What is HubSpot? A complete guide to features, pricing, and use cases

HubSpot is one of the most widely used CRM and marketing platforms for small and mid-sized businesses, but the sheer number of products it covers can make it hard to understand what HubSpot actually is at its core. This guide covers what HubSpot is, how it works, what it costs, and how it compares to Salesforce. If you're already using HubSpot and want to take it further, we'll also show you how IFTTT connects HubSpot to the rest of your stack, automatically routing new contact and deal activity to Slack, logging pipeline data to Google Sheets, and creating contacts from form submissions and other tools without manual entry.

IFTTT is an automation platform that connects over 1000 apps and services, so instead of switching between tools to track deal updates or copy contact data, you build the connection once and it runs automatically.

What is HubSpot?

HubSpot is a CRM and business growth platform built for sales, marketing, and customer service teams. At its foundation is a free contact database, the HubSpot CRM, that tracks every interaction your business has with leads and customers. On top of that database, HubSpot offers a suite of paid products called Hubs: Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, Operations Hub, and CMS Hub.

Founded in 2006, HubSpot was one of the companies that pioneered the concept of inbound marketing, the idea that attracting customers through useful content outperforms traditional outbound tactics like cold calls and ads. HubSpot built a platform to support that strategy, and over time expanded into a full CRM and business operations suite. It now serves more than 200,000 customers across over 130 countries.

What is HubSpot used for?

Sales teams use HubSpot to manage their pipeline, track deals, log call and email activity, and automate follow-up sequences. HubSpot's sales tools include deal tracking, meeting scheduling, email templates, sequences, and reporting on rep activity and quota attainment.

Marketing teams use HubSpot to run email campaigns, manage landing pages, run paid ad integrations, track marketing performance, and qualify leads before passing them to sales. The Marketing Hub includes tools for lead nurturing, A/B testing, and marketing automation workflows.

Customer service teams use HubSpot's Service Hub to manage support tickets, create a knowledge base, and track customer satisfaction. It gives support teams visibility into the full customer history from the CRM, so every interaction with a customer is in one place.

Operations and RevOps teams use HubSpot's Operations Hub to sync data between tools, automate data quality workflows, and build custom reports across the entire business.

Small businesses and startups often use HubSpot as an all-in-one alternative to piecing together separate tools for CRM, email marketing, and customer support, getting a connected view of contacts across every touchpoint from one platform.

How does HubSpot work?

HubSpot is built around a contact and company database. Every person your business interacts with, a website visitor who fills out a form, a lead from a paid campaign, a prospect a sales rep is working, becomes a contact record in HubSpot. From there, HubSpot tracks every touchpoint: emails opened, pages visited, calls logged, deals created, support tickets opened.

Deals represent sales opportunities in your pipeline. You create a deal when a contact or company is being actively pursued, assign it a stage in your pipeline (such as Appointment Scheduled, Proposal Sent, or Closed Won), and move it through stages as the opportunity progresses. HubSpot tracks all activity associated with a deal and reports on pipeline value, velocity, and close rates.

Workflows are HubSpot's automation engine. They trigger a sequence of actions when a contact meets a condition, enrolling someone in a nurture email series when they download an asset, assigning a lead to a rep when a form is submitted, or sending an internal Slack notification when a deal reaches a certain stage. Workflows are available on Professional plans and above.

Forms and landing pages connect HubSpot's marketing tools to the CRM. When a visitor fills out a HubSpot form, embedded on your site or on a HubSpot-hosted landing page, they become a contact automatically, and any deal or workflow logic you've built fires immediately.

Reporting aggregates across every Hub in the platform. You can build dashboards that show marketing attribution, sales pipeline, and support ticket volume side by side, all pulling from the same underlying contact and activity data.

Is HubSpot free?

HubSpot has a free plan that includes the core CRM, unlimited contacts, basic deal and pipeline management, email marketing up to a monthly send limit, forms, a live chat tool, and one seat in most Hubs. It's a genuinely useful free tier for small teams that need a contact database and basic sales tracking without committing to a paid plan.

Paid plans are organized by Hub, and pricing scales with the number of contacts, seats, and features you need:

Starter plans begin around $15–20 per seat per month per Hub and unlock the first tier of marketing tools, email send limits, and sales automation. Starter plans bundle together across Hubs at a discount.

