Is Hubspot pricing really suitable at all for smaller non profits with small budgets?

[KiG]

Ourselves we are a paddle club that started to test out HubSpot marketing emails and we have ended up with starter licenses for various modules since those comes at a decent price.

However we quickly found that HubSpot has bundled quite basic features requiring Professional licenses or higher. When looking at pricing for Pro even with non profit discounts they are way from what smaller non profits can afford. We really wonder if HubSpot truly support non profit society apart from bigger non profits with a lot of money and with employees stuff which is not where most non profits are. Non profits    mostly have voluntaries and not fixed employees so personal user accounts compared to usage is still espensive. Non profits don't do sales and business at scale, we do good for society being non paid.

An example a little aside.

yesterday one even enforced 2 factor MFA even for small non profits. I live security but this is overkill and increases admin and reduces our non profit use of HubSpot.

I really think it is time HubSpot look into how well they address the non profit market. If it stays as now at least we and others like us will need to look for cheaper and more flexible alternatives. We like HubSpot, question is if HubSpot wants to attract smaller non profits.

[MHebel]

Even Salesforce offers 10 full free licenses for nonprofits

[NadineLiauw]

Hi! I am responding to this post as my "homework" because my business is also a private social club and I am brand new to community. To be honest, I am quite overwhelmed but I know it is all a learning process and hope to be comfortable in this as we get going.

[danmoyle]

Welcome to the HubSpot Commonuty @NadineLiauw ! I think you'll find this a very welcoming, uplifting Community full of helpful folks. Don't be afraid to reach out, follow active members, and converse! 😊 

[SarahX]

I have to agree, we started out with the free version and did a pretty good job of making the most of it, even going as far as having seperate hubs for different kinds of contacts (e.g. an instance for clients a different one for volunteers and yet another for marketing). We have definitely got a lot out of the bump up to the paid version, we use ticket pipelines and automations for all they are worth and we can now have all our contacts in the one hub, but I do find that every time I want to try something new I hit a wall because every feature seems to require a different licence. It quickely becomes unafordable for a small to medium non profit organisation on a budget.

But as Dan mentioned above you either pay with your time finding work arounds or you pay with your finances. And sometimes you don't have a choice of which road to go down.

[danmoyle]

That's a fair question, @KiG. While I don't know HubSpot's internal workings or long term strategy, I'm both a long time user/fan, and also a nonprofit person outside of work. I can tell you based on my experience, that in smaller nonprofits I work with, we use other solutions. It pains me to say so as a HubSpot advocate, but it's the real world situation. We either use nonprofit-specific software, or we use as much free stuff as we can and pay with our time instead of our finances. So I don't think you're alone. 

And I personally don't fault HubSpot for it. Nonprofit marketing and CRM isn't their core business, it's a bonus that they can support some nonprofits. I get that. 

So while I don't have an answer, I wanted to let you know that you're not alone in seeing the limitations. 

[AMarealle]

Hey Dan, I was wondering if could you provide a list of some of there other programs you use for Nonprofit organisations?

[danmoyle]

Hi @AMarealle. A few of the other tools/programs I've used include: 

• MailChimp
• Squarespace
• WordPress
• Spreadsheets
• Network for Good
• HootSuite
• Buffer

A few things we've not used but would find value in HubSpot would be a CRM and analytcis. 

[AMarealle]

Thank you very much @danmoyle