HubSpot Implementation Cost: What's the Total Cost of Ownership?

Making the most out of HubSpot isn’t too dissimilar from any other SaaS solution. It doesn’t just fall down to how much the solution and implementation costs, but rather how much it will cost you down the line.

This isn’t just to do with the recurring costs of the software itself; it’s about any optimisations and reconfigurations you have to do down the line. After all, reports suggest that 50% of all CRM implementations fail within 2 to 3 years.

As with any bit of software though, it’s very rarely the fault of the solution itself, but rather an organisation's inability to adopt best practices and integrate it into their business’ workflows. If you’re in the implementation stage of HubSpot, our 5-Step Guide to a Successful HubSpot Implementation can help you avoid these pitfalls beforehand ensuring that you don’t fall into the trap of hidden costs below.

If you’re not at that stage and are in the final stages of pulling the trigger on HubSpot CRM, then this article is for you. We discuss:

• How much HubSpot Implementation costs
• What the real cost of HubSpot is
• How you can maximise ROI when implementing the CRM

Avoid the Pitfalls from the start

We help B2B businesses avoid the hidden traps of implementation by getting HubSpot right the first time. See how our Impact award-winning team can support you in our pricing guide.

How Much Does Implementing HubSpot Cost?

The costs of HubSpot Implementation depend on which packages you choose and which tier suits your size of business.

Software Costs

HubSpot splits this up into 6 different ‘Hubs’, depending on what solutions you require. These are:

• Marketing Hub - An all-in-one marketing suite which allows you to plan and execute marketing strategies without a full mar-tech stack. Solutions include email marketing, social media scheduling, paid ads management, and event marketing for B2B lead generation.
• Sales Hub - The tool for conducting sales outreach, deal management, automated selling sequences and everything you need to close B2B leads and manage sales teams.
• Service Hub - A suite which enables you to have everything you need to put customers first and deliver exceptional service. This includes NPS surveys, live chat (with AI functionality), customer portals and a help desk - all connected to the CRM.
• Content Hub - Content Hub manages your complete content requirements, including hosting podcasts, websites, landing pages, blogs and knowledge bases to help connect with your customers and make content creation easier.
• Operations Hub - This Hub offers businesses the tools to connect their apps, sync and clean customer data, and automate business processes.
• Commerce Hub - Commerce Hub enables you to run eCommerce operations through
• HubSpot CMS and CRM - including payment processing through Stripe.

As mentioned above, all these Hubs come with different tier levels. These are often recommended based on the size of your business, and how many people will be using HubSpot.

These three tiers are:

• HubSpot Starter - The bare essentials of each tool. Helpful for a small business looking for a tool to help them for a fraction of what a typical tech stack would cost.
• HubSpot Professional - This tier is for the SME market. This gives you the tools to scale efficiently, with more advanced technology capabilities than Starter.
• HubSpot Enterprise - Usually reserved for enterprise-level companies, this tier gives you the complete HubSpot tech stack with advanced capabilities including multiple business units (especially helpful for group companies) and partitioning.

You can pick and choose which Hubs you need for your business - or you can bundle them with HubSpot’s platform solutions which will end up being cheaper overall.

The three HubSpot Customer Platform bundles are:

• Starter Customer Platform: All the Hubs but with HubSpot Starter capabilities.
• Professional Customer Platform: All the Hubs but with HubSpot Professional capabilities
• Enterprise Customer Platform: All the Hubs but with HubSpot Enterprise capabilities.

Our pricing table below indicates what the implementation of HubSpot comes out as for each product in the UK:

Implementation Costs

The implementation cost of HubSpot is variable based on the different methods you can take to implement the CRM.

The three different methods you can use are:

• DIY Implementation - Using your internal team to implement the CRM. Other than wages and the time expense, there is no additional cost on top of the software cost.
• HubSpot’s Onboarding Solution - HubSpot offers a structured onboarding option called Guided Onboarding for Professional and Enterprise tier solutions. This costs £2,600 for HubSpot Professional and £6,090 for HubSpot Enterprise.
• Partner-Led Onboarding and Implementation - Working with a certified HubSpot partner for your implementation. The most expensive (but also more thorough and in-depth implementation solution), this price varies on the expertise and service level of the partner agency.

Of course, as a HubSpot partner agency, we’re always going to recommend a partner-led implementation but, realistically, it comes down to whichever solution suits your business needs the best.

For example, if you have a HubSpot expert in-house, it may be more cost-efficient to go with a DIY implementation.

We talk about this in detail with our HubSpot Onboarding article, tackling the different options for HubSpot implementation and comparing the three options in more detail.

What is the Total Cost of Ownership of HubSpot?

Firstly, let’s explain what we mean by Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

The total cost of HubSpot is the price of the software over its entire life cycle. This figure goes beyond simply the flat implementation cost or the monthly price of the software itself - it includes the cost of any ongoing maintenance, hires, optimisations or any ongoing training and user adoption.

For example, Aptitude8 reported that 68% of HubSpot users implemented their CRM within 3 months or less. However, if your implementation goes on longer than that, or is implemented incorrectly, then that additional cost will add to the TCO of HubSpot.

This need for optimisation and reconfiguration is highlighted in the same Aptitude8 report. They report that 66% of executives plan to modify their CRM within 12 months due to:

• Costs (40%) - Many organisations find their current CRM solutions too expensive to maintain, with hidden costs related to implementation, support, and integrations driving up the total cost of ownership.
• Lack of features (39%) - Businesses feel their CRM does not fully support their needs, whether it’s missing automation capabilities, advanced reporting, or seamless collaboration tools.
• Poor integrations (38%) - Many CRM systems do not integrate smoothly with other software in the marketing and sales tech stack, leading to inefficiencies, data silos, and increased manual work.

