Marketing contacts and 3rd party Email marketing app

[PwlAdmin]

Our current contract plan has a limit of 1,000 marketing contacts, but we expect to have more than 1,000 leads within a few months. However, upgrading the plan is not yet financially viable, so we're looking for ways to save costs. Recently, we found an external email marketing app like MailChimp that offers a more affordable option than HubSpot, even with over 1,000 contacts. If we integrate this app with HubSpot, can we disregard HubSpot's marketing contact limit? In other words, will HubSpot's contact limit still take precedence even if we integrate with an external app?

[PwlAdmin]

@karstenkoehler Thank you for the quick and detailed answer!

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @PwlAdmin,

These are the HubSpot tools that require marketing contact status: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/records/marketing-contacts#tools-that-only-work-with-marketing-contact...

Using a third-party email tool like Mailchimp to send emails does not require marketing contact status.

You would however still have to make sure that you're not accidentally setting contacts as marketing contacts, either through integrations, forms, or imports. Make sure to check your form settings...

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/records/set-contacts-as-marketing#automatically-set-contacts-as-market...

... and your integration settings under Settings > Integrations > Marketing contacts.

You could then use Mailchimp to send marketing emails to 1,000 contacts or more and stay within the 1,000 limit in HubSpot.

Let me know if you have any follow-up questions!