Why I Hate HubSpot, Let Me Count The Ways
When "easy to use" really means "hard to scale" -- a CMO’s unfiltered breakdown of everything that makes HubSpot infuriating for sophisticated marketing teams.
From graymail suppression to billing-based email limits, HubSpot’s quirks aren’t “charming”—they’re workflow killers. Here’s what every growth leader should know before buying in.
HubSpot is one of the worst tools in SaaS. Partly because it can’t decide what it wants to be: CRM or Marketing Automation Platform (MAP). You can’t be both and do them both well. I don’t care how many acquisition you do.
A few years back I worked at a company that had a Salesforce CRM and HubSpot Marketing Automation Platform. I tried using the existing tools the company had, but I found the lead scoring mechanism to not be as sophisticated as other systems so I wound up ripping it out and replacing it with a better system.
But let’s get to why I hate HubSpot:
1. It offers a Salesforce Integration that works half-assed
The whole point of integrating your marketing automation platform into your CRM is so that sales people can see the marketing activities that the prospect engaged with. When you connect, say Marketo to Salesforce to view these marketing insights, the sales rep does not also need to be logged into Marketo in order to view them. Whereas, if you connect HubSpot to Salesforce, it forces your sales people to log into HubSpot to see the marketing activities in Salesforce. SO DUMB an unnecessary, especially since HubSpot does not charge on seat licenses.
If your CRM integration forces reps to log into two systems, it’s not an integration. It’s a hostage situation.
2. It doesn’t force 2-factor authentication
HubSpot doesn’t force you to set up 2-factor authentication, like other platforms do. But it does arbitrarily decide to see if you are really who you say you are, even though you just put in your password.
So it’s solution is to send you a code to your work email. Except, that code never ever comes. And that’s because it goes into something called “Quarantined” email. I mean, doesn’t that say enough for you?
You can try reporting this to support, but you also have to be logged in to create a ticket. 🤦♀️ 🤯 Incredibly frustrating to any startup trying to move fast.
When your startup is in launch mode, the last thing you need is a login limbo that stalls your campaigns.
3. Lead scoring is not sophisticated
Sales should be able to send back a lead to Marketing to nurture. But you can’t quite do that in HubSpot. You can’t wipe the score out to zero. When I asked a HubSpot rep about this, she told me I should perhaps change my process. (🖕)
This kills any realistic feedback loop between Sales and Marketing.
So I took her advice, and I cancelled HubSpot and switched to Marketo. Going back to the devil I knew.
You also can’t set up multiple segments for a nurture campaign in the Starter package so you need to upgrade to HubSpot Marketing Hub. It’s all about nickel and dime-ing you
4. Sending email is dependent upon HubSpot’s billing
In SaaS, billing shouldn’t dictate campaign timing. HubSpot does.
Because of the way HubSpot invoices, which is on the amount of marketable contacts in your database at the end of each month, whether you can immediately use that contact in emails depends on whether the status change has fully processed and whether your account is within your contact tier.
Marketo on the other hand, they know that a marketer sometimes has to work quickly and get an email out for a campaign and doesn’t make you have time to wait for the next billing period or for it to be processed properly.
5. No way to dedupe
How can you create a system where multiple people have access to it an not offer a way to dedupe records? End rant.
6. The ‘save’ button is inconsistent
It’s like a UX scavenger hunt every time you want to save something.
Sometimes you have to hit ‘save’. But sometimes things auto-save. And the ‘save’ button, is never on the same side of the screen or in the same spot on any screen — no consistent UI.
7. They suppress emails in favor of “good hygiene”
Now at first, as a former #emailgeek, I didn’t think this was so bad. Most marketers are terrible at list hygiene. But then I started having problems where HubSpot was deciding not to email folks based on their engagement. HubSpot uses a built-in mechanism (often referred to as the “graymail suppression” feature) to automatically exclude contacts who are deemed unengaged.
Now there is a way around this, but it’s not something you can change in the settings.
I’m okay with it suppressing “never engaged” but, the rules around “Some engagement, but not in the last 16 email sends” — that I’m not okay with. I want to be in control of my email sends and be able to send out the list hygiene email that says, “Do you want to continue to receive our emails?”
Let me decide when to sunset my audience, not some graymail nanny.
8. Workflows for everything
HubSpot doesn’t want you to be fast or efficient. They require a workflow for everything if you want to track your success. Making advanced automations or cross-hub functionality work, is tedious. Setting up a workflow every time is cumbersome.
It’s like buying a Tesla that needs you to build a road every time you want to drive somewhere.
9. The UI/UX doesn’t make sense
As a marketer, if you want to create a campaign that has a landing page in it, you go to the “Marketing” tab. But if you want to add a form to that landing page you need to go to the “Content” tab. And if you want to create a list of folks to send that landing page to via an email, then you need to go to “CRM” to create the segment and then back to “Marketing” tab to send the email. If you were really smart you would have started out in the “Marketing” tab and built a campaign and then added all of your assets that way, but you’d still need to jump around tabs. It’s exhausting.
There is no single place to ‘think like a marketer’ end-to-end. You’re constantly tab-surfing.
10. Nickel and dime-ing you every step of the way
To set up an email nurture by journey you need to buy another module in HubSpot.
HubSpot loves to market itself as ‘easy,’ until you realize every advanced workflow lives behind an upsell.
Summary
HubSpot isn’t evil. It’s just built for the average marketer — not the ones trying to move fast, personalize deeply, or run complex multi-channel programs.
If you’re a lean team or need an easy start, it works. But if you’ve already built real GTM muscle, you’ll hit these walls fast.
And if you think for one second you’re going to work seamlessly with another CRM (Salesforce or Attio), you can forget it — it does not play nice in the sandbox of other competing tools. It wants you to use their CRM.
What do you like/dislike about HubSpot?