88 - Free vs. Paid HubSpot: When Do You Actually Need to Upgrade?

Rich: Hey, Catelin. Hello. Those are great earrings.

Uh, for those of you listening,

Catelin: I had to make sure that I had earrings on before we could start recording for those. Yeah, because we're video now

on YouTube. Gotta play game. So I got a little hair product, got a, exactly. Got a sassy hoop earring.

Rich: He started our count down and you screamed at him to stop.

I was like, yeah, earrings. And he did.

He's like, oh my

Rich: goodness. Alright. And then he told me

before we started that he understands why I needed them. So. Okay.

Rich: That's a vibe. It's definitely a vibe. It's alright. Well, we, um, we're not doing earrings today. I mean, we don't have a guest. It's just us. It's kind of weird.

We had so many guests. I know. It's nice And we have more coming up. [00:01:00] Um, Zach's been doing his job as a producer, just getting us those guests cranking it up. It's

Catelin: producing.

Rich: We're gonna talk about free HubSpot versus paid HubSpot. I thought it does have a lot of free, free stuff.

Catelin: They

Rich: do. Um, and like, I feel like when do you need to upgrade?

Catelin (2): Once, you know, once you taste the paid features, it's real hard to go back real hard. Well, and upgrading

Rich: to a starter suite is easy. Like that's not too expensive.

Catelin (2): Yeah, yeah. Um,

Rich: depending on how many people you have, I, um, jumping to pro can be more expensive, but it can be totally worth it. So. And

Catelin: coincidentally, the call that I was on right before this was with a new HubSpot user who is still kind of sorting through what features they need to use and who on their team needs, what features and Oh, okay.

Um. I was, uh, minorly frustrated on their behalf because it was like, well, if we, [00:02:00] it's like moving, it's like shitty Tetris, right? Where you're like, this person needs to be able to use e-signatures and be on a group calendar link, but they don't need any of the other sales features. But this person also needs to be able to do e-signature and.

Rich: Well you get, I think we've got it solved

Catelin: for now. We

Rich: do, but, and I think we need to probably talk about our fake cocktail before we get into that. Probably cocktail, since that's kind of what the intro is supposed to be. Well, it's a mocktail. Um Oh, okay. I was like,

Catelin (2): why is it fake?

Rich: I looked at it 'cause I was like, okay, so first of all, like it's a mocktail and it's got what's called ghia in it, GHIA.

And when I read it, I read GH like clarified butter. I did too. And I was like, this is scaring me. Why is there. Like liquid clarified butter in this, but it's not GI is what? It's a, it's a, um, a non-alcoholic, uh, a TiVo, um, okay. So it's infused with [00:03:00] yuzu, orange and ginger, so it gets that kind of sweet.

Citrus, but that bite or bitterness that Aperol has. Um, so yeah, so it's called The Night at the Spritz. Obviously I wanted to be putting on the spritz and I wanna know if there's a putting on the Spritz drink too. Um,

Catelin: do you know spritz cookies are my favorite Christmas cookies.

Rich: Oh, my mom loves spritz cookies.

She makes those all the time. They're so good. I'll have to. Mm-hmm. I'll have to let her know. She, they're a pain in the ass

Catelin: to make though. I got my mom, my grandma's like cookie press and I will never, they will never.

Rich: Well, if my mom makes them again, uh, this holiday season, I'll have her save something for you.

Thank you. So that would be, yeah, green Christmas

Catelin: trees were always what my mom would make. Um, sh shall we, so this,

Rich: yeah. It's a not alcoholic take on. Okay. So the description says on a Campari and soda, but a spritz is actually an Aperol spritz. Um, not always. I guess you could do SA spritz. Yeah. Well, sitz there's also

Catelin: Sitz is a spritz is anything with sparkling?

I know, but so like, you could do like a wine spritzer, [00:04:00] like a white wine spritzer is like, yep. Pinot Grigio with club soda.

Rich: But when you're in, uh. Italy. If you ask for a spritz, it's going to be an AP spritz. AAL if you don't specify. But there is also an italica spritz, which is interesting 'cause Italica is an herbal, which I think we've talked about at one point, an herbal cocktail or aper from uh, Italy as well.

That one you, you're supposed to garnish with olives, which makes me wanna just woo gag. 'cause I don't like olives, but it is very herbal. I don't like that. I mean, gin drinkers tend to like italica herbaceous. Yeah. But you can do other things with it. Um. Okay. Yeah. So this one doesn't have alcohol. If you want alcohol, you can just do, just do a spritz, like regular one.

