Our Relationship With HubSpot in 2026

We have been HubSpot Partners for a long time. Today I wanted to give an update on what we are thinking about HubSpot, Nectafy’s relationship with HubSpot, and what HubSpot is today.

This post has been updated over more than ten years. The original post started as a test. At the time, I wanted to see if I followed the things HubSpot said you should do to grow your business, if I used all their tools and approaches… would it work? 

The short answer is yes.

You can read the original post and review all of that. I hope you do. I will tell you that a good portion of what I wrote back then is now completely out of date. It is really there for nostalgia. To see what HubSpot used to be. And how we thought about marketing at the time.

I want to talk first about what HubSpot was when we initially reviewed it. What it was that got us excited about the platform. Then I will talk about what HubSpot is now and how we relate to it today.

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The first time I ever heard about HubSpot was when one of their salespeople cold-called a client of ours. Their pitch: HubSpot would solve the same problem we were solving with writing content.

I knew that was not true. But I also understood that at the time, HubSpot salespeople were probably still figuring out what they were selling.

What really interested us about HubSpot was their focus on inbound marketing. (Their annual conference is still called Inbound, which is funny because what they focus on now is not exactly inbound marketing as it was originally defined.)

At that point, HubSpot was just a marketing platform. There was no CRM. If I remember correctly, it was emails, workflows, landing pages, and analytics. There was not even a strong website product. You basically bolted it onto whatever website you already had.

What HubSpot did extremely well in those early days was believe in what they were selling. They leaned into creating helpful content. The idea was simple: Write content people actually want. Let them find you. Nurture the relationship. Use data to understand what is working.

At the time, this was mind-blowing to me. You can see that excitement in the original version of this post at the bottom of the page. It felt earth-shaking.

We eventually became HubSpot Partners. That allowed us to help clients implement HubSpot and get very familiar with the entire platform. The thing we were most excited about was creating the content that actually powered everything HubSpot promised to do.

From the beginning, though, I did not want to be an extension of HubSpot. If you dig far enough back, you will see that I initially refused to take commissions from HubSpot.

Looking back, that probably cost us a significant amount of money. Maybe a quarter of a million dollars. That was my naivete — and probably a bit of a crusader mentality — but it came from a genuine place.

Eventually, someone wiser than me said you can take the commissions and still talk honestly about the platform. The good and the bad. That turned out to be the right approach.

Today, HubSpot is an all-in-one platform. Marketing. Sales. Service. Analytics. Automation. It can do almost anything.

For many businesses, that is exciting. For others, it is overwhelming.

We see people get excited about what HubSpot can do. Then they realize how complex it is. That is usually when they need a partner. That is normal for enterprise software. It is just not what fires us up as a company.

We still work with HubSpot. We know the platform well. We help clients who use it. It just is not the thing that energizes us most.

I also need to mention pricing. Over the years, HubSpot’s pricing has been confusing for many people. They introduced free tiers, which is smart. But many users hit hard limits that move them quickly from small monthly costs to very large ones without a clear middle step.

That may have changed recently. But I do know that the people we talk to often feel stuck. They are unsure about the next reasonable step.

Where We Are Now

HubSpot is a fantastic product. It is powerful. It is complex. It can do almost anything.

Because we do not actively sell HubSpot, we have slowly moved down the HubSpot partner tiers. We may not remain partners for much longer. That might actually be freeing.

If you have questions about HubSpot, we are happy to talk. We are not trying to sell it to you. We will not make money off it. We can show you what we do and how we think about content inside the platform.

HubSpot’s content tools are still very good. Their AI features are interesting. I am not anti-AI. I just believe humans need to be involved. Ideally, humans generate the ideas and the thinking. AI can help organize or polish.

My views on AI have changed quickly because the technology itself has changed quickly. I think change is healthy. Holding the same opinions in the face of new information is not wisdom. It is intentional ignorance. I try to avoid that. At least intentionally.

A few years in, HubSpot added a CRM. I am not a brilliant business strategist, but it seemed obvious that sales tools were where the real money was. Marketing budgets are often the first thing to get cut.

The idea became marketing and sales working together in one platform. That was compelling.

The tradeoff was that while the marketing tools were still good, they were no longer purely best in class. You gained integration and gave up some specialization. Still, that period represents most of our time working with HubSpot.

Later they added service and support tools. They added more content features. More analytics. More automation.

I once toured HubSpot’s Cambridge offices. I remember walking through a developer area with around a hundred developers working. That really drove home how large and complex this platform had become.

Watching HubSpot grow has been impressive. My comments here are not criticisms. They are just perspectives.

Even as a partner earning commissions, I never tried to convince anyone to use HubSpot. That has never been my style. There are many ways to solve these problems.

I have never loved marketing in the traditional sense. I do not like performative tactics. I do not like tricks. Even things like lead magnets make me uncomfortable.

Inbound marketing was different. It felt like something I could believe in. Create something helpful. If it helps someone, great.

That sense of being real has always mattered to me. I know authenticity is complicated. We probably never fully achieve it. But the inbound approach felt closer to something I could stand behind.

Over time, HubSpot leaned more into paid acquisition and complex systems. There is nothing wrong with that. It just was not what originally drew me in.