What is the Real Cost of HubSpot?

The Cost of HubSpot, According to HubSpot

When you ask most HubSpot Solutions Partners (and even HubSpot themselves) how much HubSpot costs, this is usually the answer you get: HubSpot Pricing Page. 

And sure, that's a helpful ballpark for you to provide your accounting or finance team. But is the HubSpot pricing page really an accurate estimate of how much HubSpot will cost your company?

No.

As a Diamond HubSpot Solutions partner, the Evenbound team is more than comfortable telling you that in addition to your monthly subscription costs, you will invest more time and money on HubSpot for onboarding, implementation, and ongoing support.

Wait, what?

We're telling you HubSpot is expensive?

Are we even allowed to do that?

Well no and yes. No, we don't believe HubSpot is expensive. In fact, we know that our clients who invest in HubSpot always recoup that investment in the sales that HubSpot helps them close.

And yes, of course, we're allowed to do that, because as a HubSpot Solutions Provider, we're not HubSpot employees. We're certified and accredited experts who know a lot about what HubSpot is and can do, but we're here to help our clients make the most of the solutions that can support their growth, not pitch solutions that don't fit their goals.

So, why are we telling you all of this?

We hate poor expectations.

We want you to know exactly what you're going to get, and exactly what it's going to cost for your company to really use HubSpot in the ways that will deliver the revenue and ROI you're looking for.

So, with those few things cleared up, let's talk about the REAL cost of HubSpot, from an insider's perspective.

Understanding the REAL Cost of HubSpot

When you sign up for HubSpot, your initial cost is the amount you pay per month based on the licenses you've selected. Maybe that's Marketing Hub Pro and Sales Starter. Maybe it's the complete Enterprise CRM Suite including the HubSpot CMS. (More on the HubSpot CMS Pricing here.) Whatever tools you purchase, the money you pay for them gives you access to the tools — that's it.

Configuring the software to integrate with your existing systems and learning how to use all of these wonderful new tools aren't part of the deal. 

In addition to the monthly price you pay for your HubSpot subscription, the real cost of HubSpot includes:

• The cost of HubSpot onboarding & implementation
• The cost of HubSpot training for any employee who needs to use it
• The time your team must invest into that training
• The time your team will need to invest in proper setup
• The cost of any ongoing support or as-needed trainings to continue to support your team's success on the platform. 

Don't worry, we're going to break each of those costs down. Let's get right into it:

Setting Up HubSpot — How Much Does HubSpot Onboarding & Implementation Cost?

Once you've decided on a HubSpot subscription level, there are two paths you can take for onboarding and implementation. (More info on what HubSpot Onboarding and HubSpot Implementation are.)

1. HubSpot's Included Onboarding Service

HubSpot does offer some onboarding and implementation services. From between $3k-$15k, onboarding services provided by HubSpot offer guidance on how HubSpot works, and how you can use some of those tools. 

The key word there? GUIDANCE. 

HubSpot does not offer any hand-holding or "do it for you" service when it comes to onboarding and implementation. They will show your team how to do things and offer suggestions for setup best practices, but they won't actually complete the onboarding, data migration, or user setup for you.

Instead, you dedicate a "HubSpot Power User" from your team, who becomes responsible for all of that technical setup. That person is also responsible for teaching the rest of your team how to use HubSpot.

It's a quick and dirty way to get started, but if you're investing thousands a month in a HubSpot subscription, do you think you'll get the most out of that investment with a self-taught implementation?

The Total Cost of HubSpot's Onboarding Service

• $3-$15k for the onboarding
• 30-90 days of investment from your HubSpot Power User (someone on your team)
• Additional investment from that person to teach your team how to use your new tool
• Your team's time to participate in those team trainings and learn how to use HubSpot on their own. A conservative estimate might be 5 hours per week per team member.

If you have the internal resources, and if those internal resources have the bandwidth to handle the time investment outlined above, maybe. But otherwise, we suggest option #2. 

HubSpot does a lot of things really well, but they know that setup and support aren't their top services. That's why HubSpot has a dedicated Solutions Partner network.

2. Select a HubSpot Solutions Partner That Provides Onboarding & Implementation

If the idea of your team teaching themselves how to use a complicated new software sounds a little sketchy, you're not alone.

This is exactly why the HubSpot Solutions Partner network exists. At Evenbound, we are certified in all areas of HubSpot, and customized HubSpot onboarding & implementation is what we do every day.

What's Different About a HubSpot Solutions Partner's Onboarding & Implementation Service?

You don't have to do all of the work.

A Solutions Partner has HubSpot experts on the team who will handle all of the technical set-up steps of your onboarding. We'll remap all of your data, integrate all of your contacts into the HubSpot platform, and make sure everything is set up according to the way your team works.

Then, the real magic happens — we develop a customized implementation plan that takes your team's goals into account, and provides personalized training for your team members.

Working With a HubSpot Solutions Partner: Your Time Investment

We can't speak to every HubSpot Solutions Partner's process, but at Evenbound, ours follows a few key steps.

1. Understand your business.
We sit down with you and your team and discover what exactly it is that you do, and how you do it. 

2. Listen to your specific use cases.
We also work to hear your specific use cases for HubSpot. What do you want it to do? How can we build HubSpot to support your existing processes?

