HubSpot has built a reputation as one of the most trusted names in customer relationship management (CRM). It’s often praised as one of the best CRMs for lead management, with strong marketing automation, email marketing, and custom reporting tools. 🛠
But no matter how extensive the features are, for most companies, the price ultimately dictates whether a tool is worth it. And with HubSpot CRM, pricing isn’t exactly straightforward. With its “hubs,” onboarding fees, add-ons, and user limits to consider, the final bill can look very different from the starting price. 💰
If you want a CRM with a simple pricing structure that stays tightly connected to QuickBooks in real-time, Method CRM is worth a look.
Here at Method CRM, we’ve been supporting QuickBooks-based businesses since 2010. Method is loved by small and mid-sized business owners across a range of industries for its real-time, two-way QuickBooks sync, end-to-end sales automation, and no-code customizations. In this guide, we’ll do a deep dive into Hubspot pricing to provide a full picture as to whether this platform aligns with your budget, or if it’s worthwhile to consider a Hubspot alternative. 🤔💻
Table of Contents
- HubSpot pricing overview
- HubSpot pricing isn’t one-size-fits-all
- What’s included in each plan?
- Content hub
- Data hub
- Commerce hub
HubSpot pricing overview
HubSpot offers multiple pricing tiers, bundling tools into what they call “Hubs.” The idea here is that businesses can pick and choose what tools matter most to their team (more on those in a bit).
One of its standouts is its free CRM. HubSpot’s forever-free plan gives small teams and startups the basics to get organized, with room to grow. 🌱
The free plan supports up to two users and includes the following perks:
- Manage up to 1,000 free marketing contacts.
- 2,000 email sends per month (via Gmail and Outlook).
- Access a selection of ready-to-use email templates (with the HubSpot branding).
- Track emails and receive basic notifications.
- Schedule meetings with one active meeting link.
- Live chat, conversational bots, and a shared inbox to manage conversations.
- Stay connected with the mobile app for iOS and Android.
- Connect with third-party apps through the HubSpot App Marketplace.
With a wide range of free tools, you can use HubSpot as your starting point to test out the platform before committing to the paid plans.
Understanding the “Hubs”
Before discussing pricing, it’s important to understand HubSpot’s modular structure. Their platform consists of multiple “Hubs,” each focused on a specific business function.
A hub combines a set of tools, available in free and paid versions. Each has its own features and pricing, and costs add up as you add more functionality.
Here’s what to expect from each hub.
Marketing hub 📢
The HubSpot Marketing Hub helps attract, engage, and convert leads.
The tools and services here let you:
- Create and manage landing pages and forms.
- Run email marketing campaigns.
- Manage social media accounts and scheduling.
- Get SEO recommendations for content optimization.
- Analyze and forecast campaign performance with reporting tools.
- Automate marketing workflows to save time.
Sales hub 📈
Tightly connected to the marketing hub, the HubSpot Sales Hub is where you help your sales teams track and close deals efficiently.
Here, you can:
- Track and manage leads and deals.
- Automate outreach with email sequences.
- Schedule and log meetings.
- Monitor sales performance with dashboards.
- Integrate with Gmail and Outlook.
- Make calls and use live chat tools.
Need a CRM built for sales? We’ve put HubSpot vs Salesforce head-to-head.
Service hub 🤝
The HubSpot Service Hub covers the customer support side of the business. These aim to equip teams with the tools needed to deliver a better customer experience.
This hub provides:
- A ticketing system and help desk to manage inquiries.
- Live chat and email support channels.
- A knowledge base for self-service.
- Customer feedback collection through surveys.
- Customer service workflow automation.
- Support performance analysis with reporting tools.
Content hub 📝
Optimized content will make your marketing efforts more effective. The HubSpot Content Hub is where you handle content creation and management.
Tools and services allow you to:
- Generate content with AI-powered writing.
- Optimize content with SEO tools.
- Manage and repurpose existing content.
- Personalize content experiences for users.
- Embed content across platforms.
- Track content performance with analytics.
