HubSpot’s Marketing Hub offers a comprehensive suite of tools, and its email marketing functionality is certainly a key part of that. It’s more than just a simple email blaster; it’s designed to integrate seamlessly with the rest of the HubSpot ecosystem, particularly the CRM, to create more personalised and effective campaigns.

HubSpot Marketing Hub Email Marketing Functionality

HubSpot provides a robust set of features for email marketing. We have delved into the specifics of what email marketing features you can expect at each tier, to give you a clearer picture of the value proposition at each price point.

Free:

• Marketing Emails: Send up to 2,000 marketing emails per calendar month. These emails will include HubSpot branding.  
• Drag-and-Drop Email Editor: Basic editor to create visually appealing emails.  
• Basic Personalisation: Use contact properties like name to personalise emails.
• Contact Management: Access to HubSpot’s free CRM to store and manage contacts.  
• List Segmentation: Create up to 5 active lists and 1,000 static lists. Segmentation is limited to form submission data, contact property information, and marketing email activity.  
• Forms: Create basic forms to capture leads, which automatically feed into your CRM. HubSpot branding is included.  
• Basic Automation: One automated email action is allowed (e.g., a follow-up after a form submission).  
• Website Activity Tracking: See what pages your contacts are visiting on your website.
• Reporting: Basic reporting on email performance (opens, clicks, etc.).  
• Live Chat: Engage with website visitors in real-time (HubSpot branded).  

Starter (Starting from approximately £18 per month):

• All Free Features, Plus:
• Increased Email Sending Limits: Higher sending limits than the free tier.
• Remove HubSpot Branding: You can remove HubSpot branding from your marketing emails and forms.
• Marketing Automation: Up to 10 automated actions are available, allowing for simple follow-up sequences.
• Ad Management: Connect up to two ad accounts and create website retargeting audiences. Limited to simple website audiences.
• List Segmentation: Increased limits on active lists (typically around 10-25, depending on the specific package) and static lists. More advanced segmentation criteria become available beyond the free tier.
• Reporting Dashboards: Up to 10 standard reporting dashboards.
• Custom Properties: Create custom fields to store more specific information about your contacts.

Professional (Starting from approximately £780 per month):

• All Starter Features, Plus:
• Significantly Increased Email Sending Limits: Much higher limits suitable for growing businesses.
• Advanced Marketing Automation: Create sophisticated multi-step workflows triggered by a wider range of behaviours and contact properties (up to 300 workflows).
• A/B Testing: Test different versions of your emails to optimise performance.
• Dynamic Personalisation: Personalise email content based on more complex criteria and data.
• Campaign Management: Organise and analyse the performance of your marketing campaigns.
• SEO Tools: Get recommendations and insights to optimise your content for search engines.
• Social Media Management: Connect up to 50 social media accounts, schedule posts, and analyse performance.
• Lead Scoring: Automatically score leads based on their engagement and demographics to prioritise your efforts.
• Custom Reporting: Create and customise your own marketing reports and dashboards.
• Teams: Organise your HubSpot users into teams for better collaboration and reporting.
• Landing Pages: Create professional landing pages to capture leads (HubSpot branded on the Starter tier is removed here).
• Blog: Create and manage a blog directly within HubSpot.
• Standard Contact Scoring: Up to 5 contact scoring properties.
• Calculated Properties: Create up to 25 calculated properties based on contact data.
• Email Health Reporting: More detailed insights into your email deliverability and engagement.

Enterprise (Starting from approximately £3,000 per month):

• All Professional Features, Plus:
• Highest Email Sending Limits: Designed for large organisations with extensive email marketing needs.
• Advanced Marketing Automation: Even more sophisticated automation capabilities and higher workflow limits (up to 1,000 workflows for 300 teams).
• Predictive Lead Scoring: AI-powered lead scoring to identify your most promising leads.
• Multi-Touch Revenue Attribution: Understand which marketing efforts are driving revenue.
• Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Tools: Features to help you target and manage key accounts.
• Custom Objects: Create custom data structures beyond contacts, companies, deals, etc., for more tailored data management.
• Hierarchical Teams: More advanced team structure management.
• Behavioural Event Triggers and Reporting: Trigger automation and analyse performance based on specific user actions on your website or app.
• Webhooks: Integrate HubSpot with other applications in real-time.
• Single Sign-On (SSO): Enhanced security and user management for larger teams.
• Standard Sandbox Account: A separate environment to test new features and integrations without affecting your live data.
• Increased Limits: Higher limits on lists, workflows, reporting, and other features.
• Custom Reporting: Up to 500 custom reports.
• Target Accounts Home: Dedicated workspace for managing target accounts.
• Ad Conversion Events: Sync up to 100 ad conversion events.
• Field-Level Permissions: Control user access to specific data fields.

This detailed breakdown should help you assess which HubSpot Marketing Hub tier best aligns with your business’s current needs, growth plans, and budget for email marketing and broader marketing activities. We also recommend reading our analysis and comparison of the features of the top ten email marketing platforms.