Um, we are not here to

Catelin: tell you what to do

Rich: No. In this. Not at all. All right, so how do we make this thing? And, um, let's

Catelin: make it, let's, let's make it, you need two ounces of Gia, GIA, or Gia. It says Gia to [00:05:00] me.

Rich: I think Gia, GHIA.

Catelin: Yeah, GIA. Okay.

Rich: Yeah.

Catelin: Uh, two ounces of sparkling water, and you can garnish with a rosemary sprig and an orange twist.

So you're gonna add your Gia and sparkling water into a wine or rocks glass over ice, and just give it a little tiny stir to combine garnish with your fresh, fresh rosemary and your twist of an orange. Here's my. Twisting. Yeah. Don't stir

Rich: it too much. You'll break up all the bubbles and then you'll have a flat drink.

Yeah. And that would be sad. Um, easy, easy. That, so this is kind of interesting, comes

Catelin: from liquor.com Night at the Spritz,

Rich: A study night at the Spritz. Um, I am gonna Google and look and see if there's a putting on the spritz drink there. There's gotta be, there's gotta, if there's not be, if there's not, we're gonna make one.

Like, um, we have to. Mm-hmm.

Catelin: Yeah.

Rich: Yes. I'm looking right now.

Catelin: Okay.

Rich: Cocktail recipe from a taste of AZ putting on the spritz. [00:06:00] Okay. And oh, but there's also a version of it from Stella Rosa Wines. We won't be doing that one. I remember when Stella Rosa, aol, Kleb soda. Oh, it's basically an Aperol spritz, but with lemon juice.

Catelin: Oh, I could be into that.

Rich: Yeah. So Prosecco. Uh, Aperol Club, soda Sparkling water, which is a little bit, and then a half ounce of fresh lemon juice. So that's a little bit zinger. All right, so we got two spritz options there. Spritz. Yeah. I feel like, I don't know what else I can say about Night at the Spritz.

I feel like I'm kind of done with it.

Catelin: I, yeah, I love it. I, um, all right, well, I like the spritz. Should

Rich: we break Bubble and come back and talk about what you get for free with HubSpot and why you wanna pay and when you wanna pay?

Catelin: I think so. I think that sounds great.

Rich: We're back.

Catelin (2): We are. The countdown just

Rich: started and away we [00:07:00] went. I hate this shirt.

Catelin (2): Oh, we're focusing on, I We're

Rich: recording. My hair has been like, oh wait, did we stop? What's happening? Oh, okay. We're still, maybe we can

Catelin: just cut all of this out.

Rich: Okay, so we're gonna start over.

We're on one today. I think. I know. Welcome back,

Rich: Caitlyn. It's great to see you after that quick break. Um, yeah, I just looked up Gia. It's a really pretty bottle, so drink g cute gia.com. It GHI a.com. Um, super gorgeous and I love little cocktail glass they have with its fat stubby pedestal. Like that's real cute too.

Mm-hmm. Uh, alright, so hot spot

Catelin: I think are Georgian, Georgian Punch Glasses? Is that what that is? Are they Okay? Tyrell was just telling me about a new, new think of. New glass wear type. Um,

Rich: they have a spring set. Oh, you get the original appetit, the berry. There's a [00:08:00] berry version of Gia, a Gia, soda, GIA, ginger, lime and salt, and sumac and chili

Catelin: Sumac.

What is sumac even?

Rich: Uh, it's a, um, it's a berry, but it's like a, I think it's a, I don't know, a sweet berry or something. I'm not sure. Oh. Uh, okay. Wow. So, um, cute. It's a cute bottle hub, spot free tools. Um, there was thing that, funny, some

Catelin: debate during the break about what's free's not. There was a little debate during

Rich: the break and we'll, we'll talk about that.

Catelin: We will the,

Rich: um. The interesting thing with the free tools is I have a lot of people who are like, oh, I want the CRM and it's like the CM is always free. Mm-hmm. Like they've never charged for the, for just the CRM. It's what you want to do with the CM gets exactly. Gets to be a little bit crazy and also like advanced features on top of that.

Mm-hmm. Um. So, yeah, so I think the biggest piece is you can get lead generation, which is what HubSpot is really about in the free [00:09:00] tools. Yeah. So you can throw a form on your website, you can have that form come through and you know, you can generate leads. Um, I think the,

Catelin: the biggest, um, like awareness piece on the free side is that everything will have HubSpot.