Data hub (formerly Operations hub) 📊
HubSpot added the Operations hub after acquiring PieSync, a startup specializing in data sync. It has since been rebranded as the Data Hub. Within this hub, you can enhance your data and automation efforts.
Here’s what you could do:
- Sync customer data across multiple apps.
- Automate repetitive data workflows.
- Maintain data quality with automated checks.
- Use programmable automation with JavaScript or Python.
- Connect with 90+ third-party apps.
Commerce hub 💵
There’s also the HubSpot Commerce Hub that helps businesses handle billing and payments right inside the CRM. You can manage invoices, quotes, payment links, and subscriptions while keeping everything in sync with your other HubSpot tools.
Commerce Hub doesn’t have a monthly subscription fee. Instead, you pay per transaction, depending on your payment method.
HubSpot offers a 60-day trial period with no platform fees for HubSpot Payments, so you can test the system before committing.
Pro tip! Look around and get to know each hub. Learning what each hub actually offers makes it easier to plan your investment and get the most value from the platform.
HubSpot pricing isn’t one-size-fits-all
There’s no flat rate for HubSpot. And this could be a good and a bad thing. What’s great about these hubs is that you can pick and choose the tools that match your sales, marketing, service, or operations priorities.
The downside? Costs climb as you get more tools, users, or add-ons. For instance, if you need a CRM for multiple businesses, HubSpot has the ability to support that. But while it has a vast feature set, as you can imagine, its pricing structure makes it expensive for complex setups.
What you’ll pay in total depends on the following:
Which hubs do you use?
HubSpot’s pricing can vary depending on the hubs you select. Some hubs are more expensive because of the advanced features they offer.
Here’s a quick comparison of the costs:
- Marketing Hub Professional: $890/month for up to three seats (paid annually)
- Content Hub Professional: $450/month for up to three seats (paid annually)
- Data Hub Professional: $945/month for one seat (paid annually)
- Sales Hub Professional: $90/month/seat (paid annually)
- Service Hub Professional: $90/month/seat (paid annually)
- Commerce Hub Professional: $85/month/seat (paid annually)
The cost increases as you add more advanced features or additional users.
How many users or marketing contacts do you have?
Your subscription cost can also be influenced by the number of your marketing contacts. You need to take these into account as they’re the contacts in your database to whom you’ll be actively sending marketing emails and campaigns.
Each marketing hub tier comes with a set number of marketing contacts:
- Starter: 1,000 contacts
- Professional: 2,000 contacts
- Enterprise: 10,000 contacts
If you exceed your included contacts, HubSpot automatically upgrades you to the next tier during your current billing period and notifies you when you’re approaching your limit.
You also have the option to store up to 1,000 non-marketing contacts in your CRM for free, but you cannot target these contacts with emails or ads.
Are you on the Free, Starter, Professional, or Enterprise tier?
HubSpot offers four main tiers that you can upgrade to as you scale. Each hub has its own tier structure. This means that the same tier may include different tools depending on the hub.
Here’s a general rundown of what each tier offers:
- Free CRM: Basic marketing tools for contact management and simple workflows. Perfect for teams just testing CRM software.
- Starter plan: Adds essential features like email campaigns and forms. Ideal for small teams expanding their marketing and sales efforts.
- Professional plan: Includes advanced tools such as automation, reporting, and enhanced workflows. Suited for growing teams that need more sophisticated capabilities.
- Enterprise plan: Offers extensive customization, advanced analytics, and enterprise-level features. Designed for larger organizations with complex processes.
Any onboarding fees and optional add-ons?
HubSpot offers onboarding services to help you set up and integrate its tools properly. These fees (that also differ by hub) cover dedicated guidance from HubSpot specialists who handle the technical setup, data migration, workflow configuration, and initial training.
While it’s optional, onboarding is often recommended for businesses implementing multiple hubs or having more advanced workflows.
HubSpot also offers extra features and services that can be added to your plan for an additional cost:
- Additional users: Extra seats beyond the base that’s included in your plan.
- Specific features: Tools like custom reporting, more workflows, or increased API calls.
- Training and consulting: Personalized sessions so your team can fully utilize HubSpot.