Professional plans are where most growing teams operate. Marketing Hub Professional starts around $800/month (covers up to 2,000 marketing contacts), and Sales Hub Professional runs around $450/month for five seats. Professional unlocks workflows, A/B testing, advanced reporting, and sequences.

Enterprise plans are designed for larger organizations with complex requirements, custom objects, advanced permissions, sandboxes, and higher contact and seat limits. Pricing is negotiated.

HubSpot's pricing is modular and can add up quickly as you add Hubs, seats, and contacts. The free CRM is a real starting point, but most teams evaluating HubSpot should plan for at least Starter pricing once they need automation features.

HubSpot vs. Salesforce: what's the difference?

HubSpot and Salesforce are the two most commonly compared CRM platforms, but they're built for different company sizes and use cases. Here's how they compare:

Bottom line: HubSpot is built for teams that want to move quickly, a unified platform with a gentle learning curve, published pricing, and marketing tools that work out of the box without heavy configuration. Salesforce is the enterprise standard for organizations that need deep custom object support, complex permission models, and development resources to build on top of the platform. For teams that want to connect their CRM to the broader tools stack via IFTTT, only HubSpot has native support.

What are HubSpot's limitations?

HubSpot's pricing scales steeply at the Professional tier. The jump from free or Starter to Professional, particularly for Marketing Hub, is significant, and teams that outgrow the free tier often face a large step-up in cost before they can access automation features like workflows and sequences.

Contact limits on Marketing Hub tie cost to list size. As a business's contact database grows, so does the cost of the Marketing Hub, since marketing contact pricing is based on the number of contacts you're actively marketing to. This can become expensive for businesses with large but lower-engagement lists.

Reporting is limited on lower tiers. Custom dashboards and cross-object reporting require Professional or Enterprise, which means smaller teams on free or Starter plans have limited visibility into the data they're collecting.

HubSpot's CMS Hub and Operations Hub are useful products, but they're less commonly adopted than Sales and Marketing Hub. Teams that need a deeply customized CMS or complex data sync operations sometimes find those Hubs less mature than dedicated tools.

Finally, HubSpot is a comprehensive platform, which means it can feel like more than a freelancer or solo operator needs. For very small businesses that only need invoicing or basic contact storage, simpler tools may be a better fit than onboarding into the full HubSpot ecosystem.

How IFTTT works with HubSpot

HubSpot keeps your CRM current. IFTTT makes sure that what happens in HubSpot: new deals, stage changes, form submissions, new contacts, reaches the right people and tools automatically, without anyone manually copying data between platforms.

IFTTT's HubSpot integration works through six triggers, five Pro+ queries, and six actions. Triggers include new contacts, deal creation, form submissions, and more. Actions let you create or update contacts, move deals through pipeline stages, and more, all from other apps in your stack.

Get alerted on new deals and stage changes

Know the moment a deal is created or moves stages, without checking HubSpot manually. IFTTT can route deal activity to Slack, Google Calendar, or notifications so your team has visibility without needing to be in the CRM.

Log contacts and deals to Google Sheets

Build a running record of your pipeline and contact activity outside of HubSpot. Every new contact and every deal can be appended to a spreadsheet automatically, useful for stakeholders who don't have HubSpot access, for analysis outside the platform, or for maintaining a backup of key data.

Create contacts and tickets from other tools

HubSpot's actions let you create contacts and tickets from outside the platform entirely. A Typeform submission can become a HubSpot contact. A webhooks event can create a support ticket. our CRM stays current without anyone logging into HubSpot to enter data manually.

Keep your team updated on pipeline activity

Route deal updates, new tickets, form submissions, and contact activity to Slack, Microsoft Teams, Gmail, or notifications automatically, so your team always has visibility into what's happening in the CRM, regardless of whether they have a HubSpot seat.

Explore HubSpot integrations

Slack to HubSpot

Keep your team informed about deal activity, new contacts, and ticket creation without giving everyone a HubSpot seat. Useful for founders, account managers, and RevOps teams who want CRM visibility routed into the tools their team already works in.

