Will basic workflow (not Marketing, just basic Contacts field sync) stop when my trial is finish

[spnc]

So after finally getting HubSpot to auto-sync my Contact's Companies and Companies fields.

1. by doing this: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/CRM/Is-there-any-free-way-to-auto-sync-associate-in-real-time-my/td...

2. and then this: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/CRM/Is-there-a-way-to-sync-Company-Name-of-Companies-with-Company/m...

I finally have a workable HubSpot with auto-synced Contacts list, and associated Companies list.

I'm on Pro trial as I wanted to trial/experience Starter plan (20 eur/month if paid annually, or 30 eur/month) and support couldn't give free trials of the Starter plan, but only to the whole Pro package for 14 days.

And then comes the horror story I had not anticipated: everything works finally fine, I go to Workflows page and it seems that after the trial will be finished all the Workflows will be removed?? And that only CMS Hub Pro plan will maintain this very simple automation, the only thing that I need, to make HubSpot actually working as it should in the first place without this?? For 4'800 EUR/year??

Please tell me this is not true.

I only need that feature for 20/30 eur a month, no more, as freelance (as well as the extra 10+ columns, which is why I thought of upgrading to Starter in the first place, since I love to use hundreds of customer property columns). I don't need the rest. There's no way such a basic missing feature, which already forces me to paying 20/30 eur a month (I'm fine with that, it's around what I used to pay with Airtable), would now force me to paying a few hundreds a month. I'm a freelance, not a Fortune500 company, neither a scaleup/startup.

Please tell me I'm mistaken! If not, I can already say goodbye to my plans with Hubspot... 😕

Thanks.

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

@spnc I can certainly understand your frustration, there was a time when workflows were included with starter, I think that changed when they restructured the pricing to include a free tier and added advanced capabilities (also around the time associations were added as properties).

I do wish there was a base level of automation available, even if there were a limit for the number of workflows and/or actions.

I understand you want to keep your contact records up to date - the "company name" property goes back long before associations, I didn't do a good job of explaining 'why' most starter accounts don't use this anymore...

It's because "associated company" is now an option, which didn't exist originally.

You can filter from this property, so there really isn't a need to manually or automatically populate the "company name" property for a contact anymore:

Does this property "Contact --> Company (PRIMARY)" not work for your use case? If so, I'd love to understand why so I can better understand how you're using the company name data.

[Lucila-Andimol]

Hey @spnc 

yes, after the trial ends the PRO features become inactive

you might see them but cannot edit or run them.

If you are only evaluating PRO for the workflows

and not being able to pay the licences for the PRO price

you can always evaluate 3rd party tools like zapier and others

that depeding on your volumen of info to process

might be more accesible to you.

Check out the marketplace for apps in automation.

Hope this helps

[spnc]

Thanks for the answer.

I would like to note that this is absoluty ridiculous of a price plan. I've never seen this elsewhere. The pricing structure is nonsense.

But I appreciate your answer.

I'm gonna have to spend a few more days wasting my time on trying to set this up with Zapier indeed, since your product is not workable without upgrading to 4'800 EUR a year.

I think it should be advertised on your website that below Pro (4'800 EUR a year), HubSpot is just not usable as a Contacts list/CRM.

[Lucila-Andimol]

As a Platinum Solution Partner (not working in HubSpot but Serving clients that use HubSpot)

let me tell you that even with Starter licences you still get a lot of value from the tool.

You can still do some basic automations 

and not only have your contacts database/CRM, but emails, landing pages, connect ads accounts, have a tickets management system, a sales pipeline to follow up opportunities and much more.

It just depends on the expectations you have

and the resources you are willing to spend as a freelancer.

Also, There are more than 1500 apps that you could integrate with HubSpot to solve different needs and that may work for you perfectly before evaluating passing to a PRO licence.

This is generally the way to grow that we suggest to some independents or small business clients.

You can always talk to a HubSPot sales rep to clear all doubts and get more advise on whats better for you.

hope this helps

[spnc]

Ok well I need to see what happens when the Pro trial is over in 5 days, until then it's hard to tell if this will still work.

