{
 "schema_version": "1.0",
 "id": "hubspot",
 "name": "HubSpot",
 "research_status": "researched",
 "vendor_domain": "hubspot.com",
 "category": "Sales & CRM",
 "task": "Sales outreach, leads & CRM",
 "summary": "CRM platform with marketing, sales, service and content hubs on one contact database.",
 "best_for": "teams that want marketing, sales, service and content on one contact database and will actually use more than one hub — that shared database is the real product, and it is what makes the price defensible when you use the breadth",
 "skip_if": "you need one job done well and cheaply, because a dedicated tool will almost always beat the equivalent HubSpot hub on price; or your contact list is growing fast and your budget is not, since contacts are the meter that moves without you touching anything",
 "honest_knock": "Three numbers on this pricing page are not what they look like, and they compound.\n\nThe first is the $7. It is the number in large black type on the Starter card, and the $20 beside it in small grey type is the list price. The banner above the table explains why: up to 65% off Starter, new customers only, for a limited time. So $7 is an introductory rate and $20 is what the seat costs afterwards — a 186% step for a system that by then holds your contact database, which is the single most painful kind of software to leave.\n\nThe second is the $800. Professional carries a required one-time onboarding fee of $3,000, disclosed in a footnote under the card rather than in the price. Year one on Professional is therefore $800 × 12 + $3,000 = $12,600 if you pay annually, or $890 × 12 + $3,000 = $13,680 month to month. The onboarding adds roughly a third to the first year, and no amount of shopping around removes it — it is mandatory. Enterprise does the same thing at $7,000 on top of $43,200 a year.\n\nThe third is the seat count, because it is not the meter that usually bites. Professional includes 3 Core Seats and 2,000 marketing contacts. For a marketing platform, contacts are the axis that grows on its own: your list gets bigger whether or not you hire anyone, and the contact tier moves the bill without anyone deciding to upgrade. Price your next two years on the list you expect to have, not the team you have now.\n\nOne more thing worth knowing before you start on Free. The free tier is genuinely usable — two users, 1,000 contacts, no expiry — and that is exactly how the ladder is designed to work. The step from Starter to Professional is not incremental: at list prices a three-seat team goes from $60 a month to $890 plus $3,000 once, which is roughly fifteen times the monthly cost. Whatever you build on Free, build it knowing where the next rung is.",
 "pricing": {
  "status": "public",
  "entry_price": "$20",
  "entry_price_terms": "Starter, per seat · the list price per seat per month",
  "from_price_usd_month": 20.0,
  "plans": null,
  "plans_source": null,
  "notes": "(re-verified 2026-10-09 in a live browser on their own marketing and CRM pricing pages, USD view; first read 2026-08-18, no amount changed in between) Free is $0 for up to 2 users and 1,000 marketing contacts, with no time limit. Starter is advertised at $7 per seat a month against a list price of $20 per seat a month, under a banner reading “Save up to 65% on Starter — new customers only, select offers available for a limited time”. It includes 500 HubSpot Credits and 1,000 marketing contacts. Professional starts at $800 a month paid annually, or $890 a month billed monthly, and includes 3 Core Seats with additional Core Seats from $45 a month, 3,000 credits and 2,000 marketing contacts. On top of that comes a required one-time Professional Onboarding fee of $3,000 that the headline price does not include. Enterprise starts at $3,600 a month with 5 Core Seats, extra seats from $75, 5,000 credits and 10,000 marketing contacts, and a required one-time onboarding fee of $7,000. HubSpot AEO, their answer-engine visibility tracker, is sold separately at $50 a month or $45 annually for 25 prompts across 3 engines, with a 28-day trial; on the 9 October reading the page adds that AEO is also included in Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise. The free tools FAQ caps a free account at 1,000 contacts, 2 users and 1 million records across the other standard object types.",
  "verified_at": "2026-10-09",
  "source_url": null
 },
 "free_plan": true,
 "free_plan_evidence": "The free tier is genuinely usable — two users, 1,000 contacts, no expiry — and that is exactly how the ladder is designed to work.",
 "cost_traps": [
  {
   "id": "per_seat",
   "label": "Per-seat pricing",
   "evidence": "Starter is advertised at $7 per seat a month against a list price of $20 per seat a month, under a banner reading “Save up to 65% on Starter — new customers only, select offers available for a limited time”.",
   "verified_at": "2026-10-09",
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "id": "usage_metered",
   "label": "Usage-metered",
   "evidence": "It includes 500 HubSpot Credits and 1,000 marketing contacts.",
   "verified_at": "2026-10-09",
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "id": "renewal_jump",
   "label": "Renewal price jump",
   "evidence": "So $7 is an introductory rate and $20 is what the seat costs afterwards — a 186% step for a system that by then holds your contact database, which is the single most painful kind of software to leave.",
   "verified_at": "2026-10-09",
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "id": "addons_extra",
   "label": "Key features are paid add-ons",
   "evidence": "Enterprise does the same thing at $7,000 on top of $43,200 a year.",
   "verified_at": "2026-10-09",
   "source_url": null
  }
 ],
 "compare_with": {
  "name": "Pipedrive or Close",
  "why": "the honest comparison is not feature-for-feature but shape-for-shape. Pipedrive and Close are sales tools that do one job and publish a per-seat price you can multiply in your head. HubSpot is a database with hubs bolted around it, priced on two meters at once — seats and contacts — with a mandatory onboarding fee at the Professional rung. If you want a CRM, the dedicated tools are cheaper and simpler. If you want marketing, sales and service reading from one contact record, that is the thing HubSpot sells and they do not really compete. Verify all current price lists yourself; ours were read on 18 August 2026."
