HubSpot

We hired an inbound marketing firm and they wanted to use HubSpot. They are a certified HubSpot partner so we thought it would all work out. Promises of HubSpot making everything easier and cheaper for the marketing firm to setup and manage our account. That was the end of the good stuff.

We talked with HubSpot's sales person and even their technical team on what we needed to make sure HubSpot would work. After many hours on the phone, and multiple assurances from them, we pulled the trigger. That was the start of a 3 month nightmare.

Our requirements were that we host our own website and blog. We do not use HubSpot for the hosting. This sounds simple, but after 3 months of constantly working with the HubSpot engineers, we were unable to integrate HubSpot with our website. There were some easy upgrades HubSpot can do to rectify the problem.

1. For external blogs - They have a spot where you can specify the domain name you want email links and followers to be sent to, but it is greyed out and you can't change it to your own domain. So even if the blog is posted on your website, they will send all of the followers to a HubSpot hosted domain.

2. Upgrade to newer version of Bootstrap - They use and outdated version which is incompatible with the new versions. This makes it hard to have their software talk with your site if you are using Bootstrap.

Eventually we got reimbursed for the remaining months but lost a lot of time, human resources working on the project and paying for 3 useless months of their service.

Strengths: Good Sales team

Needs to improve: You have to host your website with them to make it seamless. If you don't, be ready for some headaches. Have to sign a 1 year contract before you even know if it works. Very difficult to cancel and get any money back.