"let me tell you that even with Starter licences you still get a lot of value from the tool. You can still do some basic automations"

The problem is what you're saying here is not very clear, precise. It doesn't really tell me what I will get from the actualy Starter plan. HubSpot website is not great at comparing all the plans and features very thoroughly. And since there's no free trial on the Starter plan, it's hard to tell either.

Maybe I'll get the Starter plan in 5 days to see by myself, but I want you to give my money back in case I notice immediately that the automation is gone.

So to sum up:

• if the workflow still works with the Starter plan, I'll be fine and go ahead with the plan.
• if the workflow doesn't work with the Starter plan, I will want my money back
• and if any case I will create a separate ticket to inquire about which of the 1500 apps can do this job, because this is also not very clear

Thanks

[Jnix284]

@spnc The pricing comparison page shows that workflows are only included in Pro (up to 300) and only basic automations are included with Sales Starter (for deal stages)

As shown in your other post, this setting will allow you to create auto-associations for contacts to companies based on their email domain:

This automation will NOT be lost when you end the free trial for Pro and switch to Starter.

The second post where you built the workflow to associate between the contact and company record can be done with Associ8 that allows 50 free associations a month - if you're a freelancer, this should be more than enough, if not, you'd have to either start a paid plan for the integration or bump up to Pro for one Hub.

The workflow you've built will be lost if you end the Pro trial.

I'm just trying to understand why the second item is so critical for you - I have hundreds of accounts where this is not configured and nothing in their process is broken as a result.

With contact  records being so customizable to surface information from other objects (like company) directly in the contact sidebars, I haven't had a need to do this type of automation in a very long time.

Hope this helps clarify what will happen when the trial ends!

[spnc]

Thanks for the lenghty and detailed answer Jennifer, this adressed each point specifically:

- "This automation will NOT be lost when you end the free trial for Pro and switch to Starter."

Yes, good, I didn't expect this one to disappear actually. I just mentioned it to put things in context.

- "The second post where you built the workflow to associate between the contact and company record can be done with Associ8 that allows 50 free associations a month - if you're a freelancer, this should be more than enough, if not, you'd have to either start a paid plan for the integration or bump up to Pro for one Hub."

Thanks, yeah Associ8 seems to be the most used plugin that I've come across searching around here and on Reddit. I still find it quite odd that Hubspot, which has been leading this market for 10+ years, is still unable in 2024 to provide such as entry-level feature to all (paid) customers. It's so strange to have to use a third-party app for associations, when associations are managed by HubSpot themselves in the app? I'd really love to understand this one day, from a company software design and process perspective. I assume the reason is that you prefer to focus on developing the product as a whole (?) which is strange to me I don't see many many features and novelties being developed by HubSpot on its platform over the years? (I might be wrong)

Anyway, people seem to be happy with Associ8, even though they describe it like me as a "workaround". 

"This should be a HS feature but unfortunately, it is not"

"Associ8 works. It solves a problem we've had with HubSpot of otherwise being unable to disassociate contacts from companies that they were getting auto-associated with"

"it takes time to process all the associations that we require up to date. We have more than 1K records to associate daily, and sometimes it takes more than 1 hour to associate a record." - Okay in my case I don't need it to be in sync in the next 5 seconds necessarily, so I can live with it, but again, I find it strange.

Also you said:

"I'm just trying to understand why the second item is so critical for you - I have hundreds of accounts where this is not configured and nothing in their process is broken as a result."

It is critical as I'm trying to build a 100% accurate representation of my Contacts, and the Companies they work for is part of that snapshot. It doesn't 'break' anything but without this automation it defeats the point of having a CRM's Contact list in the first place.

I'll give it a try on the free plan when the HS plan free trial comes to an end. I definitely need more than 50 Associations, as I said, I have thousands of contacts to insert in my Contacts list, so I guess 500 is a good starting point (49 USD a month, or 41 if paid early). And probably will need the Pro one (99 USD a month, or 84 if paid early) with Custom Objects and 5'000 in a few months to level up.