3. Configure HubSpot according to your processes.
Once we have a solid understanding of what you do, and how you want HubSpot to work for you, we make it happen. We handle all the heavy lifting, from importing data and contacts to setting up email templates, workflows, sequences, and more. 

4. Train you to be successful with your new software platform.
When all the heavy lifting is done, we then take time to train all the responsible parties on how to use HubSpot for success. We provide both team and individual one-on-one training to ensure that everyone feels they can get the most out of their HubSpot tools. 

With a better understanding of this process, you can gain a clearer understanding of how much time your team will have to invest in the "getting started with HubSpot" process. (If you want to know more about getting started with HubSpot, check out these answers to 5 of the most common HubSpot onboarding questions.)

Unlike the HubSpot-provided implementation and onboarding, your team only needs to dedicate their time to an initial discovery meeting, and then the subsequent trainings.

Yup, that's more like it. 

While we do like to have one point of contact on your team, this person is primarily responsible for gaining approval from your team and reviewing the imported data and systems we build.

For most companies, this is a much more comfortable time investment than dedicating an entire team member to learn and then train others on HubSpot.

But the question still remains, how much does this Solutions Partner onboarding and implementation service cost your company?

How Much Does it Cost to Work with a HubSpot Solutions Partner?

Big surprise here — it depends. The complexity of your business, how many people are on your team, and how many systems you're hoping to integrate with your HubSpot platform will ultimately dictate your overall investment. 

To give you a ballpark, your overall investment in HubSpot onboarding & implementation with a HubSpot Solutions Partner will include:

• Between $6-30k on implementation and onboarding 
• Time for your team to sit down in a dedicated discovery meeting
• Time for one person on your team to review and approve our work
• Time for your team members to dedicate to 3-6 trainings over the course of your onboarding and implementation. These may be team trainings or one-on-one trainings

As you might imagine, smaller companies that are just looking for a few simple trainings can expect to be on the lower end of the budget. Complex businesses that require more configuration can plan for the higher end of the budget. 

What Happens After Onboarding & Implementation?

So we've broken down the cost of onboarding and implementation, but that's not where your HubSpot engagement stops.

Once you've implemented HubSpot, whether you choose HubSpot's services or those of a Solutions Partner, your team is still going to run into questions. There's no company we've ever worked with that has been completely set and ready to run HubSpot totally autonomously after an implementation.

There will always be situations like:

• New questions
• New hires
• New implementation requests
• Changes in your products or services
• Changes in your sales, marketing, or service processes
• Improvements in your RevOps systems

That will change how you want to use HubSpot. 

And truly, your HubSpot platform should evolve and grow as your company does. As such, it's important to budget a sum for regular HubSpot support services. 

Depending on your company's comfortability with the platform, this could be anywhere from 4 hours a month to 20.

With regular trainings that are customized to your team's needs, and support time to fix any questions you may run into down the road, you can ensure your team is maintaining their use of the tools you've purchased, and you're reaping the many rewards that HubSpot can provide your company.

Summing it Up: The Real Cost of HubSpot

In this blog, we've walked through a lot. The initial cost of HubSpot, the cost of onboarding and implementation, plus the cost of ongoing support. So, what does that mean, and can your company afford these costs?

We'll actually break that question down in our blog Can My Company Afford HubSpot, but to give you a quick answer, yes.

On average, companies who move onto the HubSpot platform, and are dedicated to learning and implementing the tools it provides, see significant results in 1 year or less.

The Real Cost of HubSpot Includes:

• $45 to $5,000 a month for the tools, depending on what tools you choose
• $3-$30,000 for onboarding and implementation, depending on what service provider you choose
• 30-90 days of training and onboarding time for your team, where they can expect to be in around one HubSpot training meeting a week. 
• The cost of ongoing support, where you are purchasing the time of certified and accredited experts to answer questions, troubleshoot problems and provide additional as-needed training. 

Looking at all of those numbers can cause a bit of sticker shock for some. But with all industries seeing significantly more closed-won deals after just a year on HubSpot, is that an investment you can afford not to make?

What Do You Get From Your Investment in HubSpot? What's the ROI of HubSpot?

Great question! We're actually going to write a whole blog about it, it's so important.

But, since you're here now, we'll also give you a few stats to show you exactly what you can expect when you invest in HubSpot.

After 1 year on the platform, HubSpot customers saw:

• 181% more visitors on their websites
• 159% more inbound leads acquired through form submissions
• 92% more closed-won deals
• 41% increase in their deal close rate

See the whole HubSpot ROI report here.

Those are some pretty impressive stats. What does 92% more closed sales mean for your company? My guess is it's well beyond the total cost of what you'll pay for HubSpot. 

In the end, HubSpot should pay for itself. The entire purpose of the platform is to help you attract more of the right fit leads and close them. If you do that, most companies find that HubSpot pays for itself after just a few sales. 

Is HubSpot Right for You?

We want you to be prepared for the cost of HubSpot, because we want you to get the most out of your investment.

If you want to see what HubSpot could do for your company, what your investment would be, and what ROI you could see for that investment, we'd love to connect.

We're happy to take a look at that math with you, so you can make an educated decision about whether HubSpot is right for you.