- Integration services: Connecting HubSpot with other platforms or custom applications.
Even though these add-ons aren’t required, they can help teams maximize the value of their HubSpot investment.
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What’s included in each plan?
Now we’re getting to the nitty-gritty.
First, here’s a brief overview of HubSpot’s free CRM:
Free Tools plan: Forever-free
Hubspot’s Free Tools plan offers site tracking, forms, landing pages, 1-to-1 emails, one meeting scheduling link, email marketing for up to 1,000 contacts, and data sync capabilities. Applies to all hubs.
Now, let’s break down HubSpot’s pricing by hub and what’s included. We’ll also highlight who each hub works best for, so you can see where your business fits.
Marketing hub
👍 Best for: Teams focused on automation and multi-channel campaigns.
Expect these costs when subscribing to HubSpot’s marketing hub:
Starter plan: $9/month/seat
- Includes up to 1,000 marketing contacts, with additional contacts available in 1,000-contact increments for $30-$37.50/month (price depends on total number of contacts).
- Takes the HubSpot branding off your forms, emails, landing pages, and live chat.
Professional plan: $890/month for up to three seats (additional seats cost $45/month)
- Up to 2,000 marketing contacts; additional contacts sold in 5,000-contact increments for $134.83-$224.72/month (price depends on total number of contacts).
- Notable additional features include more automation capabilities, A/B testing, cross-channel marketing automation, account-based marketing tools, dynamic content personalization, multilingual content support, social media management, video hosting, contact and company scoring, A/B experiments, and reporting dashboards.
Enterprise plan: $3,600/month for up to five seats (additional seats cost $75/month)
- Includes 10,000 marketing contacts; extra contacts sold in 10,000-contact increments for $60-$100/month (price depends on total number of contacts).
- Key new features include extensive customization, predictive lead scoring, custom objects, behavioural email triggers, webhooks, advanced team access controls, and multi-touch revenue tracking.
Sales hub
👍 Best for: Outbound sales teams working in a defined pipeline.
What to budget for when using HubSpot’s Sales Hub:
Starter plan: $9/month/seat
- Eliminates the HubSpot branding from live chat, meeting links, documents, and individual emails. Manage conversation routing, automate recurring tasks with task queues, integrate with Stripe, and access additional workflow tools. Two deal pipelines.
Professional plan: $90/month/seat
- Automate sales sequences and workflows, performance analytics, team management tools, custom reporting, account-based marketing (ABM) features, eSignature capabilities, and additional advanced sales tools. Up to 15 deal pipelines.
Enterprise plan: $150/month/seat
- Custom objects for tailored CRM data, advanced reporting and analytics, event triggers, dedicated account support, conversation intelligence, revenue attribution reporting, advanced automation, and routing. Up to 50 deal pipelines.
Service hub
👍 Best for: Teams handling customer tickets through shared inboxes and knowledge bases.
Plan for these costs when choosing the service hub:
Starter plan: $15/month/seat
- Removes the HubSpot branding. Includes simple ticket automation, multiple ticket pipelines, multiple currencies, and a calling SDK.
Professional plan: $90/month/seat
- Includes a knowledge base, automated help desk, ticket routing, service level agreement (SLA), and Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys, Breeze customer agent, plus a customer portal.
Enterprise plan: $150/month/seat
- Features include permission sets, custom objects, goal tracking, playbooks, advanced SLAs and routing, single sign-on, and multiple knowledge bases.
If juggling multiple tools in HubSpot already feels cumbersome, Method CRM streamlines sales and service processes into a single system, helping you make the most of your CRM and customer experience. This way, you reduce the back-and-forth between separate platforms.
Content hub
👍 Best for: Brands that want a content management system (CMS) baked into their CRM.
Anticipate these costs with a content hub subscription:
Starter plan: $9/month/seat
- No HubSpot branding on your website, includes additional website pages and blog posts, personalization tokens, live chat, and email support.
