How to optimise your HubSpot pricing (and stop overpaying)

With marketing budgets squeezed to their limit, getting the most from your CMS and CRM tools can make or break your plans. HubSpot is a firm favourite for many companies, ourselves included. But it’s easy to fall short of using its full potential and lose money in the form of unnecessary manual labour or other supplementary tools.

Sharing insights from a webinar with our CEO, Matthew Stibbe, this article explains how to optimise your HubSpot pricing and stop overpaying via underutilisation, renewal errors, seat waste and more.

Maximise your HubSpot utilisation

One of the most common issues for HubSpot users is ‘underutilisation’. In our webinar, Matthew highlighted that our clients, on average, use only half of their available HubSpot features. Service Hub, for example, which includes crucial features like customer support and surveys, is the least utilised at 26%. If you're paying for features you’re not using, it's time to reassess your subscription and consider downgrading or eliminating unnecessary services.

Avoid the ‘oversubscription’ pitfall

HubSpot’s pricing structure can be confusing. There are various tiers, hubs, and add-ons, so it’s easy to overspend, especially when HubSpot sales representatives (reps) are so effective at upselling. If a client mentions needing single sign-on, for example, reps may steer you towards higher-tier packages whether it’s necessary or not. As a HubSpot Platinum Partner with 10+ years of HubSpot experience, we remember when pricing was much simpler. Now it’s more complex and designed to encourage users to climb the pricing ladder—shrewd business, but less helpful for buyers.

Matthew’s advice? ‘Bundles hide waste and allow somewhat lazy, heuristic thinking, [but] sometimes they allow you to get a much better price.’ In short, do your own due diligence before you sign up to a package deal. Ask yourself:

• What exactly do you need for your business?
• What features are you getting in the package?
• What’s the price difference between the package and the individual elements?

Negotiate renewals

Renewals can catch the best of us off guard, with many of us unaware of (or forgetting) that initial discounts can disappear. In Matthew’s experience, the best time to negotiate pricing is during your first year as a new customer. By the time renewal comes around, you might face significant price increases due to the removal of new customer discounts. Engaging with an independent HubSpot consultant (like Articulate) before the end of that first year can equip you with the right insights for more effective negotiation to avoid spiralling costs.

Ditch unnecessary seats or permissions

Another common issue is overspending on user seats. For example, a CEO might have a full seat when they only need occasional access to dashboards. Regular audits of user access and permissions can help identify unused seats and optimise costs. Matthew suggests scheduling audits quarterly to ensure you only pay for what you truly need.

Get to know your marketing contact costs

Marketing contacts in HubSpot come with their own pricing nuances. If you want to send marketing emails to a group of people, those people must be labelled as marketing contacts. You get a certain number of marketing contacts included in your license, but after that, HubSpot charges you in increments for any over that amount.

Crucially, your database size rarely equals the number of marketing contacts who will receive your communications. If email addresses are no longer in use or have become ‘unengaged’ by not opening several emails from you in a row, they’re no longer valuable, but you might still be paying for them if you haven’t reviewed your database recently. Audit regularly, or work with a HubSpot expert like Articulate to do it for you.

Four things to do this week to optimise your HubSpot pricing

If you’re staring at this article wondering where to start, we’ve got you. Here are four things you can do this week to avoid overpaying for your HubSpot license:

1. Audit your users and seats: Look at who on your team (and in the wider business) has access to what, and review that against what they ultimately need.
2. Clean your contacts database: Review your marketing contacts in HubSpot and identify any that are undeliverable, unengaged or disqualified (HubSpot has its own inbuilt tools to help with this.)
3. Set a calendar reminder to start renewal preparation: Put a note in your diary to give yourself a few weeks’ notice to do your research and build your case.
4. Book Articulate for a HubSpot review: Get in touch with our team to get expert support from a HubSpot Platinum partner with 10+ years of HubSpot experience.