transitions from one salesperson to another and then from salespeople to customer service reps. As an added bonus, the basic CRM is free and integrates seamlessly with the rest of HubSpot's tools.
Con: While our HubSpot CRM review is generally positive, it may not be the right tool if you have an enterprise team with complicated structures and multiple members. Although it can support businesses with any amount of revenue, costs can significantly escalate when you obtain the add-ons and integrations needed for a growing business.
Key Considerations: Is HubSpot Right for You?
Despite all of HubSpot's advantages, marketing automation software is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Your business needs, requirements, and goals may be different from those of your competitors. You might also stand apart in terms of team size, business size, or overall strategy.
Team Size & Needs
Although many different kinds of businesses can use HubSpot, it works best for small to mid-sized teams. More specifically, it's beneficial if you're focused on automation, content marketing, and inbound sales. It's also an excellent tool when you're just beginning to grow your business or your goal is to increase the number of leads you generate online.
Budget Considerations
HubSpot has different pricing structures for each of its tools, which can make it challenging to get a clear understanding of how much you'll have to spend. With free and low-cost options starting at $15 per month, it's an easy choice for smaller businesses. However, as your business expands, so do the expenses.
HubSpot's tools have incremental contact costs that can raise the total price. For example, the Starter Customer Platform option for the Marketing Hub costs only $15 per month and includes 1,000 marketing contacts. However, if you want 2,000 marketing contacts, you'll need to upgrade your plan to Marketing Hub Professional. This makes the price jump to $800 per month. Plans for enterprise organizations are significantly more expensive—Marketing Hub Enterprise costs $3,600 per month.
These pricing tiers are important to keep in mind when planning your budget, particularly if you operate a larger business. While it may initially seem affordable, the costs can sneak up on you as your needs change.
Integration Requirements
HubSpot offers integrations with hundreds of apps and web services in various categories, including:
- Video
- Analytics and data
- Content
- Sales
- Events and webinars
Integration options range from Salesforce to Facebook Ads and Databox. The platform has an open API that allows developers to build custom integrations. With that said, if your brand has unique needs that require multiple custom integrations, you may encounter higher costs and greater complexity.
HubSpot Success Story
HubSpot isn’t just for B2B lead generation businesses. As we already mentioned, it has robust resources for any eCommerce brand looking to jump into inbound marketing.
Cutter & Buck is an American sportswear business based in Seattle, WA (and a Groove Commerce client). After struggling with Pardot email marketing, the brand looked for a more intuitive and powerful solution to meet its needs.
The company’s team aligned its HubSpot Marketing Hub rollout with a new site launch—and made tremendous leaps in its marketing strategy in the process. After increasing email efforts and setting up automation, sessions from email increased 33 percent year-over-year. Furthermore, Cutter & Buck’s eCommerce conversion rate went up 45 percent and revenue increased by one-quarter. The company integrated HubSpot and BigCommerce, helping to boost the number of transactions by 22 percent.
For more examples, visit our case studies page and select “HubSpot” on the “Technology” menu.
Conclusion
HubSpot has significant strengths—including automation and data analytics—as well as some noteworthy weaknesses. Overall, it's well-suited to brands that are willing to invest some time and resources in their inbound marketing.
If you’re looking for an all-in-one tool that helps your business implement an effective inbound marketing strategy, you can explore all the HubSpot features firsthand with its no-cost CRM option or a free trial. You could also evaluate it in more detail by reading an additional HubSpot CRM review, looking more closely at HubSpot CMS pros and cons, and comparing it against major competitors (like HubSpot vs. Mailchimp or HubSpot vs. Marketo).
As a HubSpot marketing agency, Groove Commerce is a great resource when you have questions about HubSpot pros and cons or want to learn more about your eCommerce options. Reach out to us for further details. You can also request a free website performance audit.
