The invoice arrived in February: $48,000 for annual HubSpot renewal. Marketing automation, CRM, email campaigns, landing pages, workflows, analytics—the full suite.
Our marketing team was seven people. We were using HubSpot for email sends, basic landing pages, and lead tracking. Maybe 15% of what we were paying for.
The VP of Marketing had been advocating for months to "leverage more of the platform." We weren't using workflows. We weren't using sequences. We weren't using the social media tools or the content management system or the ad integration or the reporting dashboards.
"We're paying for a Ferrari and driving it like a Honda Civic," she said.
She was right. But the reason we weren't using more of the platform wasn't lack of effort. We'd tried.
We'd taken the training courses. We'd hired a HubSpot consultant ($8K for a month of "implementation support"). We'd assigned ownership of different platform areas to different team members.
The problem was simple: HubSpot was designed for companies with dedicated marketing ops teams. We had one marketing ops person, and they spent 80% of their time troubleshooting why workflows broke or campaigns didn't send correctly.
The platform's complexity was killing our marketing velocity.
So I proposed something that sounded insane: cancel HubSpot and rebuild our marketing stack from scratch using simpler, cheaper tools.
The VP of Marketing thought I was joking. The CFO thought it was worth exploring.
Six months later, we've cut our marketing automation spend by 70%, increased campaign velocity by 40%, and eliminated approximately twelve hours per week of "why isn't this working" troubleshooting.
The Complexity Tax Nobody Talks About
Here's what nobody tells you about enterprise marketing automation platforms: the cost isn't just the licensing fee. It's the ongoing operational tax of managing complexity.
HubSpot complexity tax at our company:
Workflow maintenance: Fifteen active workflows for lead nurturing, sales handoff, customer onboarding. Every time a field changed in our CRM or a campaign ended, we had to update 3-5 workflows. Each update took 30-45 minutes. That's 6-8 hours per month just keeping existing workflows functional.
Integration debugging: HubSpot connected to Salesforce, Slack, our webinar platform, our event platform, and our product analytics tool. These integrations broke regularly (sometimes HubSpot's fault, sometimes the other tool's fault, sometimes configuration drift). Each broken integration took 2-4 hours to debug and fix. That's 8-12 hours per month on integration firefighting.
Template troubleshooting: HubSpot's email templates used proprietary HubL templating language. Our designers could build beautiful emails in HTML/CSS. But translating them to HubL always introduced rendering bugs—especially in Outlook. Each campaign required 2-3 hours of template debugging. With 3-4 campaigns per month, that's another 8-12 hours.
Permission and access management: As team members came and went, managing HubSpot permissions became increasingly complex. Who can edit workflows? Who can send emails? Who can access contact data? Each new hire or departure required 30-60 minutes of permission auditing. That's another 3-4 hours per month.
Platform updates and feature changes: HubSpot regularly updates features and changes UI. Sometimes these updates broke our existing workflows or required retraining. Every quarter, we spent 4-6 hours dealing with platform changes.
Total complexity tax: 35-45 hours per month. More than one full-time employee just maintaining the platform.
And that didn't count the opportunity cost—the marketing campaigns we didn't run because the platform was too complicated to move quickly.
The Feature Bloat Audit
Before proposing we cancel HubSpot, I did an audit: which features were we actually using versus which were we paying for?
Features we used actively:
- Email campaigns (3-4 per month)
- Landing pages (6-8 per quarter)
- Lead tracking and scoring
- Basic CRM for contact management
- Form submissions
Features we used occasionally:
- Workflows (15 active, but mostly set-and-forget)
- Email sequences for sales (used by 2 of our 8 sales reps)
- Basic reporting dashboards
Features we never used:
- Social media management
- Content management system
- SEO tools
- Paid ads integration
- Advanced reporting and attribution
- A/B testing engine (we ran tests manually)
- Conversations and live chat
- Custom objects and advanced CRM features
- Salesforce-style pipeline management
- Video hosting and management
- And about forty other features we couldn't even name
We were paying for 80+ features and using maybe twelve of them.
The sales pitch for comprehensive platforms is that you'll "grow into" the features. But three years into our HubSpot contract, we still hadn't grown into them. And the features we were using had simpler alternatives at 1/10th the cost.