Spot's branding on it. Yep. So it'll say in a corner somewhere, you know, created with HubSpot or get started with your own HubSpot instance, or whatever the like, disclaimer is that you're using a HubSpot tool. Um, but that's really, I mean, aside from that, and it's not like, um, it's not like a huge. Banner or anything, it's like one single line of text.

Mm-hmm. With the little HubSpot, it's really tiny. Yeah. Powered by

Rich: HubSpot or something like that that is on there. Exactly.

Catelin: Yeah. So just a disclaimer at the top that says like, people will be able to see that you're using HubSpot, which is like whatever, you know, if you're in your initial stages of, of growth.

Mm-hmm. Not a big deal. So

Rich: yeah, a lot of people don't care. I mean, and people, I've seen people put up GoDaddy websites that says, powered by GoDaddy. Gosh. And I'm like, I would not leave that on there, but whatever.

Catelin (2): [00:10:00] No. Um, nope. Nope.

Rich: But you do also get like your contact management. Mm-hmm. Um, so you know, if you're keeping your contacts in just your, uh, address book on your computer or your, god forbid, keeping them in like a spreadsheet or something, spreadsheets, um, this is a much better way to go.

I do have, I have an onboarding where, and I was, are we migrating data from anywhere? And she's like, yes, it's called Excel. And I'm like, great. That's an easy one to migrate from. Um, she's like, yeah, we need to get out of Excel. Um, you do get some light marketing automation. Um, you get blogging. You also get their copilot, like you get the, the basic, the basic like AI for free.

Absolutely. You don't get all the other AI tools, but just the basic kind of their chat, GPT, um mm-hmm. Thing. Um. And you do get, like, some things are limited, like, like you get one meeting link. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But you can't get more than one. And again,

Catelin: if you like, if you're a single like mm-hmm. [00:11:00] Sole proprietor solepreneur.

And you need, yeah. You need to be able to have people find time on your calendar and you do a good job of keeping up with your Google area outlook. Like that's a really easy thing. And you can have on that meeting, like multiple time slots to say like, oh, I want, you know, a. Quick 15 minutes or 30 minutes or an hour.

Yep. And they can choose that duration. So there are still some pretty advanced free

Rich: options. Yeah. And it's free, right? So like you can go try it and just see. What you like and what works for you. It's a really good test run of the software. Um, yeah, you can also do, I don't know what my hair is doing today, by the way, but I'm very bothered by it.

I'm getting a haircut tomorrow, so, um, but you can also. Um, do trials of different hubs as well. Mm-hmm. You can usually do a 14 day trial of a hub if you wanna see what that's like. Yeah. Um, but be careful 'cause you might get hooked on features you don't have in the free version or [00:12:00] even in the starter version.

Catelin: Yeah. That's my problem. Once you taste the, once you taste the pro mm-hmm. Kool-Aid, it's really hard to dial back to, uh

Rich: Oh. Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, to the point we've even got a couple of enter, like, I, well I guess it's just sales enterprise right now.

Catelin (2): Yeah.

Rich: Um, yeah. Okay, so what makes you sad? What are you gonna be missing out on?

And honestly, these are like, if they're not deal breakers, then free might work for you to give it a start. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, and if some of them are, we will talk about starter and pro and enterprise and all that. Yeah. Um, yeah. But what's missing, I.

Catelin: Uh, for me it's the automation pieces that are missing.

Catelin (2): Mm-hmm.

Catelin: That there's no email automation, which is really what a lot of marketing automation comes down to, right. Is you wanna be able to trigger emails based on contact activities like form fills or interacting with content or, um, you know, drip campaigns, nurture things, those types of [00:13:00] like really kind of baseline marketing.

Mm-hmm. Activities. Yep. That's, that's the biggest thing. And, and you get some of that with the starter version. They have, you know, you can send a couple of emails, um, with, with the starter like. If somebody fills out a form, what do you want to happen right after? Yep. A little bit of that, but there's not, you know, it doesn't get any, any more robust than that.

You can't add delays, you can't do, you know if thens, those types of things, but

Rich: yeah, that's, and you don't get like complex workflows, so you're not gonna get any branching or anything like that. Exactly. The thing that got me even, even starter is everybody wants to do the like. I wanna resend this to people who didn't open it and that's not an option.

