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Recorded: Tuesday 25 February 2025 | Published: Friday 28 February 2025
Have you noticed that ‘deep’ is the new word for signaling ‘premium’ or ‘advanced’? Just look at all the latest AI tools: DeepSeek, DeepMind, DeepSearch, DeepResearch (and of course Deep Mind).
We’ve reached peak deep lol. Brace yourself for some ‘Deep’ naming in your favourite tools… eg Deep Breeze.
For more than a decade we built websites on WordPress.
Three years ago we switched to exclusively building websites on HubSpot.
There are lots of big reasons:
But there's also tiny reasons:
Whether you should switch from other platforms to HubSpot for your website depends on a bunch of considerations:
Reminder: we prepared a comprehensive overview of Content Hub last year (or watch it here). Also feel free to reach out to us if you’d like to discuss your specific situation.
Here’s a few quick items of interest we noticed:
Not much difference in HubSpot between:
versus:
Reporting path allows comparison on the graph, and list up to 100 without paging.
Forms path has a visual bar for the submissions which is nice.
A handy setting on the HubSpot extension in Google Chrome, for the Calendar.
Enabling the option will show some new options:
When you prepare for a meeting, the following screens show:
Question: How many of my HubSpot workflows call other workflows?
Answer: You can easily filter down using the Action types.
Another use case: workflows that set marketing contact status.
Speaking of building your website on HubSpot, here’s another tiny reason…
Managing website domain security items is simple in HubSpot.
You can set security protocols and headers per domain.
Here are the details. It is not readily noticeable but when you see it it makes a massive difference.
Note that if you use the quick filters and shift views the filter remains on/active. So don’t get caught out as it will alter the number you see on the left panel of the view.
I love this.
AccountScout is a beautiful 3rd party app by Stuart Balcombe that enriches company records:
It has a nice card that you can add to Company records as well - here's an example of using to enrich HubSpot's company record in our portal :-)
Stuart has a good walkthrough video here.
It essentially replaces the HubSpot Insights feature (that is being sunset in March). And it’s free (although he will hopefully be rolling out an optional paid pro tier as well soon).
I think this is better than HubSpot Insights, because of the card. You can easily see the properties, plus I love the quick links to website and social channels right there on the card.
I also found it was better than HubSpot Insights for some data points eg the FB link was correct in my testing, whereas I’ve often found it missing or wrong previously.
Definitely worth trying (or join the invite list).
I’ll discuss this further in our Thought of the Week later in Shot 11.
Reminder: that it's easy to copy out all the items in a HubSpot property list (eg a dropdown). Just use the 'Copy option labels' link in the Field type tab.
Very handy for those 'Can you send me that list of options in our Industry dropdown please' requests.
“Good, but doesn’t come out often enough.”
Further to our discussion of AccountScout (by Stuart) above I wanted to chat about HubSpot’s Breeze Credit approach.
I think HubSpot might have made a misstep charging for Breeze. At the same time, they've decided to take functionality out of HubSpot with the HubSpot Insights sunset (which was free). It's almost as though the perception from people is that they've removed something from HubSpot in order to force you to pay to get it back.
That's a bad look, even if it's not entirely true - because the data that powered HubSpot Insights is actually different from the Breeze data. But that's not the customers' understanding or perception.
The second thing is, by adding in all the Breeze and ClearBit stuff, they actually had an opportunity to further differentiate HubSpot from a bunch of other tools. I feel they should've made Breeze free at HubSpot Starter level and above - you just got Breeze enriching all your data for free.
I know everyone wants everything for free, and I'm actually pretty reasonable when it comes to paying for features. I think Breeze is one area where they've missed it, and I think this is going to bug them for years - until they possibly roll it back and make it free.
This echoes what happened with reporting. Long time HubSpot users may remember when they first added reporting - you had to pay for the reporting functionality. There are still parts of that model in the portal, but by and large, once you're on a certain tier, you get reporting - as much reporting and dashboarding as you need. I mean, it's not unlimited, but for most people, you just get it. You're not paying extra for reporting.
Here’s my point: it took them years to roll back that mistake. I think they've started down that same path with Breeze.
They had an opportunity to differentiate and they missed it.
But it doesn’t stop there, because it has opened up third-party tools. So you're seeing things like AccountScout, which is fantastic, kind of replacing the HubSpot Insights for free. It's all integrated in, so it's actually really nice. What you get for free with AccountScout is actually a better experience than you used to get with HubSpot Insights.
So HubSpot has opened the door to a whole bunch of competitors and third-party options. I think they’ll thrive for a little while, but then HubSpot will possibly wake up and use their pricing power to reduce Breeze to zero and kill those options.
So not only will they have rolled back and had to kind of reverse their decision, but they've actually pissed off a whole bunch of third-party developers in their marketplace - and they're always trying to promote their marketplace. So overall, I have a nagging feeling this might have been a bad go-to-market approach by HubSpot.
"Better to be disliked for who you are, than liked for who you aren’t."
Saw this on social somewhere (possibly it’s a version of the Andre Gide quote)
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HubShots, the podcast for marketing managers and sales professionals who use HubSpot, hosted by Ian Jacob from Search & Be Found and Craig Bailey from XEN and XEN Create.
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