Hubspot Insights sunsetted? Paid alternative?

[HanzWil]

I just saw a remark in our Hubspot account that Hubspot Insights is being sunsetted.  Breeze is supposed to replace the HI, but in order to use it you need to pay (a lot!).   

I'm really shocked that a feature can just be pulled like that and be replaced by a paid feature.   I've been looking, but it doesn't seem there is going to be a "breeze light" which would do the same thing has Hubspot Insights used to do.  

Is everybody just fine with this? And better yet: is this normal behaviour for Hubspot to just pull features away - even from enterprise packages - ?

[Lucila-Andimol · Accepted solution]

Hi @HanzWil 

Yes, HubSpot insights is being replace by Breeze intelligence enrichment

as mentioned in this document.

But Breeze is a much more robust tool now, you not only get data enrichment

but a lot of AI features.

If you compare the cost of Breeze with other tools,

and having it in the same UI without having to go outside HubSpot

the cost is quite competitive.

you can checkout all Breeze functionalities here

hope this helps

[ZoeBarber]

Yes, this is really poor form from HubSpot. When I read the email I couldn't believe it. The basics of HubSpot being taken away and put under Breeze Intelligence? HubSpot is already in the higher price range for the market. First the seat system now this. Very disappointed.

[CBerse]

Update: In true HubSpot fashion, they have listened to their customers and are in the process of bringing back Company Names and logos for free. Additional data points will still require Breeze Intelligence credits, but, this is a welcome development. Thanks product team!

[stuartbalcombe]

Definitely a big win for HubSpot users (especially on the logo as there is no way to update it via the API so 3rd party apps would be stumped).

Appreciate you being a really early user of AccountScout (free company insights alternative) to keep enriching the additional data points previously being added by HubSpot insights for free.

[PZito]

No I'm not okay with this, now my reps will have to manually create companies anytime a lead with a domain registers. This is pretty basic CRM functionality and it's BS they want to charge us for this. This is going to significantly slow down our reps selling process unless we choose to opt into what will most likely be an expensive add-on.

[stuartbalcombe]

This is definitely a common sentiment! Based on the community reaction I decided to build a direct (and free) replacement for HubSpot insights. 

AccountScout is free and automatically enriches the same 22 company properties Company insights did using the same default HubSpot properties so it just works when you install it.

Added a longer reply to this thread with more details too!

[cjonesy]

I agree -- this is very aggravating to strip out existing features and then "upgrade them" with extra functionality we don't need just so you can charge us extra. I'm fine if you want to offer additional features for extra money, but this approach really hurts the trust I have in HubSpot.

[MWard7]

I just found out about this myself - we do sales lead assignment based on MANY of the fields that HubSpot Insights populates for us (location, company size, etc). Is no other company going to have the same issue we are - no one with bandwidth to manually populate these details and can't afford the breeze pricing?? This is going to be a huge impact for us.

[NSegol]

You are not alone! This is crazily unreasonable. I have a multi-year contract with an allocated budget and is expected to pay more for the same functionality. 

[LMcilveen4]

This is very unfortunate and quite poor form. Simple Company Name population was a great differentiator from other CRMs and a big-time saver. For my smaller clients, adding Breeze is cost prohibitive given it provides limited other benefit to their current sales and marketing tactics.

Hubspots manual data entry is slower than the likes of Pipedrive which combines the basic primary data entry across objects. Having the Company data prepopulated offset that.

This really bugs me

[CBerse]

I completely agree. HubSpot needs to fix this. Upcharge for additional enrichment from Clearbit datapoints but now starting to charge for basics like Conpany Name, address and industry is not the right way to approach this at all

[JJeffery]

Im completely agree with you @HanzWil. @Lucila-Andimol I completely understand your sentiment re the breeze being competitive with other tools. However, to remove the insights is deeply frustrating. The little things like adding the company name and domain off the back of the email domain, of the created contact, feels backwards to me. Forcing people to upgrade to a tool, no matter how powerful or not doesn't feel right. 

[Lucila-Andimol · Accepted solution]

Hi @HanzWil 

Yes, HubSpot insights is being replace by Breeze intelligence enrichment

as mentioned in this document.

But Breeze is a much more robust tool now, you not only get data enrichment

but a lot of AI features.

If you compare the cost of Breeze with other tools,

and having it in the same UI without having to go outside HubSpot

the cost is quite competitive.

you can checkout all Breeze functionalities here

hope this helps

[BérangèreL]

Hi @HanzWil, @Lucila-Andimol, @JJeffery, @CBerse, @LMcilveen4, @MWard7, @cjonesy, @PZito, @ZoeBarber, @dmartone, @ABrekstad8, @DRoberge,

Thank you for sharing this feedback. I hear and feel the frustration you are sending.

I'm sorry to hear about your experience regarding this.

I would like to apologize for the frustration, data issues, and business impact this has caused.

I'd like to thank you for sharing your valuable feedback! This means a lot to us.
I have shared it internally to bring more visibility to it.

As a temporary solution, if you send me via private message your Hub ID, we could turn on HubSpot Insights for you until it’s sunset.

Thanks.

Best,
Bérangère

[HanzWil]

Hi,

That might be, but still a feature is removed. If you ask me the right way would have been to offer a "light" version with the same features as now with Hubspot Insights and a paid version for all the options.  Now they just remove a functionality which was actually part of the product and contract when we bought this service. 

What if they would do this with the e-mail marketing, just removing it. And then say we got a fancy new email tool but you now need to pay extra for it to use it, or you can't send any e-mails anymore. 

[dazza]

I cannot agree more. Clearly it's harmful to yank core functionality that most customers would have relied on and replace it with a paid feature. I'm pretty sick of receiving the happy news that product XYZ now has AI features if only we're willing to upgrade to the new package, but at least that makes it a choice for us. I'm not sure I've ever seen a company extort their customers as HubSpot has done here, though, by sunsetting a core feature in order to force the upsell.

Customer relations 101 - Offer an optional upsell that does something better. Don't cripple your current customers by yanking core features to basically force us to pay more for something we didn't want!!