Yeah, right. Um, you gotta get up to pro for that. There's, um, you can do something with people who opened it in starter, which is really weird to me. 'cause like if you opened it, I don't [00:14:00] necessarily need to do anything with you. Like, um, but not people. The unopeneds are the ones that's like, you know, I wanna reengage them or try to reengage them.

Catelin: Um, you could, I mean. Still filter a list by, you know, is not mm-hmm. Opened or like Yep. There's some's work around. Yeah. That how I've done it in the past Yeah. Is you

Rich: put 'em in a list and then you, uh, have to manually send the email again to that list, like the next day or whatever. Mm-hmm. So it's not terrible, but again, if you're like low.

You don't have a huge list. You don't send a ton of emails. Um, it's eminently better than the free MailChimp, like way, way light years better.

Catelin: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and it's less of a pain in the ass to like, when you get to the upgrade. MailChimps audiences are bonkers to me, like it doesn't make sense. We've migrated several people out of MailChimp.

Mm-hmm. And. The way in which they segment contacts makes me wanna pull all of my hair [00:15:00] out.

Rich: So

Catelin: I just

Rich: like, yeah. It doesn't come over cleanly even though there's an integration. No. Um,

Catelin: no. No.

Rich: You're also not gonna be able to install your own template from the marketplace for landing pages or blogs. You're just gonna have to take the free templates that HubSpot has and they provide like four, I think.

Yeah. Uh, themes. Yeah. Sorry. The themes. Um. There are, when you get to starter, there are some themes you can put in that are starter compatible. Mm-hmm. Um, but really at pro is where all the, like I wanna say, the wheels come off the, not the wheels, the handcuffs come off.

Catelin: Yeah. And there, the difference between starter and pro is you can't do individual module per.

Purchases from the marketplace where mm-hmm. In a starter theme, you're limited to the modules available in that theme. Yep. You can't like add a calculator widget to a page or, uh mm-hmm. Those types of things from the, from the marketplace. But Yep. We, I've used, and we've used at the agency to, um, the.[00:16:00]

Power Pro. Mm-hmm. Starter version in starter portals and been really impressed and satisfied with the customizations available there.

Rich: Yeah. There's just, I mean, and if you've got a starter port portal, it's great, but if you've got like a pro portal and you try to use a starter template, you're gonna, or theme, you're gonna be really disappointed.

'cause it just, there's things that just doesn't do because it's not designed to. Mm-hmm. Because it's not designed for a pro, uh, instance. So I think the other big ones, like, um, there's a lot of power in HubSpot's reporting. Mm-hmm. Totally. And you just get standard reports. Which works for a lot of people.

Um, and then API I restrictions, again,

Catelin: some of those like baseline things where it's like, I just wanna know how many contacts opened by emails. I just wanna know, you know, what my average deal, revenue, age. Exactly. Like those baseline things. And quite honestly, we find that a lot of people aren't taking advantage of those reporting capabilities even at a baseline, right?

Catelin (2): Yep.

Catelin: That they, they're not capitalizing at all the data that's available in their like pro [00:17:00] or enterprise. Portal. So maybe that's not a big, big deal.

Rich: The one that always kills me and I think hurts for solopreneurs especially is, uh, no social media. Yeah. The social media functions just aren't there. Um mm-hmm.

Um, they're also not there in starter. You've gotta go to pro to get those. Um, yeah,

Catelin: and that's I think my biggest pain point as well is being able to really, but. Push that you can mar, you know, manage all of your marketing in a single place. Mm-hmm. In one place. Because it, and when and when social media and HubSpot were kind of coming up, you know, initially.

Mm-hmm. Social media was not really required. It was more of an individual thing. And then Yeah. You know, they built out people suite and other tools, starter pro enterprise. You know, at a different level of when social media became kind of required for businesses and they just haven't Yep. [00:18:00] It hasn't caught up, which is surprising for me.

Yeah.

Rich: I mean, and YouTube used to be an enterprise only and they rolled it down to profile. Mm-hmm. So you get, um, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. LinkedIn now are the four. Yeah. Yeah. Um. Yeah, I think, I'm trying to think if there was something else in that area. Those are kind of the big ones, I think.

Mm-hmm. Um, and you just can't do as much and you don't have as much customization, but if you're already doing social media in another tool, um, and you don't need that and you really just want this for your drip campaigns generation and your CRM totally great. Like that's a hundred percent fine. Yep. Um.

Yeah. All good. All good.