What We Replaced It With
The new stack took two weeks to implement and cost $14,400/year (a 70% reduction):
Email: SendGrid ($1,200/year)
- Handles all transactional and campaign emails
- Simple templating using standard HTML/CSS
- Reliable deliverability
- Easy integration via API
- No proprietary templating language to debug
Landing Pages: Webflow ($3,600/year for Business plan)
- Designers build pages visually without code constraints
- Fast page load times (critical for conversion)
- Easy A/B testing
- Custom domain support
- No waiting for HubSpot's page builder to load
CRM: Airtable ($2,400/year for Pro plan)
- Flexible data model that matches how we actually think about leads
- Easy to customize without technical overhead
- Simple integrations via Zapier
- Team members can actually understand the structure
Lead Tracking: Segment ($6,000/year)
- Tracks all user behavior across website and product
- Sends data to multiple destinations
- Clean, reliable tracking without the complexity
- Developer-friendly for our small engineering team
Automation: Zapier ($1,200/year for Team plan)
- Connects all the tools together
- Simple "when this happens, do that" logic
- No custom coding required
- Easy to troubleshoot when something breaks
Total: $14,400/year versus $48,000/year for HubSpot.
But the real savings wasn't the licensing cost. It was the 35-45 hours per month we got back from eliminating platform complexity.
The Migration That Actually Worked
The conventional wisdom about leaving marketing automation platforms: it's incredibly painful. Data migration is a nightmare. You'll lose historical tracking. Your team will mutiny.
Our experience was different. Because we weren't actually using most of HubSpot's features, migrating away from it was simpler than expected.
Week 1: Data Export
- Exported all contacts and deal data from HubSpot (standard CSV export)
- Imported into Airtable in about 4 hours
- Lost some custom field mappings, but 90% of important data transferred cleanly
Week 2: Tool Setup
- Set up SendGrid and migrated email templates (8 hours)
- Set up Webflow and rebuilt our 4 core landing pages (12 hours)
- Implemented Segment tracking (6 hours of developer time)
- Connected everything via Zapier (4 hours)
Week 3: Testing and Training
- Ran test campaigns through new stack
- Trained team on new tools (much faster than HubSpot training)
- Documented new processes
Week 4: Go Live
- Sent first campaign through SendGrid
- Stopped using HubSpot for new campaigns
- Maintained read-only HubSpot access for historical data (downgraded to free plan)
Total migration time: about 60 hours of work spread across two weeks. Compare that to the 35-45 hours per month we were spending on HubSpot maintenance—we recouped the migration investment in less than two months.
What We Lost (and Why It Didn't Matter)
The conventional argument for comprehensive platforms like HubSpot: integrated data, unified reporting, seamless workflows across marketing and sales.
Here's what we actually lost when we switched to a multi-tool stack:
Lost: Unified Reporting Dashboard
HubSpot had one dashboard showing email performance, landing page conversion, lead scoring, and CRM pipeline all in one place.
Our new stack requires checking three tools: SendGrid for email metrics, Webflow for landing page analytics, Airtable for pipeline.
Did it matter? Not really. We built a simple Airtable view that pulls the key metrics we actually care about. Takes 30 seconds to check. No more digging through HubSpot's overly complex reporting interface trying to find the one metric we need.
Lost: Automated Lead Scoring
HubSpot's lead scoring system automatically calculated scores based on behavior and firmographic data.
Our new approach: simple Airtable formulas based on the three behaviors that actually predict good-fit leads (product demo request, pricing page visit, case study download).
Did it matter? Actually, this improved our qualification. HubSpot's lead scoring was opaque—we never fully understood why someone scored 72 vs. 84. Our new scoring is transparent and based on behaviors we trust.
Lost: Complex Multi-Step Workflows
HubSpot workflows could trigger complex sequences: if lead does X, wait 3 days, check if they did Y, if yes send email A, if no send email B, then wait 7 days and reassign to sales rep based on territory rules.
Our new approach: Zapier automations handle simple triggers (form submission → add to Airtable → send welcome email). Complex logic happens in Airtable where we can actually see and debug it.
Did it matter? This was actually a benefit. Our old workflows were so complex that nobody fully understood them. When they broke, fixing them required hours of debugging. New automations are simple enough that anyone on the team can understand and fix them.
Lost: Sales and Marketing Platform Integration
HubSpot's CRM connected seamlessly with its marketing tools—complete visibility into how marketing touches influenced sales outcomes.
Our new approach: Airtable serves as the single source of truth for leads and deals. Zapier syncs relevant data to Salesforce for sales team's daily use.
Did it matter? Slightly. Attribution is a bit fuzzier. But we were never confident in HubSpot's attribution anyway—it over-credited marketing touches and under-credited sales effort. The new setup is less automated but more trustworthy because we manually review what matters.
What We Gained (That Nobody Expected)
The surprising benefits of moving to a simpler, multi-tool stack:
Benefit 1: Marketing Velocity
Before: To launch a new email campaign in HubSpot, we had to build the template (3 hours with HubL debugging), set up the list (1 hour navigating HubSpot's list logic), configure the workflow (1 hour), test send (30 minutes to troubleshoot rendering issues), schedule send (15 minutes).
