We’re a B2B SaaS company running a hybrid PLG and sales-led motion. Users self-sign up individually, but many belong to the same company or even the same sub-team within a large enterprise. We’re running into a few interconnected problems and want to know if anyone has solved this cleanly in HubSpot.
Our setup:
- Every user gets a unique internal ID on signup
- Users may belong to a company, which also has its own ID
- Some companies are subsidiaries or divisions of larger parent organizations (e.g., Apple East, Apple West under Apple Inc.)
- We want to track usage data (plan, activity, credits used, etc.) at the individual user level but roll it up to team, office, region, and enterprise levels
Problem 1: Multi-layer account hierarchy Standard parent/child on the Company object gets us one level. But we need 3-4 layers: Enterprise > Business Unit > Office/Region > Individual User. Has anyone built this with custom objects and relationship associations? How did you structure it without it becoming unmanageable?
Problem 2: Contact object doing too much Because we’re PLG-first, we’re tracking subscription lifecycle (free trial, paid, etc.) at the Contact level rather than the Deal object. This means the Contact is carrying both relationship data and commercial data. When one contact under a company converts, HubSpot’s automation updates the lifecycle stage for every contact tied to that company -- which is wrong. We only closed one user, not the whole account. How are others handling per-user commercial tracking without polluting the contact lifecycle?
Problem 3: Piping in usage data via API We push usage data (plan type, activity metrics, credits consumed, etc.) via API using our internal user/workspace IDs. The goal is for reps to see a full usage snapshot directly on the Contact record without jumping between tools. Anyone using a middleware layer or direct API writes to achieve this reliably? Any gotchas with field mapping at scale?
What we’re trying to get to: A rep opens a contact, sees their plan, usage, next step, and which team/office they belong to. A manager opens an account, sees total ARR, usage rollup, and expansion opportunity by business unit. No admin pinging required.
We’re 5 months left on our HubSpot contract and actively evaluating whether to rebuild here or migrate. Would love to hear from anyone who’s made this work natively in HubSpot before we make that call.