Professional plan: $450/month for up to three seats (additional seats cost $45/month)
- Provides software for content remix (repurpose content for different channels), brand voice (maintain consistent tone across content), and podcasts (host and manage podcast content); includes dynamic personalization, content management (advanced tools for managing content at scale), memberships and gated content (create paid or restricted content), and content optimization and reporting.
Enterprise plan: $1,500/month for up to five seats (additional seats cost $75/month)
- On top of the professional plan features, you can manage multiple websites, content approvals (team-based workflow), gain permissioning and team access control, activity logging, custom objects, and serverless functions.
Data hub
👍 Best for: Teams with multiple systems to sync or advanced permissions to manage.
These are the costs for a data hub subscription:
Starter plan: $9/month/seat
- Provides historical data sync for complete CRM data visibility, custom properties to tailor the CRM to your business logic, and data sync with over 100 apps like Salesforce, Mailchimp, and NetSuite. Includes email and in-app chat support.
Professional plan: $720/month for one seat (additional seat costs $45/month)
- Programmable automation with custom code actions, data quality automation, including AI-powered data formatting recommendations, scheduled workflow triggers, and email, phone, and chat support.
Enterprise plan: $2,000/month for one seat (additional seats cost $75/month)
- Advanced governance and data calculations, sandbox account for testing, Snowflake data sharing, custom objects, data lineage tracking, and priority support.
Commerce hub
👍 Best for: Teams managing quote-to-cash workflows and analytics directly within HubSpot CRM.
These are the costs for a Commerce hub subscription:
Professional plan: $85/month per seat (additional seats same price)
- AI-powered quotes (CPQ), closing agent, and quote-to-cash automation; commerce analytics suite, enhanced quoting and reporting; e-signature functionality (25 per user/month); and integrated billing and payments with invoicing, automation, and tracking.
Enterprise plan: $140/month per seat (additional seats same price; billed annually)
- All Professional features, plus advanced quote approvals, higher e-signature allowance (50 per user/month), and additional enterprise-grade features (improved governance, scaling, and customized transaction handling).
Hidden and unexpected HubSpot costs
While HubSpot offers a comprehensive suite of tools, several add-ons and fees can impact your total cost. These costs can stack up faster than you expect.
Onboarding fees 💸
Onboarding services are particularly beneficial for Professional and Enterprise plans. These require a one-time fee.
Here’s what to expect:
- Marketing Hub Professional: $3,000
- Sales and Service Professional Hubs: $1,500 each
- Marketing Hub Enterprise: $7,000
- Sales and Service Enterprise Hubs: $3,500 each
Marketing contact overages 👥
HubSpot’s pricing is designed to scale with the size of your business. If your database or email needs grow over time, you’ll need to purchase additional marketing contacts to match that growth. Costs climb once you exceed the base limit included in your tier.
Additional contacts are sold in increments depending on the plan you’re subscribed to.
Add-ons ✅
Need extra power? Have a specific need you want covered? HubSpot charges for that.
You can bolt on plenty of features like these, though the price climbs with each one:
- HubSpot credits (for automation, AI tools, etc.): $45/month for 5,000 credits
- SMS limit increase: $15/month
- WhatsApp limit increase: $70/month for 1,000 messages
- Dedicated IP: $300/month
- Ads limit increase: $100/month
- Custom SSL: $100/month
- Phone number limit increase: $25/month
- Video limit increase: $50/month
- Workflows limit increase: $200/month
- Teams limit increase: $200/month
- Calling minute limit increase: $50/month
- API limit increase: $500/month
- Reporting limit increase: $200/month
- E-signature limit increase: $60/month
- Custom properties limit increase: $220/month
Seat minimums 🪑
HubSpot no longer enforces strict minimums, but higher tiers still bundle in required seats, driving up cost. For example, the Marketing Hub Professional plan costs $890/month for three seats (paid monthly). You pay for those extra seats whether you use them or not.
This will inflate your baseline subscription cost and directly impact your bottom line if your team is smaller than the baked-in number of seats.
Annual contracts 📑
HubSpot’s Professional and Enterprise tiers require annual contracts, billed monthly. So once you sign up for the plan, you’re committed to paying for the full year, even if your team shrinks, you pause campaigns, or realize you don’t need all the features.