Catelin: Yeah. I wonder if we could talk about when free doesn't cut it anymore. Like when, so basically what are some, how do you know? Yeah. Like when are you need to upgrade? What are some indi or what are some indicators that it's time?

Rich: Um, I think growing frustration is what's always mine.

[00:19:00] Like, whenever there's, like I go to do something and there's the little, the little orange lock beside it and I'm like, oh, but I wanted to do that. That's a really good one. When there are features, 'cause you'll see all of the features. There'll just be these little orange locks by them. That means you don't get this.

And if you click it, it'll say reach, reach out to us to upgrade. Um, or even I that that's, or start your free trial. A big one. Yeah. But, um. If your contact lists are getting really big and you want more automation to manage those, um mm-hmm. You do hit a point, like you can have as many people in the CRM as you want to again know millions of people.

Mm-hmm. And it's like 10 million or something like that. It's, yeah. But if you're gonna market to them, you've gotta pay. Um mm-hmm. You know, that's where they kind of get you, but also like just your list organization automation is so handy for that. Um, and you get a limited number of lists, um, like groups of contacts Yeah.

Audiences is what MailChimp calls them. Mm-hmm. Um, and so the, as you tier up to Starter Pro and Enterprise, you get more and more lists. Yeah. So [00:20:00] if you've got a huge, I mean, I had a client that had 160,000 people they imported, and I was like, oh my God. Um, and they're like, well, we don't market to all of those.

And I'm like, okay. Like, but geez, that's a lot. Then

Catelin: what are you doing with them?

Rich: Um, there were, they had like, sorry,

Catelin: it was like 20

Rich: or 30,000 where they're like, do not contact list. And I'm like, yeah, you can bring that in. It's fine. Yeah. Um,

Catelin (2): I guess I, I always just am like, well, if

Rich: they're not in here, I won't contact them, so why bother?

Catelin (2): Mm-hmm.

Rich: Um, but I know that bigger companies need more, uh, more structure on that. Yeah. Um. But yeah, so that's really big. And then I think the other one we touched on when automation, you need automation and you need things to happen for you. Mm-hmm. And I think like looking at it as, even if you're going all the way to Pro, which runs, um, the best deal in PRO is called HubSpot for marketers used to be Marketing Plus.

And you get all the content tools, the AI tools mm-hmm. And the marketing tools all oop into one for about $300 or $400 cheaper than you could get 'em separately, but it's like $900 a month. Yeah. Um, but when you look at [00:21:00] that, I mean, that's not even. A $12,000 a year part-time employee. And if you're getting all of those AI tools and you're gonna be able to do more mm-hmm.

With the marketing automation and not have to follow up on things yourself. That's such an interesting, it could worth perspective.

Catelin: Yeah.

Rich: I always look at it as what would it be if I had to hire somebody to do this and how, how can I get around, um, that when I was, what I'm looking at, like from a small business running standpoint.

Yeah. Um. Because the more you do yourself, the better.

Catelin: That's such good perspective actually. Wow.

Rich: Mm-hmm.

Catelin: Wow. Wow, wow. Well, same thing

Rich: if you're gonna have a $60,000 retainer, so $5,000 a month with an agency mm-hmm. Um, people are like, oh, that's a lot of money. And it's like, that's barely a decent employee in most markets.

You know? Yeah. 60 grand get it gets, might get you some, somebody with a little bit of experience, but they're also not gonna have the breadth that our team of, you know, 10 or 12 or 15 people would, however big, um, have. And you can't flex. Like you get one person and you just hope that [00:22:00] they can do everything you need to.

Catelin: Figure it out. Joanie

Rich: roll the dice. Um, all right, so reporting is the other one we talked about. Mm-hmm. If you're not able to create the reports that you want, but again, if you're a small business, you probably can from all the standard reports. Mm-hmm. Um, and then social media is a big one. Ads integration is a big one.

Yeah. Um, you know, you wanna have a chat bot on your website, you're gonna have to upgrade. Um, definitely. Yeah. So those are kind of the, the big pieces. But the number one that I see is a client will be like, I wanna do this, but it says I can't unless I upgrade. Mm-hmm. It's like, yes, that's correct. Let, we can demo that for you and if you wanna upgrade, this is what it looks like.

Catelin (2): Mm-hmm.

Catelin: I also just would encourage anyone who's considering an upgrade to make sure that you include the operations hub. Mm-hmm. Even if it's just Operation Starter, because that's like your bare minimum, like [00:23:00] capitalization, um, you know, first name, last name, separating. There's like some really simple.

