Is HubSpot worth it for a small business?

Don’t waste your money on unnecessary software.

In this deep dive, I go over a basic tech stack for a small business and see how HubSpot compares to the competition.

CRM

1. Google sheets

   1. Google sheets can be used as a basic CRM, but you’ll have to build this out yourself and set up automations in the background to populate the CRM.

   2. This could work for a very small business with a low number of leads.

2. Airtable

   1. A step up would be Airtable, where you can build out a custom CRM and have more functionality. This would suit a technically minded founder who doesn’t want to be bound by a restrictive platform.

3. HubSpot

   1. I believe HubSpot is the best CRM for small businesses as it’s free and is far more powerful than the other options.

   2. You can store all this data easily, keep records of all your communications, and segment & track the data. This is also a lot more scalable as HubSpot will work as you grow as a business.

Calendar booking

1. Calendly

   1. This is the most common calendar booking solution. It integrates with most platforms but the costs can spiral as you create more calendars and use their advanced features.

2. HubSpot

   1. HubSpot has a free calendar booking tool that integrates directly into the CRM. If you’re using HubSpot as your CRM, you may as well use this.

Website

1. Carrd

   1. Carrd is a great landing page building platform, where you can create a simple one-page website for only $9 a year. This is great for really early-stage businesses where you don’t want to invest much capital.

2. Typedream

   1. This is one of my favourite solutions, you can create a nice looking website that integrates with the rest of your tech stack for $15 p/m.

3. HubSpot

   1. HubSpot has a free drag-and-drop website builder. If you want to get rid of the watermark, you will need to pay for content hub starter which is from £18 p/m.

Email

1. EmailOctopus

   1. This is a great low cost email sending tool. It is free up to 2,500 subscribers, then the cost is £14 p/m if you were to move to the pro version. This allows you to remove their branding and use the automations tool.

2. Beehiiv

   1. Beehiiv is also free up to 2.500 subscribers, but the costs increase quite substantially to $59 p/m which catches a lot of people out.

3. HubSpot

   1. You can send 2,000 emails per month for free with HubSpot.

   2. If you move up to the starter package, you can send 5x the number of contacts you have stored in your portal for £18 p/m

Content

1. Hypefury

   1. Hypefury is a great way to cross post and schedule your social posts. If you’re looking to grow your X, LinkedIn, and Instagram followers, then investing in a tool like this can really help.

2. Tella

   1. Tella is a great video production software. It makes it easy to record and edit simple videos for your YouTube channel.

3. HubSpot

   1. HubSpot has some great content tools. I recommend using HubSpot to host your blog as it’s an easy way to generate more inbound traffic to your website.

Outreach

Sending outbound campaigns from HubSpot is against their TOS, so I recommend this tech stack instead.

1. Instantly

   1. Instantly allows you to send outreach emails from multiple email accounts and domains. It is really powerful and often a no-brainer tactic for B2B businesses.

2. Apollo

   1. Apollo is the leading B2B data provider. I recommend starting here to source your data, then importing it into instantly to send.

3. Zapier

   1. You can use a simple zap to send interested leads from your outbound campaigns into HubSpot, so you can manage the sales process there.