Update: HubSpot Is Temporarily Upgrading Services For Users At All Levels

As we all try to weather the storm we’re facing as communities and as a global economy, many companies are finding ways to retain business, support their customers, and help their communities—and SaaS companies are no exception.

As HubSpot users and service providers, we wanted to share with you an announcement we just received from the founder and CEO of HubSpot, Brian Halligan:

“Like many of you, we are trying to do what we can to help our customers and the larger community navigate this challenging time. Here are details on plans that will hopefully help, as well as a sincere ask from us for your input on what more we could do.“

More business functions are moving online for a wider variety of businesses than ever before, and that comes with a great deal of strain. Regular contact with customers and communities is more important than ever, especially as many businesses also do what they can to help with COVID-19 response and relief efforts in addition to their normal operations.

Yet the tools we use for these things aren’t cheap, especially when revenue has dropped (or stopped). If that’s the situation you’re in, here are a few things that may help.

1. Premium features to support your digital sales process.

Firstly, HubSpot is opening up a number of features around the sales process. As of now, they will be available for 90 days from activation, and will be launching very soon. If you already have a HubSpot account, you will be notified you within your portal as soon as the new features are live.

All HubSpot users—Free, Starter, Professional, and Enterprise—will now have access to the paid Meetings functionality, Quotes, E-Sign, and 1:1 Video creation tools free of charge. Here’s a breakdown:

• Meetings

  • Send a meeting link to prospects or customers that lets them view available time in your calendar and book virtual meetings with you.

  • All users will have access to paid meeting functionality, including up to 1,000 personal and team meetings links per portal.

• Quotes & E-sign

  • Create and share proposals online

  • Collect digital signatures for quotes and other documents.

  • All users will have access to unlimited quotes and 10 signatures per user per month.

• 1:1 Video Creation

  • Create and share personalized videos with prospects directly from the HubSpot CRM and track their performance.

  • Videos can be up to one hour in length.

If you’re new to handling these functions online, or integrating them with the digital elements of your business, these features are a great place to start. And if you find it at all intimidating, we’d be happy to talk you through it. Just drop your email below and we’ll reach out to set up a time.

For users already on paid HubSpot plans, they have expand your email and call capacity. For Marketing Hub Professional and Enterprise accounts, email send limits will be temporarily suspended, allowing unlimited sends. Customers with Sales or Service Hub Starter and Professional plans will have their call limits increased to 2,000 minutes per month.

2. Reduced pricing for the Starter Growth Suite.

Discounts may not seem like a public service, but this is a big one—they’re reducing the cost of their Starter Growth Suite from $112.50 USD/month to $50 USD/month for 12 months after purchase.

The Starter Growth Suite includes the Marketing, Sales, and Service Hubs all at the Starter level, which gives you 1000 contacts, 2 paid sales users (there’s no limit on people who can use your portal), and 2 paid service users. Given that each of these products starts at $50 alone, this is a massive number of free features:

If that list looks intimidating, here are a few ideas to start with:

• Add live chat to help your customers or clients navigate their changing needs

• Delegate the most common questions or requests to conversation bots

• Connect your Facebook Messenger to your CRM

• Create a shared inbox that your whole team can work from to handle 1:1 communication with customers, prospects, etc.

• Or, automatically assign incoming chats and emails to the right Sales Hub user (2 users included)

• Schedule emails in advance so you can batch your work

• Use email tracking and notifications to see if people received and opened your emails

• Save admin time using meetings scheduling

• Track sales rep productivity to improve your processes

• Use simple automation to cut time-consuming operational tasks from your sales process

• Log customer issues as service tickets, and split tickets into different pipelines (e.g. for different teams to handle)

3. Resources for continuing education and community support.

Lastly, HubSpot has always been heavily focused on community and network, so it’s no surprise that they included several information resources in their announcement. If you use HubSpot at any level, you won’t want to miss the new virtual HubSpot User Group (HUG) meetups. HUGs are a chance to talk with other users, HubSpot employees, and industry experts about how you’re using the tools and how you can get more out of them.

You may also want to check out their resource hub for remote work, which has content for everyone from beginners to experienced remote workers.

Just a reminder—we’re happy have a free consultation about getting started with HubSpot, including the free CRM. This form links directly to my calendar, so you’ll be able to choose a time immediately after submitting it.