It’s worth noting that these stats are considered across both HubSpot and Salesforce - with HubSpot users reporting greater ease of use and better integrations.

To calculate the TCO of your HubSpot Implementation, ensure you measure:

• The Onboarding Cost (whichever solution you choose).
• The cost of HubSpot training per employee.
• The time expense that your team need to invest in both training and implementation.
• The cost of ongoing support and training to ensure user adoption.

Add these to the HubSpot implementation costs and you’ll get a true view of what HubSpot costs and how much investment is needed for your business.

Maximising ROI with HubSpot

Fortunately, HubSpot is uniquely placed to support all members of your organisation with the different Hubs. So much so that, in comparison with Salesforce (37%), 51% of HubSpot users were extremely satisfied with their CRM implementation.

But, as mentioned, HubSpot CRM failures are usually not about the software - but rather the people using the software. There really is no transformation without changing the behaviours and habits of those using the system (we discussed this in our Make and Market Podcast a couple of months back).

Here are our tips for ensuring an ROI from implementing HubSpot CRM.

1. Ensure user adoption from the start of your project

The absolute first thing you should do before buying HubSpot is make sure your team are on board.

Ensure that all stakeholders have clear visibility on:

• How you expect the system to work within your organisation
• The benefits a CRM will have for their role
• How you expect their habits to change within their role

The final bullet is vital for ensuring user adoption. Without a clear expectation or understanding of how their role will be impacted because of HubSpot, they can't be expected to adopt the new system as expected. After all, CRM implementations don’t happen in a silo - or at least they shouldn’t.

Implementations that work solely for a sales or marketing department won’t see the ROI benefits that a CRM implementation would across all departments. All that does is emphasise the data silos you had before - just now with a fancy CRM. This highlights the need for complete user adoption across your business.

All teams that will be using HubSpot or certain aspects of the CRM need to be made aware of how it can benefit their day-to-day operations and how having a single view of the customer makes their job easier, not harder.

2. Have a clearly defined strategy and scope

Before embarking on your HubSpot Implementation, you need to have a clear roadmap and strategy for the project.

The first step of this is to analyse your existing CRM (or lack of it), and evaluate the current performance to understand your current ‘as is’ situation. Consider how to:

• Increase the number of customers (eg manage leads better, improve the sales process)
• Decrease customer churn rates and improve the customer experience
• Increase your opportunity to upsell
• Reduce costs and "friction"
• Differentiate data between different customer segments.

This will help you form the foundation for the scope of your HubSpot CRM project whilst giving your actionable objectives for what ‘success’ looks like. This will help drive, not only your implementation but your optimisations down the line to see the progress you have made and will make going forward.

This analysis will also help you identify what aspect of your CRM is currently impacting business performance now and where the opportunities for improvement lie. This will help you decrease your time to value (TTV) with a new CRM and improve impact to the bottom line faster - ultimately helping you drive ROI quicker.

3. Understand that a CRM is an ongoing process

We like to say that ‘CRM is a journey’.

View HubSpot CRM implementation as a living project, evolving over time rather than a one-time project. We would always recommend holding monthly meetings with key stakeholders to discuss how HubSpot is performing, and what you need to do to improve user adoption and customer experience.

Ultimately, the question you need to answer is are your customers, people, processes, and technology getting the support they need to create leads?

Answer this question and you will be driving an ROI from the CRM system in no time.

4. Work with a Solutions Partner

We’ve seen the effects of partially or poorly implemented HubSpot CRMs. While you might think you’re cleverly cutting corners in order to avoid big overhead costs, you’re actually wasting more time, money, and chances to grow your business.

By working with a solutions provider, in most cases, you follow a structured approach utilising best practices from experts who work in HubSpot day in, day out. Alongside that, most providers will provide ongoing support and training to ensure that you don’t have to reimplement your portal down the line.

We supported Eldapoint with just this and won a coveted HubSpot Impact Award in the process.

They were a group of companies that had become one through acquisition and needed help consolidating all of their data on HubSpot. From having no CRM at all, we strategically implemented HubSpot so that all companies had a single view of the customer, driving ROI by:

• Enabling upsell and cross-sell opportunities across multiple complementary businesses
• Driving an increase in the average number of deals per month
• Reducing reporting time from 14 hours to 15 minutes.

Listen, we don’t want this section to be a complete sell of our services.

We just want to reassure you that working with a HubSpot Solutions Partner can get you from ‘Point A’ to ‘Point B’ faster, without the need to visit ‘Point C’ further down the road. Without the need to revisit the implementation of your HubSpot portal, you will reduce the TCO associated with the CRM and improve ROI.

Supporting you with Your HubSpot CRM Strategy

As with any software implementation within your business, it’s not completely about the cost of the software itself, but the cost of the journey it takes to get to your ‘true north’. Ensuring you complete your project successfully the first time, ensure you keep your HubSpot Implementation Costs low and get a clear return on your investment.

At Axon Garside, we help B2B businesses unlock the power of HubSpot CRM and have a long track record of implementing HubSpot so our clients don’t have to ‘re-do’ their portal further down the line. Take advantage of our expert team today and download our pricing guide to discover how we can support you in implementing HubSpot.