Total time: 5.75 hours per campaign.
After: Write email content (1 hour), build template in SendGrid (30 minutes with standard HTML), upload list (15 minutes), send (5 minutes).
Total time: 1.75 hours per campaign.
We went from launching 3-4 campaigns per month to 8-10 campaigns per month with the same team size.
Benefit 2: Team Ownership
In HubSpot, only one person (our marketing ops specialist) really understood how everything worked. Everyone else felt like they needed permission and support to do anything.
In our new stack, every tool is simple enough that team members can own their areas independently. The content marketer owns SendGrid and can launch campaigns without technical support. The designer owns Webflow and can build landing pages without engineering help.
This distributed ownership made the team more self-sufficient and faster.
Benefit 3: Easier Troubleshooting
When something broke in HubSpot (workflow didn't trigger, email didn't send, lead didn't sync), debugging was a nightmare. Was it a permission issue? A workflow logic error? An integration problem? A HubSpot bug?
When something breaks in our new stack, the surface area is smaller. If an email doesn't send, it's a SendGrid issue. If a landing page doesn't convert, it's a Webflow issue. If a lead doesn't sync, it's a Zapier issue.
Smaller, simpler tools are easier to debug.
Benefit 4: Lower Training Burden
Onboarding someone to HubSpot took 2-3 weeks of training plus ongoing support.
Onboarding someone to our new stack takes 2-3 days. SendGrid is intuitive. Webflow is designer-friendly. Airtable is a spreadsheet on steroids. Zapier makes sense to anyone who understands "if this, then that" logic.
New team members contribute faster with less frustration.
The Real Reason Marketing Automation Platforms Are Struggling
After we made this switch, I started talking to other marketing leaders about their platform experiences. A pattern emerged:
Companies with dedicated marketing ops teams (3+ people): HubSpot/Marketo/Pardot makes sense. They have the resources to leverage the complexity and extract value.
Companies without dedicated marketing ops teams (0-2 people): Comprehensive platforms are usually overkill. The complexity tax exceeds the value gained from integration.
The problem: sales reps sell comprehensive platforms to both groups. The pitch is the same: "You'll grow into it. Start simple and add features as you scale."
But most companies don't scale their marketing ops teams proportionally to their platform complexity. They add more marketing programs, more campaigns, more leads—all on the same platform that's already too complex for their team to manage.
The result: marketing automation platforms that slow down marketing rather than speeding it up.
For teams managing GTM operations while trying to maintain velocity without dedicated ops headcount, platforms like Segment8 help PMMs coordinate cross-functional work without adding another complex system that requires constant maintenance—the middle ground between feature-bloated enterprise platforms and duct-taped multi-tool stacks.
The Question You Should Ask Before Buying
If you're evaluating marketing automation platforms, ask this question:
"How many hours per week will we spend maintaining this platform versus using it to market?"
If the honest answer is more than 20% maintenance, the platform is too complex for your team size.
A simple heuristic:
- 1-person marketing ops team: stick to simple, single-purpose tools
- 2-person marketing ops team: consider mid-tier platforms with limited feature sets
- 3+ person marketing ops team: comprehensive platforms might make sense
We had a 1-person marketing ops team trying to manage an enterprise platform built for 3+ person teams.
The platform didn't fail. Our team size just didn't match the platform's complexity.
What We'd Do Differently
Six months into our new stack, would we make the same decision again?
Absolutely.
The only thing we'd change: we should have done it two years earlier. We spent 24 months paying $48K/year for a platform we weren't using effectively, while spending 35-45 hours per month managing complexity instead of marketing.
That's $96,000 in licensing fees plus roughly 1,000 hours of team time that could have been spent on marketing programs instead of platform maintenance.
The switching cost was 60 hours of migration work and some temporary disruption.
We should have switched the first time we realized we were using 15% of what we were paying for.
The Uncomfortable Industry Truth
The marketing automation industry wants you to believe that comprehensive platforms are table stakes. That successful marketing requires unified data, complex workflows, and sophisticated attribution.
For some companies, that's true. For most, it's not.
Most B2B companies need:
- Reliable email sending
- Simple landing pages
- Basic lead tracking
- Clean CRM data
You don't need a $50K platform to do those four things well.
What you need is clarity about what actually drives your business, ruthless prioritization of the few things that matter, and tools simple enough that your team can use them without constant support.
The "comprehensive platform" approach optimizes for features. The "simple stack" approach optimizes for velocity.
For most early-stage and mid-market companies, velocity beats features.
And sometimes the best marketing automation decision is to stop using the automation platform.