While this setup can help with budgeting, since your monthly cost won’t fluctuate, it still limits flexibility.
HubSpot bundles
If individual features cost too much to obtain on their own and you’re looking for similar ones, a HubSpot bundle might be for you. Hubspot users can create custom bundles that combine multiple hubs and features into one package, which costs less than buying each separately. They can also choose to start with the Customer Platform bundle.
Customer platform
This is the entry-level bundle with Starter versions of all major Hubs.
Pricing: $9/month/user (promo for the first year); $15–20/month/user for the standard pricing. No onboarding needed.
Best for: Startups exploring their first CRM.
Includes: Starter editions of Marketing, Sales, Service, Content, Data, Commerce, plus HubSpot’s Smart CRM.
Choosing based on your business needs
The ideal HubSpot plan comes down to your team’s size, goals, and how many tools you’ll realistically use.
Here’s a quick guide to help you choose.
For small businesses or startups 🧑🏻💻
Recommended: Free or Starter
If you’re dipping your toes into CRM for the first time, HubSpot Free or Starter is often enough.
You’ll get contact management, a basic sales pipeline, and email integration without the overhead of advanced features you may not use yet.
For example, a two-person startup can track leads, send follow-up emails, and log calls in one place without paying thousands upfront.
Tip! Stick with Starter until you’ve outgrown its contact limits or need automation.
For marketing teams 🎯
Recommended: Marketing Hub Professional
HubSpot Marketing Hub Pro makes sense once you’re running multi-channel campaigns and need data to prove what’s working. It adds A/B testing, campaign reporting, and automation tools that offer more than simple newsletters.
A team running paid ads and email campaigns, for instance, can automate lead nurture sequences and see which campaigns actually drive conversions.
Tip! Watch your contact count closely, as costs climb fast the more you add marketing contacts.
For sales and support teams 📞
Recommended: Sales and Service Hubs
HubSpot Sales Hub and service hub shine for teams that live in the deal pipeline or customer inbox.
Sales hub gives reps playbooks, email tracking, and automation to shorten the sales cycle. Meanwhile, the service hub adds ticketing, live chat, and a knowledge base, which are key for keeping customer requests in check.
If you’ve got five reps with hundreds of leads, or a support team fielding daily tickets, these tools can save time and tighten your process.
Tip! Budget for Professional onboarding if you want to upgrade from Starter.
HubSpot cost: Final takeaways
What a ride, right? HubSpot’s pricing is flexible, but it comes with layers—lots of them. Tiers, add-ons, seat minimums, annual contracts, and overages can creep up fast.
HubSpot ultimately works best for teams who know exactly what they need and have the budget to back it up. But if your business is still testing, growing, or wants more say over which features you pay for, HubSpot can feel like you’re buying the whole store just to get a few things off the shelf.
That’s when you’d want to consider HubSpot alternatives with simpler pricing structures or specific features that don’t require you to jump through hoops to get them.
If you’d rather have a custom CRM with fewer surprises, deeper accounting sync, and workflows built around your existing operations, Method CRM is the perfect fit. 🧩
Book a free demo with the Method team and get a walkthrough tailored to your business.
Frequently asked questions
How much does HubSpot cost monthly?
HubSpot offers a wide range of pricing, so there’s no specific answer.
The Free plan is quite comprehensive and covers essentials like contact management and email tracking. Starter plans begin at around $15–20 per user/month, while Professional and Enterprise plans jump to $90–$5,000+/month, depending on the hub.
These often come with annual contracts and onboarding fees. Add-ons are also sold separately.
Is HubSpot really worth it?
Yes, HubSpot can be worth it, but only if your team will use its extensive tools. HubSpot shines for companies that want marketing automation, sales pipelines, and customer support all in one system. However, add-ons, seat minimums, and contact overages can escalate costs.
Which HubSpot plan is best for small businesses?
For most small businesses just starting with CRM, HubSpot Free or Starter is plenty. It covers core CRM features like contact management, email integration, and a basic sales pipeline without locking you into annual contracts.