Operations automations, it doesn't. Very simple

Rich: stuff. Most of the operations like automation stuff for data cleanup is in Pro. Mm-hmm. But what Operations Hub Starter gets you is the biggest one is custom properties from integrations. So integrations have a limited number of properties without operations hub.

Okay. Okay. When, and it's just your standard properties, whether it's QuickBooks or UM, zoom. Okay. Or any of those. Sure, sure. Um, but when you do operations UpStarter, which is only at the time of this, just $15 per month for one seat, and you really just need one seat. Yeah. You don't need a bunch. Um, it opens up custom properties, so it might be these 15 standard properties will sink and you're like, well, I've always, I've got like, you know, 3,500 Yeah.

Or 500 properties or whatever. Yeah. And it's [00:24:00] like, yeah. Okay. So you can actually map those then, um mm-hmm.

Catelin: Yeah.

Rich: So, um, that's

Catelin: good. That's good context.

Rich: Um, yeah, so that's a big one for me. Yeah. Um, I think that's the best advice I've ever heard is just get operations, UpStarter, at least if you can do the, I mean, the pro is,

Catelin (2): yeah, I wanna

Rich: say it's like 500 a year, five 40, something like that.

Um, it's not terrible. Um, but it's, it can be really worth it.

Catelin: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Rich: Um.

Catelin: Even just the, I got really excited about like the capitalization where it's like if somebody types in all caps, just like standardize their responses so they're not actually yelling you numbers. Yeah.

Rich: Yep. And phone number formats.

The phone number property will do that for you. Um, you don't need operations hubs, so you can do that even on the free. Mm-hmm. You can set that property properly. It's just a little bit more difficult, but, um. Yeah. It just, it cleans up so much stuff. It'll also, if somebody puts a first and [00:25:00] last name in the first name mm-hmm.

With Operations Pro, it'll extract the last name and put it in the last, last name field. Oh, that's

Catelin (2): okay. Mm-hmm.

Rich: Yeah. That's really nice.

Catelin (2): I love that. Yeah.

Rich: Uh, all right. I'm trying to think of the other reasons. I just always get people who are like, I want to do this and I can't. Mm-hmm. Um, for sales, it would be sequences.

Yeah. Or a big one to upgrade. Yeah. Um, to pro. Um, and those are like automated series of emails and your goal is to try to get somebody to email you back, schedule a meeting, fill out a form, whatever those are. Mm-hmm. Um, so that's a huge one when you want to automate more of that sales piece. Um, the other one, I just had it in my brain.

Oh. Uh, if you want more than one pipeline.

Catelin (2): Yeah.

Rich: Um, and some people do, some people don't. Some people just mix everything in one, but sometimes it's nice to have a separate pipeline. Yeah. Um, so yeah, those were really the big ones. Mm-hmm. Um, but just remember also like even if you've got Marketing Pro, you still have [00:26:00] free on all the other plans, like you've got sales free and all that.

Mm-hmm. And so you can still do a meeting link and, you know, some of those light tools and whatnot. Yep. Um, just not gonna be as many, um, as you could otherwise.

Catelin: Yeah. Yeah, and all in all, like we were saying at the beginning, it still leaps and bounds ahead of what you get for free out of most other. Mm-hmm.

Similar tools, like I would be shocked to know that Calendly offered a free option that was as robust as the free, you know, the single free meeting link, single meeting link, HubSpot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Rich: And I think so. That's a good point. What I run into with folks who get a little bit price sensitive, it's like, okay, but you're paying for Calendly.

You're paying for constant contact. You're paying for this, you're paying for that. You can roll all of those in here, and you've got all of those features. In this platform, even at the starter level. And,

Catelin: and I think that the thing that I [00:27:00] try and counsel people on most often with that is that all of the tools function and are set up in a similar way.

Mm-hmm. So once you understand how a deal pipeline works, you're also gonna understand how a service pipeline works, right? Yep. They're exactly the same. So you're understanding the sales. Process, you can start to integrate some of the free service tools. Mm-hmm. Um, similarly, like when you start to set up properties for your contacts, those properties work the same on deals, companies, tickets, whatever, you know, all of your separate objects and, and wear like a Salesforce or you know, if you're using a constant contact and a Calendly.

