What’s one HubSpot workflow you wish you had built differently?

Marketing & Content Hub Tips, Tricks & Best Practices
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I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to keep adding workflows as a CRM grows, even when some of them could probably be simplified.

For people who have been using HubSpot for a while:

  • Was there a workflow you eventually removed or redesigned?

  • What made you realize it had become too complicated?

  • Do you prefer a few larger workflows or smaller workflows that each handle one job?

I’m especially interested in lessons from people who inherited an existing HubSpot portal rather than setting everything up from scratch.

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Hi @ApexSaad and Happy Thursday!

Great topic, thanks for starting this discussion on the HubSpot Community!

You’re absolutely right, as a CRM grows, workflows can easily become complex.

From what I’ve seen in the Community, many members often find that simplifying processes leads to better results.

One popular approach is to break down larger, multi-step workflows into smaller, more focused ones, which makes things easier to manage and troubleshoot.

I’d like to share this topic which can also help: " Working smarter, not harder - with Workflows! | Share your Workflows optimization tips ".

And the “Workflows Library” which is a catalogue of example workflows to help achieve your goals and master the workflows tool! That can be helpful too.

Also, I’d love to hear from our Top Experts: Hi @karstenkoehler, @danmoyle and @rebeccatravels from your experience, do you have any tips to share, please?

If anyone here has transformed their workflows after inheriting a HubSpot portal, I’d love to hear your strategies and tips! This is a great chance to share what’s worked well (or not so well) for you.

Looking forward to everyone’s insights!

Thanks so much and have a lovely day!
Bérangère

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Welcome to the Community @ApexSaad glad to have you here and active. And this is an interesting question. I’ve been using HubSpot so long it’s hard to pin down one specific workflow. But here’s what I’d offer as part of this discussion. I tend to prefer workflows that have one clear job, especially in an inherited portal. A workflow is probably too complicated when you can’t quickly explain its enrollment criteria, desired outcome, and what data it is allowed to change.

Before adding another branch, ask whether the logic belongs in an active list, a lead score, a property, or the data model itself. For example, if a workflow is trying to infer intent from a very specific page-view pattern, I’d consider a broader lead-scoring approach instead of making the automation increasingly precise and brittle.

For inherited portals, I’d audit workflows by purpose and impact: what enrolls, what gets changed, what records are created, and whether another workflow already owns that action. The biggest red flag is usually overlapping workflows writing to the same properties or records.

Thanks for the tag @Berangere - love these community conversations happening!

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In EdTech I’ve had some complicated workflows related to re-engagement: abandon account creation, abandon before taking a course, abandon course (with many types). We’ve kept some together to ensure they won’t get multiple too close together, but separate when there is no benefit to keeping together and makes it easier to QA.

Lead routing is one I regularly see over-engineered and nearly impossible to figure out what went wrong where- and reliably change contacts when people leave the company.