I agree with some of the commentators here - this isn’t really a ‘nice to have’ - it seems more like a bug. The problem is that the plugin is putting huge numbers of irrelevant contacts in to our CRMs, and Hubspot charges you per contact over a certain number. Other automation platforms charge you in more intuitive ways - e.g. by number of emails sent or some other metric that actually considers which contacts are ‘marketing active’ and which are just ‘contacts’. Personally, although we don’t use it, i feel that the Slack model of charging by activity is nearer to what Hubspot should be doing to stand itself apart from the competition.
I thought the whole reasoning behind Hubspot charging per contact, regardless of whether the contact is ‘active’, or not, was that we were being encouraged to keep really succinct and cleanly tagged lists of engaged contacts. The fact that this bug exists in the plugin seems to undermine that - Hubspot is bascially saying ‘track everyone you email’ unless you remember to swithch the button off everytime! And then very conveniently, Hubspot charges you for those contacts that are getting added!
My feeling is that we will need to refuse to pay the extra amount chargeble on our bill that is there as a result of our having gone over the contact thresholds. This bug makes is more difficult to automate certain aspects of our contact maintenance - as one poster mentioned above, they’re having to pay an external person to sort this out for them.
I really understand that the Hubspot team have 1000s of feature requests and bugs to deal with, and i also understand that ultimately the plugin is an extra that has been added in to the suite of inclusions to improve a product that we would have bought even if it didn’t include that plugin. However i feel that if you add a product feature that is inconsistent with something as core as your pricing/ commercial model, then this is a ‘bug’ just the same as a technology bug. Arguably it is more severe because it relates directly to something we’re being asked to pay extra for.
So either you switch off the plugin altogether and take the gamble that people won’t start moving to other automation platforms that offer this type off functionality bug-free OR you fix it quickly and leave the plugin on because you think it is important.
Thanks for reading.