Yep. And like they're all different. There's. Exactly. There's all those little different kind of, um, tweaks and things that you need to figure out. And similarly, again, like if you can [00:28:00] figure out how to build an email, more often than not you can figure out how to build a landing page because those drag and drop editors work very similarly.

Rich: Yep. And I keep saying sweet, but it's the customer platform now is what they call it. Oh. Um, so what I will generally see, um, is um, oh, they changed how they display pricing. It's sort of weird. Uh, more people will start with like the starter customer platform mm-hmm. Than I see doing just pure free. Mm-hmm.

Um, or they'll start with free and be like, yeah, I kind of want this and upgrade to the starter platform. Mm-hmm. Um, and you get quite a bit with that starter platform and it's $15 a month per seat. So, you know, if you've got two people, it's gonna be 360 bucks a year. Three people's gonna be, well, 15 times 12.

More than that, I'm now lost on math. Um,

Catelin: four 40, I think

Rich: four people would be 600. [00:29:00] Four 50. Would that be three people? That sounds right. Four

Catelin: 40.

Rich: Four 40. Um, three. That's three. The six

Catelin: and the eight.

Rich: Yeah. Like do you want

Catelin: me to, just talking through to the map. I

Rich: have that, that whiteboard, that's like everything going in front of me.

Catelin: Um, with all

Rich: the math equations,

Catelin: six and eight is 14. And then you carry the one and it becomes

Rich: Yeah. No, five 40.

Catelin: It's not five. It's not four 40, it's five 40. I don't even know.

Rich: Um, anyway, but you, you get so much for like that. Fairly low price. Mm-hmm. Um, and then like if you're like, oh, okay. Like, well the sales starter is great for me and service starter is great for me in the one pipeline and I'm good with that.

But I really need more in marketing. You can upgrade marketing. Just know it will break the starter platform, like discount. 'cause there is a discount for all of those things being together. And when you upgrade one hub, it kind of like. Freaks it out. Just, uh, I don't, yeah. Does not. But any sales rep, like if you're gonna upgrade from free to starter or from starter to pro, they'll help you like mm-hmm.[00:30:00]

Make sure that you aren't getting, you know, screwed. Um, hub. What's really good about that, I think, um, yeah, but like I said, like, you know, doing that HubSpot for marketers is so great. Mm-hmm. And that 900 a month includes three seats. So I dunno.

Catelin: I don't know either.

Rich: Um, so on the starter platform, there are some restrictions.

Again, you get more than with free, but you'll get fewer things. Like there's a limited number of webpages. I think it's like 30, if I remember right. Um, mm-hmm. And you get one blog. And I think you get, it's like, uh, it's like, isn't it still 10,000 blog posts or something? It's, it's a really high number.

Right?

Catelin: It's, it's quite a few posts. Yeah. It's a single blog. The caveat or like, kind of, not a workaround necessarily, but one of the things that surprised me about Starter is that you can do a single language translation. So you can have a second English, Spanish language. [00:31:00] English, exactly. And that's what I'm working with.

Um, one of my non-profit volunteer spots. It's like translating their whole website into Spanish.

Yep.

Catelin: Cool. And you can also do, um, I've leaned pretty heavily on my $20 chat GPT subscription for that.

Rich: Oh, they've made some updates. Caitlyn, I'm looking at it. So you get two ticket pipelines in the starters, um, service starter.

Really? Or just

Rich: one? Yeah, I'm looking at it right here in front of me. And you get 15 in pro, so like pro, like you ramp up significantly. Yeah. The thing about the webpage, and this is a fun one, you get 30 webpages and for small businesses that's not a big deal. Mm-hmm. You also get 30 total landing pages.

Landing pages.

Mm-hmm. Which

Rich: are essentially webpage like in, depending on what you do with your navigation, you get 60 pages. Mm-hmm. Um. But you do only get one subdomain, um, and one top level domain, so Yep. But that actually works in your favor if you, I mean, the landing pages can just carry your main domain if you wanna put your website in there.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, so yeah, that's one of the things I think we find the most is people will do that starter [00:32:00] platform to get their website out of WordPress and into HubSpot. Mm-hmm. Um, and if you've got a few, I mean, I know you and I both have, um, you know, websites that we've pulled in there.

Catelin: Yeah.

Rich: Um. And pulled it in.

It also removes your HubSpot branding, so that's your other benefit of moving up to starter. Yep. Um,

alright. I

Catelin: think we've, I think we've covered it

Rich: kind of. I mean, we, we don't really don't want to get into the pro and the enterprise, like, it just gets into like, you just get more. As you go into those, the one thing that I will say, and I know we brought this up when Alex was our guest, if you do just one enterprise seat, it unlocks a whole suite of tools for your entire hub.