How Much Does HubSpot Marketing Hub Cost (And Is It Worth It?)

HubSpot Marketing Hub comes in several tiers, each with different pricing structures and feature sets:

• Free: Offers basic email marketing features, contact management, and CRM functionality. It’s a good starting point for very small businesses or those just dipping their toes into email marketing. However, it has limitations on the number of marketing emails you can send per month and lacks more advanced features.
• Starter (Starting from approximately £18 per month): This tier includes more features and higher limits, but automation and more sophisticated segmentation are still limited.
• Professional (Starting from approximately £780 per month): This is where you unlock more advanced features like marketing automation, advanced segmentation, and A/B testing. The pricing jumps significantly at this level.
• Enterprise (Starting from approximately £3,000 per month): Offers the full suite of HubSpot’s marketing capabilities, designed for larger organisations with complex needs.

The value for money depends heavily on the size and needs of your business.

• Free: For very small businesses with basic needs, the free tier offers decent value to get started.
• Starter: If you need to send more emails and want some basic automation, the Starter tier can be worthwhile.
• Professional and Enterprise: These tiers offer significant power and functionality, but they come with a substantial cost. For businesses that will actively use the advanced automation, segmentation, and reporting features, and who already use or plan to use the HubSpot CRM, the value can be excellent. The integration streamlines workflows and provides a holistic view of customer interactions. However, for businesses solely focused on email marketing and not leveraging the broader HubSpot ecosystem, the cost might be higher than dedicated email marketing platforms offering similar features. You need to consider if the integrated nature of HubSpot justifies the price.

Take a look at where HubSpot Marketing Hub sits on our ranking of the most cost-effective email marketing platforms.

HubSpot Marketing Hub: Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths	Weaknesses
Seamless CRM Integration: Unifies marketing and sales data for better targeting and personalisation.	Cost: The Professional and Enterprise tiers can be quite expensive, especially for smaller businesses.
Powerful Automation Capabilities: Allows for sophisticated lead nurturing and customer communication workflows.	Complexity: The platform can be overwhelming for new users, with a steep learning curve for the more advanced features.
Robust Segmentation: Enables highly targeted email campaigns based on various criteria.	Feature Overlap: If you only need email marketing, you might be paying for a lot of features you don’t use in the higher tiers.
User-Friendly Drag-and-Drop Editor: Makes email creation accessible to non-technical users.	Email Design Limitations (in lower tiers): While the editor is user-friendly, advanced customisation might require some coding knowledge, particularly in the lower tiers.
Comprehensive Analytics and Reporting: Provides valuable insights into email performance.	Minimum Contact Requirements (in paid tiers): Some paid tiers have minimum contact requirements which can impact the overall cost for smaller lists.
Scalability: The platform can grow with your business needs.

Our Analysis: What Type of Business is HubSpot Marketing Hub Best Suited For?

HubSpot Marketing Hub’s email marketing capabilities are best suited for businesses that:

• Already use or plan to use the HubSpot CRM: The tight integration offers significant advantages in terms of data management, personalisation, and automation.
• Value a unified marketing and sales platform: If you want to manage your email marketing alongside other marketing activities like social media, SEO, and content marketing, HubSpot provides a central hub.
• Require advanced automation and segmentation: Businesses looking to implement sophisticated lead nurturing workflows and highly targeted campaigns will find HubSpot’s capabilities very useful.
• Are willing to invest in a comprehensive marketing platform: If you see email marketing as part of a broader inbound marketing strategy and are prepared for the cost, HubSpot can be a powerful tool.
• Small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and larger enterprises: While the free and starter tiers can suit very small businesses, the real power of HubSpot’s email marketing shines through in the Professional and Enterprise tiers, which are more accessible to growing SMBs and larger companies with more complex needs.

It might be less ideal for very small businesses with extremely limited budgets who only need basic email broadcasting functionality, or for businesses that already have a deeply entrenched CRM system they are not looking to replace. In these cases, a dedicated email marketing platform might offer a more cost-effective solution.

Conclusion

HubSpot Marketing Hub offers a powerful and well-integrated email marketing solution, particularly for businesses invested in the HubSpot ecosystem. Its strengths lie in its seamless CRM integration, robust automation, and sophisticated segmentation capabilities. While the cost can be a significant factor, especially for the more advanced tiers, the value for money can be excellent for businesses that fully leverage its features and the unified platform. However, businesses solely focused on email marketing should carefully weigh the cost against dedicated email marketing platforms to ensure it aligns with their budget and specific needs. Overall, if you’re looking for an email marketing tool that works hand-in-glove with a CRM and provides a comprehensive marketing solution, HubSpot Marketing Hub is certainly a strong contender.

HubSpot Marketing Hub Competitors

• Omnisend
• ActiveCampaign
• GetResponse
• Brevo
• Mailchimp
• Constant Contact
• Klaviyo
• MailerLite
• Campaign Monitor

Check out our comparison of the best email marketing software, and see where HubSpot Marketing Hub sits in the top ten.