Not a big deal, and overall the post-sale experience was great!

When I spoke with them, I tried to explain that it’s nothing wrong with the product or methodology. I simply don’t need it because I’m technical enough to do the tasks manually. It doesn’t take me that long to copy a form template and create a call to action. Additionally, I don’t really need all the advanced reporting. The real value is in form submissions, not website traffic at this point. …trying to keep it real simple.

I’ll try to switch to a monthly billing cycle, paying the difference in fees accumulated so far. If I can’t, I’ll just keep using it to get my money’s worth. I just wish I had asked for the 30 day trial or to see if there were different billing cycles besides annual, to give me more flexibility.

To be honest, I’ve even sent people to your website who were a better fit for your services…

Take care…

In the end, it really is a great platform in total, and a good value given all the tools you get, plus support. I tried building out a duck taped system, and found it was more trouble than it was worth.

For me the real value is the system and education. Inbound marketing I’ve found is much more than just social media marketing, and hubspot is really the only platform that does a good job of having all the top tools, a methodology, and support / education in one place.

I would suggest, if your already stuck, make the best of it, use the hell out of the education materials and methodology. Keep in mind, you can use that information in any platform. Also, there are many users of Hubspot who use the tracking code in their WordPress site and leverage it that way. You don’t need to use the CMS, but it helps, plus you don’t need hosting.

Before you kill it off completely, go to your hubspot dashboard, and in the top right, you should find a link called:

“Jump to … Your HubSpot Training Center”

This is invaluable information, and must be done start to finish to find success. If you skip any of it, you will not success in inbound marketing. (This basic info will translate to any other CMS). Also plug into the community, they are also a valuable part of the Hubspot platform.

Note to Hubspot, this must be more emphasized in the dashboard!!!

In the end, the blog wranglers have no problem migrating people to WordPress.

Additionally, it’s not posting to my LinkedIn account and Google can’t even find my company if I type in the company name!
When I called to cancel the account and ask for a pro-rated refund (like many service providers allow – ie GoDaddy, etc), they refused. My account rep sent me to the collections manager, Rob. He refused to cancel the account too.

He said he was choosing to “honor the contract terms between the two firms”. Now I’m stuck with an expensive service not relevant for a small start-up company on a shoe-string budget.

In the end, you don’t need hubspot to particiapte in social marketing. It’s just a tool. The important thing is to do the activities, and the traffic will come. Don’t buy Hubspot! Do the tasks manually first. When it’s working manually…then use an marketing automation solution.

I keep thinking that I could create my own landing pages pretty quickly, since I come from a web design background….

I’m getting more and more familiar with Hubspot, and I’m grateful for what I’ve learned. I didn’t know anything about inbound marketing and social media before Hubspot.

However, I’m starting to wonder if I can conduct social media campaigns without Hubspot at first. My only goal is really to just write blog articles that have links to forms where people can ask for more info.

From what I’m seeing, the following can be done without HubSpot pretty easily:

1. Search the internet to learn what people are talking about.

2. Write articles and link your articles to their discussions. Post links to the blog in my social media accounts.

3. Add CTAs to get their contact info

4. Send e-mail drips to those who fill in the forms

5. Repeat steps 1-4 above to get more and more contacts. Some of the contacts will turn into leads.

I know that without Hubspot, I don’t have access to a lot of the reports. However, with our small marketing budget, I wonder if I should just generate traffic manually first. Then once I have enough leads, upgrade to the Hubspot solution, so that we can increase automation and get more access to reports.

Thoughts? Am I missing a big component to what Hubspot is offering?

I wonder if Hubspot might provide a refund for the remaining months I haven’t used…

Micky

If you’re ok with being very restricted with what your site/blog will look like, HS is probably easier to just write and click “post”. But if you do care, and you’re willing to learn even just a little bit, you’ll probably want to look at WP. I’m non-technical and use WP every day for a CMS and blog, and it’s been really easy to pick up.

The reason that I decided to chime in is that I work for Spectate; we’re an alternative to HubSpot that doesn’t require any particular CMS and we integrate with WordPress. Sorry I’m late to the party! spectate.com

I definitely see WordPress less and less as simply a publishing platform, but more and more as a development platform or a starting point from which to build and add on to based on whatever the business need is.

http://www.hubspot.com/services/colleen-coyne/

Good information about continuing education for your customers.

Question – some people have other needs and decide to migrate, some wish backup, some have other needs entirely and yet no data export is available. Is there any good reason why you don’t provide exportable data to your clients so that they have if for several purposes including:
1. backup
2. exit needs
3. re-use in other applications

Most major systems offer this type of data portability, but not Hubspot that I can see/find.

Aside: FWIW Colleen, your picture on your hubspot profile page is jammed up against your text paragraph in my browser. Easy fix if you wish I’d be happy to send the css to you or a screenshot to show what I am referring to.

First, thanks for being a HubSpot customer! I have been with the company for several years now and we certainly appreciate your business.

I want you to know that we are committed to providing ongoing education for our customers beyond your initial consulting or group training. Are you aware of “Content Camp”? (http://camp.hubspot.com/) – This is a series of weekly webinars specifically for HubSpot customers and there is no added cost. You can check out the details on the site, but I think you’ll find it helpful. Happy lead gen!

Another angle is that after a certain amount of self-paced learning clients reach a state of omniscience and shed the training wheels.

For me, hubspot is a combination of tools, and methodologies, that unless you are a inbound marketing expert, and a web developer, you may have difficulty finding elsewhere. My gripe about hubspot is that they do give you enough rope to hang yourself, because the $250 a month only includes self paced training and a group webinar. If you don’t follow the methods, you are basically spending $250 a month for a process that will fail. If you go with Hubspot, you need to commit to the process and methods and complete the on-boarding process.

Different question, why sign up for a service that locks in your data and causes you to have to hire a service like us. Granted we do a lot of other moves like mt (moveable type) where the data is not locked in because we can do it faster and we do it often vs a client doing it once so we have advantages, but why not select something that gives you your data when/if you want it?

That is the point for this example. It is true that in some cases clients are not using HubSpot because they don’t understand it. In other cases it is because they are busy running their business. Either way people soon realize that paying handsomely for something not being used is a waste of money and source of frustration in any economic time. In some cases a business owner can pay for someone to do it for them (professional services), rather than paying for the ability to do it all themselves (HubSpot). And in some cases a business owner will simply not do the “doing” no matter whether it is expensive or free to do it.

There are also those who sign up with HubSpot, learn a lot, understand the value and feel they can fly on their own using other tools that are available in the market place.

If you’re not going to use the capabilities that Hubspot is designed to deliver – an integrated online marketing platform – then you shouldn’t be using it.

If all you need is a CMS or blogging platform then there is a lot of choice / alternatives out there, WordPress being one of the best open source alternatives for sure

However if you understand the value of lead generation and nurturing (versus having a website and blogging) and need to measure you’re results, move quickly and without hassle, all of which is really a business driven application then you need to look at alternatives like HubSpot.