 },
 "links": {
  "record": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/api/v1/products/hubspot.json",
  "review": "https://marketingandsalessoftware.com/hubspot-review.html",
  "marketplace": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/marketplace/hubspot/",
  "vendor_site": "https://hubspot.com"
 },
 "purchase": {
  "seller": "the vendor",
  "how": "AIBuilder Marketplace does not sell this software. Sign up, start a trial or buy on the vendor's site.",
  "handoff_url": "https://www.hubspot.com/",
  "affiliate": false,
  "disclosure": "Where purchase.affiliate is true, purchase.handoff_url is an affiliate link: AIBuilder Marketplace may earn a commission at no extra cost to the buyer. Commission never changes what a record says, and products are not ranked by commission. Where it is false the link is the vendor's plain site."
 },
 "provenance": {
  "research": "hand-researched dossier, read on the vendor's own pages",
  "researched_since": "2026-07",
  "method": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/how-we-review/",
  "license": "CC BY 4.0. Credit 'AIBuilder Marketplace' with a link to https://aibuildermarketplace.com/atlas/.",
  "note": "A rebuild is not a new measurement: pricing.verified_at is the date that matters."
 },
 "cost": {
  "status": "not_yet",
  "engine": "https://aibuildermarketplace.com/agents/#cost",
  "rules": null,
  "growth": null
 },
 "unknowns": [
  "Plan-by-plan prices are not structured in this record yet; pricing.notes has the full text.",
  "Contract terms (cancellation, data export, data location, minimum seats) are not researched as separate fields; pricing.notes mentions them only where the vendor's pricing page does.",
  "No computable price rules yet: cost at a given team size cannot be calculated for this product.",
  "Not tested hands-on by us: what the product does comes from the vendor's pages and our reading of them."
 ],
 "task_evidence": null,
 "open_questions": [
  {
   "question_id": "hubspot:cancellation_terms",
   "key": "cancellation_terms",
   "question": "Can a customer cancel at any time, and what happens to an annual plan that is cancelled mid-term?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "hubspot:data_export",
   "key": "data_export",
   "question": "Which data can a customer export, in which formats, on which plans?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "hubspot:data_location",
   "key": "data_location",
   "question": "Where is customer data stored, and can a customer choose the region?",
   "status": "open"
  },
  {
   "question_id": "hubspot:minimum_seats",
   "key": "minimum_seats",
   "question": "Is there a minimum number of seats or users on any plan?",
   "status": "open"
  }
 ],
 "vendor_answers": [],
 "agent_channels": {
  "vendor_mcp": {
   "what": "Two servers. A hosted remote server at mcp.hubspot.com gives any MCP client read and write access to CRM records, marketing and content objects and full activity history over OAuth 2.1 with PKCE; a local Developer MCP server drives the HubSpot Developer Platform through the CLI.",
   "plan": "Their changelog: the remote server graduated from beta and is \"generally available to all HubSpot accounts\" as of 13 April 2026. No separate price is named, your existing HubSpot permissions apply, and accounts with sensitive data switched on have activity objects blocked from the server.",
   "status": "Live",
   "source": "https://developers.hubspot.com/ai-tools/mcp",
   "checked": "2026-07-28",
   "note": "The vendor's own MCP server, from our MCP research; it works with your own account at the vendor."
  },
  "agent_checkout": {
   "status": "not_found",
   "detail": "No explicit support for purchases by AI agents on the vendor's own pages.",
   "checked_at": "2026-10-07",
   "method": "homepage, /pricing and the pricing page we cite, read as plain HTML (no JavaScript) and searched for explicit support of purchases by AI agents: Agentic Commerce Protocol, Instant Checkout, Agent Payments Protocol, buy in ChatGPT, agentic checkout"
  }
 },
 "task_scope": {
  "scope": "crm",
  "label": "CRM (contacts, deals and pipeline)",
  "why": "CRM platform with marketing, sales, service and content hubs on one contact database.",
  "source": "our dossier",
  "phrases": [
   "crm",
   "a crm",
   "sales crm",
   "simple crm",
   "small business crm",
   "customer relationship management",
   "pipeline management",
   "track deals",
   "manage deals",
   "contact management",
   "email marketing",
   "newsletter",
   "newsletters",
   "email newsletter",
   "email campaigns",
   "marketing emails",
   "mailing list",
   "email list",
   "autoresponder",
   "email marketing platform"
  ],
  "also": [
   {
    "scope": "email_marketing",
    "label": "Email marketing to your own subscribers"
   }
  ]
 }
}