Still expensive (as I also need to add the 30 USD monthly of HubSpot plan, or 20 if paid yearly) as it's 84 + 20 = 104 USD a month to have what I think HubSpot should be offering to all paid customers for say, half the price (50 USD).

Just my two cents. Thanks.

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

@spnc I can certainly understand your frustration, there was a time when workflows were included with starter, I think that changed when they restructured the pricing to include a free tier and added advanced capabilities (also around the time associations were added as properties).

I do wish there was a base level of automation available, even if there were a limit for the number of workflows and/or actions.

I understand you want to keep your contact records up to date - the "company name" property goes back long before associations, I didn't do a good job of explaining 'why' most starter accounts don't use this anymore...

It's because "associated company" is now an option, which didn't exist originally.

You can filter from this property, so there really isn't a need to manually or automatically populate the "company name" property for a contact anymore:

Does this property "Contact --> Company (PRIMARY)" not work for your use case? If so, I'd love to understand why so I can better understand how you're using the company name data.

[spnc]

Yes you're right, the Contact => Company (Primary) is the auto-generated property by HS of the Company's page related to the Contact's Company.

But this is very limited, as, if I change the email of an existing contact, it doesn't automatically (1) change the Contact => Company (Primary) value in Contacts because (2) it doesn't add the new Company of the existing Contact in Companies.

Only if I create a new Contact (say same person, same name) with the new Company, only then it logically creates the new Company entry in Company and Contact => Company (Primary) is correct and finally up-to-date in Contacts then.

Which is a big issue when my Contacts change jobs (because I saw they changed their title on LinkedIn for instance). Because by faking the creation of the same contact, under a new contact with different #ID number, it would ruin any further workflow and marketing history/interaction with that particular Contact?

So I guess the only way is to pay. For now I don't wanna pay too much so I will do more manual stuff like creating new entries when my Contacts change their job for instance (which is not ideal, again, as it entails manual work + creating new Contact everytime ruins the history/marketing automation with that particular Contact/#ID?).

After a while, I will upgrade to Associ8, or Zapier, or work with the API myself to code my own automations for less of a cost. Because I don't think this unique yet critical use case I have (auto-syncing Contact's Companies) is worth 100 bucks a month.

At this rate, I would even consider coding my own CRM after all for free, since the CRM Suite starter doesn't seem to offer any other benefit vs. the free plan than having more than 10+ custom properties?

"@spnc I can certainly understand your frustration, there was a time when workflows were included with starter, I think that changed when they restructured the pricing to include a free tier and added advanced capabilities (also around the time associations were added as properties).

I do wish there was a base level of automation available, even if there were a limit for the number of workflows and/or actions."

That's correct... *sigh*

Thanks for your help.

[Jnix284]

Re: changing email for existing contact

This really depends on whether you were selling to the "individual" or the "business" - as a best practice, if someone leaves a company and your communications were related to that company, you wouldn't want to update that record to their new company or it could cause the deals, meetings, etc. to not be accurate.

If you're selling to individuals, it's a little different and I would say "company" is significantly less important overall.

I would create a new contact with their new email, and if you feel you need to combine, use the merge contacts tool to clean up your data every quarter or so.

or...if you know you want the same record, create their new contact, merge with their old, and everything is up to date.

I tagged you on another post about using associated company in reporting, just thought it might be helpful.

I don't know that you'll need to code your own CRM, if you want to share more about your specific use case, I'd be happy to share recommendations for how I would leverage HubSpot's available tools. It's possible you're trying to do something "the hard way" and it could be simplified.

[spnc]

That's a good point thanks.

I also wanted to ask you if you tried the Zapier route, as it's relatively cheaper than Associ8, would it be worth it for me to spend some time auomating stuff with Zapier, or is Associ8 more suitable here because they're specifically geared toward HubSpot?

Do you have practical experience with Zapier on HubSpot? Cheers.

[Jnix284 · Accepted solution]

@spnc I know some people that never use zaps and some that swear by them.

I mostly get frustrated with them, I can get them configured initially and when it gets disconnected or doesn't do what I want I go a different route instead of fiddling with it.

It would definitely be worth exploring if it's possible, especially since it's a smaller lift and less expensive to test.