A First Look at the New HubSpot Pricing Scheme

A couple of days ago HubSpot's new software "editions" and pricing went into effect, so I thought I would take a minute to explain the new pricing scheme to our current and prospective clients. The new "Basic", "Professional" and "Enterprise" editions replace the previous "Small", "Medium" and "Large" packages. I'll explain the differences between these new editions, but the new pricing scheme has changed significantly, with monthly fees now depending on both edition and volume of contacts in your system. If you're an existing HubSpot customer, your fees are grandfathered in, but you might want to consider an upgrade. Let's look at some of the details.

Why Did HubSpot Change Their Pricing?

First, here's the pricing schedule on HubSpot, and here's a comparative breakdown for the editions.

Well, I'm not a HubSpot spokesman, but here are some observations that I think encapsulate the move:

• HubSpot has added a lot of new features - if you look at the addition of the Performable toolkit (advanced analytics, A/B testing and lead nurturing) plus a variety of new tools across the inbound marketing spectrum, the platform is much broader and more advanced than it was even a year ago.
• HubSpot's customers span a huge spectrum - from SMB's all the way up to Fortune 500 companies. Small, medium and large businesses have different needs and demands placed on the HubSpot hardware and software. Larger businesses can be expected to place much larger loads on the system, so it makes sense that they should pay more for their bandwidth, just like any other software-as-a-service plan.
• HubSpot itself has changed - they've grown rapidly and expanded the entire inbound marketing marketplace in the process. It makes sense to go to a more scaleable pricing plan to accommodate internal growth without sacrificing product performance and customer service.

The New Editions

Think of the new HubSpot pricing as a two-dimensional matrix. The editions, Basic, Professional and Enterprise have different levels of functionality. One important change is that limits on the number of user accounts and lead nurturing campaigns have been lifted across the board. Effective 9/1/11, " from now on, all HubSpot customers will have limits of 50 user accounts and 100 lead nurturing campaigns." Existing customers also continue to enjoy the benefit of unlimited contacts in their marketing database.

• BASIC - this package is perfect for small businesses getting started with inbound marketing and happy to have the entire marketing platform under one roof (or CMS). All of the popular functions for creating content, blogging, marketing with CTA's and landing pages, and analyzing results are still here.
• PROFESSIONAL - at this level you have some additional lead generation and analysis tools, such as notifications when leads revisit your site and custom lead grading to identify hot leads for your sales team. The biggest difference here is the ability to spread your wings and integrate your HubSpot "hub" with CRM systems, e-commerce platforms and other business applications via the API.
• ENTERPRISE - the flagship of the HubSpot product line gives you the most powerful integrated set of marketing automation tools in the market today. You can track, analyze and optimize all kinds of content from your website, blog, landing pages and much more. Sophisticated tools marry the science of attraction marketing to conversion rate optimization and lifecycle analytics. You can manage the entire closed-loop sales and marketing funnel from top to bottom and understand the financial impact of your marketing strategies.

The New Scalability

Now, instead of one-price-fits-all for the three editions. Pricing within each edition depends on how much you use the system. Customers who have more "contacts" stored in the system now pay a higher monthly fee. I'm assuming the term "contacts" refers to the equivalent of a CRM contact - someone stored in your database that you track as a lead and/or reach out to via e-mail marketing or social media marketing. Maybe a HubSpotter can comment here and define it more precisely.

How Will the New Pricing Impact New Customer Sales?

Of course, this remains to be seen. I think the new scheme is more flexible and more adaptable to a wide variety of customer needs. Our inbound marketing clients all have different challenges and goals. Our value-add is not just to provide them with ongoing strategy and excellent service. We want to leverage the latest tools to improve their inbound marketing results. As HubSpot continuously improves its products, we want to learn them and roll them out to our customers. A good example is the new Performable tools for advanced lead generation and analytics that we will be providing in the coming months. The new pricing scheme gives us a fair and rational way of upgrading our current clients to these cutting edge tools without breaking the bank. It also gives us a leg up in penetrating new markets for our services.

For all HubSpot customers and prospective customers I would look at this as an opportunity rather than a problem. You now have a way of taking your marketing efforts to the next level with the latest marketing automation tools with a pricing scheme that's both rational and scalable. As the new tools and packages evolve, I look forward to keeping you updated from a user's perspective and look forward to hearing from you about your experiences as well.

Image courtesy of HubSpot and the Inc. 500.