The world of HubSpot licenses can seem complex at first glance, but with the right knowledge you can set up your company efficiently and avoid unnecessary expenses. In this podcast episode, Stefan Wendt and Domink Enzler show you how you can really save on your HubSpot licenses in 2025!
HubSpot licenses 2024/2025: The new model explained
HubSpot changed its license model about a year and a half ago, in 2024. Previously, licenses were strongly linked to the individual hubs (Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, etc.) and often a minimum number of licenses had to be purchased. This led to unnecessary costs, especially for smaller companies.
Today, HubSpot relies on a "seat-based" license model. This means that every user in your HubSpot portal is assigned a so-called "seat", which gives them certain rights and access to tools. The big question is always: Who needs which authorizations and which tools?
We will go through the different seat types and show you how to use them optimally.
1. the view-only seat: your free access to CRM
The view-only seat is a free HubSpot license and offers users read-only access to your HubSpot portal. As the name suggests, you can use it to view data, but not edit it.
Who is it suitable for?
- Management: To view reports and current data without being operationally active.
Accounting or other departments: If they need to check contacts or company data in the CRM from time to time.
- Team assistants or secretaries: To check information or set internal comments.
- External stakeholders/business partners: Who need to gain an insight into certain areas of the CRM.
What can you do with it?
- View reports, deals, contacts and other CRM objects.
- Add internal comments to objects.
- Activate email and calendar integration (Microsoft 365 or Gmail) to log emails in the system and use the calendar.
What is not possible?
- Make edits in HubSpot.
- Send sequences.
- Use or create templates.
- Execute automations.
- Your savings tip: Check exactly which employees really only need read access. Every view-only seat saves you money!
2. the core seat: the basis for operational work
The Core Seat is the first paid Seat variant and grants you editing rights for all purchased Hubs. It is your ideal companion if you carry out operational tasks in HubSpot but have no direct, daily customer contact that requires specific sales or service tools.
Who is it suitable for?
- Marketing employees: For creating workflows, emails, advertising campaigns, social media posts.
- Administrators (admins): Who manage and configure the system.
- Internal sales staff: If they support administrative tasks in sales, prepare offers or work in e-mail traffic that is not designed for high frequency. They do not necessarily need a sales license if they do not use specific sales tools.
- Employees without direct customer contact: Modify the data records or create reports.
What can you do with it?
- Editing rights in all acquired hubs.
- Modify data records and create reports.
- Create marketing workflows.
- Create emails, advertising campaigns and social media posts.
- Access and use templates (email, snippets) and tasks.
Create your own dashboards.
Important difference to the Sales Seat: Even though you can use templates and send emails, certain sales functions such as sequences or the digital signature are not included in the quotation tool.
3. the sales hub seat: your tool for direct sales
The Sales Hub Seat is specially designed for anyone who has daily and direct customer contact in sales. It gives you access to essential tools that make your day-to-day sales work more efficient.
Who is it suitable for?
- Sales representatives (sales reps): Those who are active in outreach and maintain direct customer contact.
- Managing directors: If they carry out sales activities themselves.
Which tools does he activate?
- Sequences: Automated and personalized email sequences for customer contact.
- Personal prospecting workspace: A central overview of all your sales activities.
- Playbooks: Interactive conversation guides for initial conversations or focus conversations.
- Forecasting: For sales planning and forecasting.
- Calling Feature: Direct calls via HubSpot.
- Digital signature (e-Signature): For quotations and contracts.
- HubSpot Meetings Tool: To allow external people to book appointments in your calendar. (Attention: The simple calendar integration of Outlook/Google also works with a free license, but the special HubSpot tool requires a sales license).
Your savings tip: Not everyone in sales necessarily needs a sales seat. If employees have more supportive or administrative roles, a core seat is often enough to save costs.
4. the service hub seat: your support for excellent customer service
The service hub seat is essential for anyone who has daily and direct customer contact in customer service. It offers specific functions for the efficient support of your existing customers.
Who is it suitable for?
- Customer service agents: Those who work in the helpdesk and process customer inquiries.
- Technical support staff: Who use playbooks for customer support.
Which tools does it unlock?
- Helpdesk access: To process tickets and communicate with existing customers.
- SLA tracking: To monitor service level agreements.
- Service playbooks: Guides for customer support on the phone.
- Live chat interaction: To interact with users on the website in real time and answer questions.
- Publish knowledge base articles: To create and manage self-service resources.
How to really save on your HubSpot licenses!
The key question when choosing the right licenses is always: "What does this person's day-to-day work look like?"
- Regular audit: Carry out a small audit of your existing licenses. Who has which seat and is it even necessary? Regularly check whether the assigned licenses still correspond to the actual tasks.
- Don't buy blindly: Don't blindly buy service or sales licenses for your entire team. If only five out of ten sales employees need a sales license, the other five can work with a core seat. This saves enormous costs!
- Flexible license allocation: You can switch licenses flexibly between users. For example, if you have an external sales team or part-time employees who work on different days, you can give a sales license to one person today and another tomorrow. HubSpot works according to the "high water mark" principle here: you book a maximum number of licenses and can then distribute them freely internally.
- Beware of account sharing: We strongly advise against sharing an account with several people (e.g. one sales license for the entire sales department). This is not only against HubSpot's terms of use, but also extremely risky! You will then not be able to track who carried out which action in HubSpot (e.g. wrote to contacts, deleted or exported data). This makes it impossible to assign responsibilities and poses a major security risk.
Conclusion - Your path to optimized HubSpot licenses
Choosing the right HubSpot licenses is crucial for your company's efficiency and costs. It's worth taking a close look and planning which licenses your employees really need.
Do you need support? We will be happy to help you structure your HubSpot licenses optimally and achieve cost savings. We would be happy to clarify your requirements in a non-binding initial consultation.
Meet us in person: We are out and about at events such as DMEXCO and Staffing Pro! Check Dominik's LinkedIn page for an appointment link.
Also listen to our podcasts: For a general overview of HubSpot pricing and the different hubs, we recommend our special podcast episode on this.