Mm-hmm. Not, um, and for a lot of those, everyone can play with 'em. Mm-hmm. Um, some of 'em that you can't. Like, like the IVR and everything. You have to up seat in enterprise to be, have your phone number on the IVR and all that, but like permissions by individual properties mm-hmm. [00:33:00] Comes along with it setting up, uh, presets for, um, user permissions comes with it.

Gosh.

Catelin: Yeah. Yeah. So,

Rich: um, and that's with either enterprise prof, enterprise, uh, sales enterprise or service enterprise. I cannot talk today, I think it's my hair. It's distracting me. No, it was like so staticky today and I was trying to do something and it just kept standing up and I'm like, Ugh. But, um, there's a little like

Catelin: mad scientist look going on.

Very much

Rich: so. Um, but without like all of the benefits of it, um, I have no invention whatsoever. Just clutter, I think. Yeah. Well. But yeah, so one service enterprise seat or one sales enterprise seat, depending on which one you need more. Mm-hmm. Just unlocks a whole bunch of features. Yeah. So that's something to consider as well.

And those are, um, I think the service enterprise is like 90 bucks a month, I think. I don't remember. And, uh, sales enterprise. Uh oh, sales enterprise or sales professional. Is 90 bucks sales Enterprise is one [00:34:00] 50. Service Enterprise. Oh, it's also one 50. I thought that it was cheaper. Um,

Catelin: they must have caught onto people doing service instead of sales.

Rich: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think service used to be a hundred. Um. But yeah, so it's, um, there's just so much. And you also get all of the e-commerce or the commerce tools, excuse me. Mm-hmm. Um, even in the free version, you get some light versions, but they open up pretty much all of it and you just pay per transaction mm-hmm.

As you go. So

Catelin: I have been really impressed with their commerce rollout and the capability as well as the ease, again, of integration with

Catelin (2): mm-hmm.

Catelin: The rest of the, the platform. So I think that's a. Across the board if you've ever tried. For sure.

Rich: Yeah. If you've ever tried to integrate with authorized.net, like, ooh, so many hoops and so difficult, HubSpot's even easier than Stripe, like mm-hmm.

It's just, and Stripe is pretty easy. Yeah. It's just so, so, so easy. Mm-hmm. Um, all right. So I would say [00:35:00] like, you know, jump into starter, give it a try, like just the whole, or the free suite. Sorry. Give it a try. Yep. Don't worry about that. Leap up to starter. Mm-hmm. Especially if you're just one person or two people.

It's not that expensive. A few hundred bucks a year, I guarantee you you're paying more than that for like toilet paper. Um. But it's, and it's

Catelin: probably for the disparate tools that you're trying to use as well. Mm-hmm.

Rich: Yeah, exactly. Start looking at your tools and see what you can consolidate into HubSpot.

Yeah. Um, and I think that, you know, if you then decide like, Hey, I need to upgrade to a professional hub, you're gonna get a HubSpot like. Uh, they're called a growth specialist who will help you with that. Um, a salesperson. Mm-hmm. There's agencies like us that can do a demo and kind of advise you on what you need in your software stack.

We do that all the time for people. Um, so it's really, um, you know, a good opportunity to start, get things organized and then just grow with it. And as you grow, you can grow what you do with [00:36:00] HubSpot.

Catelin (2): Yeah,

Rich: it's pretty cool. Put it on a billboard. Yep. I drank a big, big bucket of orange Kool-Aid. Loving it.

Catelin: That's funny. Uh, as always, you can find our agency at Antidote seven one. If you have a question you'd like to send our way, head to CTA podcast live, live to shoot us an email, or even better, you can leave us a voice message on our hotline at 4 0 2 7 1 8 9 9 7 1. Your question will make it into a future episode.

What's coming up?

Rich: Okay, so we do have another episode coming next week. This one should be wild. The most overhyped marketing tactics right now. So what is like super hot, super popular, but like, eh, probably doesn't, juice isn't worth

Catelin: the squeeze. That makes me tired. Exactly. You know when the juice is always worth a

Rich: squeeze.

A margarita, that lemon juice is always worth the squeeze a hundred. That's

Catelin: correct. A little lemon drop. I love it. Well, we'll see you [00:37:00] next week.