• Post a Slack message when a deal moves to a new pipeline stage
• Notify a channel when a new HubSpot ticket is created
• Share recent deals with the team in a daily Slack digest

Set up Slack → HubSpot

Google Sheets to HubSpot

Log pipeline data, create contacts from spreadsheet rows, and build an external record of deal and contact activity. Useful for teams that do reporting or sharing outside HubSpot, or who need a simple backup of key CRM data.

• Append every new deal to a running Google Sheets log
• Add new HubSpot contacts to a spreadsheet automatically
• Create or update a HubSpot contact from each new row added to a sheet

Set up Google Sheets → HubSpot

Typeform to HubSpot

Turn form submissions into HubSpot contacts automatically. Useful for marketing teams running lead capture campaigns who want every submission to land in the CRM without a manual import step.

• Create a new HubSpot contact for every Typeform submission
• Add form respondents directly to a HubSpot static list
• Trigger a deal creation when a high-intent form is submitted

Set up Typeform → HubSpot

Asana to HubSpot

Connect your project management and CRM so that deal and ticket activity flows between HubSpot and Asana automatically. Useful for sales and customer success teams that manage post-deal onboarding or account tasks in Asana alongside pipeline work in HubSpot.

• Create an Asana task when a new HubSpot ticket is created
• Create a HubSpot ticket when an Asana task is marked complete
• Keep deal and project activity in sync across both platforms

Set up Asana → HubSpot

8 more ways to automate your CRM workflow

If you're already connecting HubSpot with IFTTT, these Applets extend automation to the other tools in your stack. Asana and Stripe are two of the most common tools HubSpot users run alongside their CRM, and both are on IFTTT.

HubSpot and IFTTT: better together

HubSpot keeps your contacts, deals, and tickets in one place. IFTTT makes sure that data doesn't stay siloed: routing deal activity to Slack, logging contacts to spreadsheets, creating tickets from external tools, and keeping your team informed without anyone manually checking the CRM.

Ready to connect HubSpot to your workflow? Get started on IFTTT today, no code required.

Frequently asked questions about HubSpot

What is the difference between HubSpot CRM and HubSpot Sales Hub?

HubSpot CRM is the free foundation, the contact and company database that stores every interaction, deal, and activity in your account. It's available at no cost to unlimited users and includes basic pipeline management, email logging, and contact tracking. HubSpot Sales Hub is a paid product that sits on top of the CRM and adds sales-specific features: email sequences, meeting scheduling, advanced call tracking, deal forecasting, playbooks, and more detailed sales reporting. You need the CRM to use any Hub, but the CRM alone doesn't include automation or advanced sales tools.

Does HubSpot integrate with Gmail and Outlook?

Yes, HubSpot has native integrations with both Gmail and Outlook through its free Sales Extension. Once installed, you can log emails to HubSpot contacts directly from your inbox, track whether recipients have opened emails, use HubSpot email templates without leaving Gmail or Outlook, and access your HubSpot contact records and deal details from a sidebar while composing messages. Emails you send through Gmail or Outlook can be automatically logged to the associated contact record in HubSpot, keeping your CRM current without any manual entry. The extension is free and works with HubSpot's free CRM.

What is the difference between a HubSpot sequence and a workflow?

Sequences and workflows are both automation tools in HubSpot, but they serve different purposes. A sequence is a sales tool, it's a series of personalized one-to-one emails and tasks sent from a sales rep's own email address to individual prospects, typically used for outreach and follow-up. When a prospect replies or books a meeting, they're automatically unenrolled. Sequences are available on Sales Hub Professional and above. A workflow is a marketing and operations automation tool, it can enroll multiple contacts at once, trigger across deals, tickets, and companies (not just contacts), and fire a wide range of actions including internal notifications, property updates, list assignments, and more. Workflows require Professional plans and are the tool for large-scale nurture campaigns and process automation.

Does HubSpot have a mobile app?

Yes, HubSpot has a mobile app for iOS and Android that covers core CRM tasks on the go: logging calls and emails, checking contact and deal records, viewing pipeline activity, and managing tasks and notifications. The mobile app is particularly useful for sales reps who need to update deals or log activities immediately after a call or meeting. Some features, advanced workflow editing, detailed report building, and CMS tools, are better suited to the desktop version. HubSpot also offers business card scanning through the app, which creates a new contact from a scanned card automatically.

Explore more IFTTT blogs

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