HubSpot Pricing 2025: How Much Does It Really Cost?

HubSpot has this reputation as the Swiss Army knife of business software — marketing, sales, service, the whole thing in one platform. But here’s what nobody talks about upfront: figuring out what it’ll actually cost you is like solving a puzzle where half the pieces are missing.

You’ve got six different “Hubs,” seat-based pricing, contact limits, and onboarding fees that can run into the thousands. I’ve watched businesses get excited about HubSpot’s free plan, then get sticker shock when they see what the real features cost. The truth is, most companies end up spending way more than they expected.

Let’s break down what HubSpot really costs and whether it makes sense when you could get solid email marketing from something like Sender.net for $7/month without the complexity.

HubSpot Pricing Overview

HubSpot splits everything into separate products they call “Hubs” — Marketing, Sales, Service, Content, Operations, and Commerce. You can buy them individually or bundle them, and each one has four pricing levels: Free, Starter, Professional, and Enterprise.

The tricky part is the seat-based pricing. You’re not just buying features, you’re buying access for specific people. A “Core Seat” gives basic access to everything you’ve purchased, but if you want the full Professional features for Sales or Service, you need special “Paid Seats” for those areas.

Industry data shows most customers spend $15,000 to $35,000 annually. That’s a different world from simple email tools where you might spend a few hundred dollars a year. HubSpot isn’t really competing with email marketing platforms — they’re going after entire business operations.

HubSpot Monthly Pricing

Here’s something that catches people off guard: only Starter plans let you pay monthly. Professional and Enterprise require annual commitments, which means you’re locked in whether the platform works for you or not.

Starter seats cost about $20 monthly, which seems reasonable until you realize most businesses need multiple people and multiple Hubs. Professional plans typically run $890-$1,200 monthly for small teams, and that’s before any add-ons or extras.

The “mixed-tier” thing gets expensive fast. If you have one Enterprise Hub and one Professional Hub, all your seats get priced at the Enterprise level. Everyone pays the highest price, even if they don’t need those features.

HubSpot Monthly Plans

Main Plans Comparison

*Pricing varies significantly by Hub selection and seat count **Base pricing for small teams, scales with features and users

Free Plan

The free plan is surprisingly good — full CRM for up to a million contacts, basic marketing tools, simple landing pages, live chat. It’s more generous than most free business software.

But it’s obviously designed to hook you. Want to remove the “Powered by HubSpot” footer from your emails? That’s a paid feature. Need real automation? Paid feature. Want phone support when something breaks? You guessed it.

It works well as a trial, less well as a permanent solution. Small businesses might stick with it for a while, but most companies outgrow the limitations pretty quickly.

Starter Plan

At $20 per seat monthly, Starter removes the obvious free plan restrictions. No more HubSpot branding on your emails, basic workflow automation, and you get phone support when things go wrong.

This is where comparing to dedicated email tools gets interesting. Sender.net gives you 2,500 subscribers and 15,000 emails free, while HubSpot Starter gives you 1,000 marketing contacts for $20 monthly per person who needs access.

The value depends on what else you need. Just email marketing? Sender.net wins easily. Email plus CRM plus landing pages plus basic automation? HubSpot starts making more sense, even at the higher price.

Professional Plan

Professional is where things get expensive. Marketing Hub Professional runs about $890 monthly for a team, plus there’s a $3,000 onboarding fee. Add Sales Hub Professional and you’re looking at another chunk of change plus its own onboarding fee.

The features are legitimately powerful — advanced automation that can handle complex customer journeys, custom reporting, A/B testing that goes beyond basic subject line tests. But you’re committing to annual contracts and potentially implementation costs that match your annual subscription.

If you’re replacing multiple specialized tools, the math might work. If you just need better email marketing, you’re probably paying for a lot of stuff you won’t use.

Enterprise Plan

Enterprise starts around $3,600 monthly and can easily hit five figures for larger operations. You get everything — predictive analytics, custom objects, dedicated support, the works. Marketing Enterprise alone has a $7,000 onboarding fee.

At this point, you’re not buying software, you’re buying a platform that can run significant parts of your business. The question becomes whether you need that level of complexity or if simpler tools would actually serve you better.

Most businesses looking at Enterprise aren’t comparing email marketing tools anymore. They’re deciding between building custom solutions, licensing multiple enterprise platforms, or going all-in on HubSpot’s ecosystem.

HubSpot Pay-as-you-go Plan

Traditional Pay-as-you-go Pricing

HubSpot doesn’t really do pay-as-you-go the way most email platforms do. Everything is subscription-based with add-ons you can buy for extra capacity.

This is pretty different from something like Sender.net where you can buy email credits and use them when you need them. With HubSpot, you’re committed to monthly subscriptions whether you use everything or not.

The closest thing to flexible pricing is their add-on structure — extra API calls, more reporting features, SMS capabilities. But even these are monthly commitments, not true usage-based pricing.

HubSpot Transactional Emails Pricing

Here’s something that surprises people: HubSpot doesn’t handle transactional emails. Order confirmations, password resets, system notifications — you need a separate service for all of that.

For a platform that calls itself “all-in-one,” this is a pretty big gap. Most marketing platforms include basic transactional email features, but HubSpot has kept this completely separate.

You end up integrating with services like SendGrid or Mailgun, which works but adds another layer of complexity and another monthly bill. If you need both marketing and transactional emails, this separation can get expensive and annoying to manage.

HubSpot SMS Pricing

SMS Add-on Pricing Structure

SMS costs $75 monthly for 1,000 message segments, and you can only add it to Professional or Enterprise Marketing Hub plans. So you’re already paying $890+ monthly before SMS even enters the picture.

The geographic restrictions are pretty limiting — US-based numbers to US and Canada only. Sender.net includes SMS in regular pricing with broader coverage and no separate add-on fees.

Unused segments don’t roll over month to month, which is frustrating if your messaging volume varies seasonally. You’re paying $75 whether you send 100 messages or 1,000.

Pricing current as of July 2025. HubSpot changes their structure regularly, so double-check their website for the latest rates.

About author

Emily Austin

Author

Sender

Emily is a content manager who has dipped her toes in almost all fields of marketing, including email marketing, PR, social media, and ecommerce. She loves perfecting digital content, ensuring everything is polished and ready to go live.