HS standard lifecycle vs. custom lifecycle property?

[#1]

Do you use a custom lifecycle property or the standard HS one? Can we talk pros & cons?

We have a custom lifecycle property b/c HS standard doesn't fit the sales process. But I'm finding this is really limiting reporting capabilities.

For instance, it looks like I can't even begin to use the new multitouch attribution reporting b/c that's all built to only run on the HS standard lifecycle property.

And it seems I can't build my own lovely pipeline velocity report like this one bc, again, it's built to only run on the HS standard lifecycle property. And the funnel visualization option isn't even available when you start a custom report from scratch.

 

Maybe there are reporting workarounds here that I haven't found yet?

[#2]

A couple interesting historical posts on the topic to consider ...

- see Difficulty reporting due to deletion of Became x Lifecycle Stage Date property?

- see Best practices for lifecycle marketing approach (B2B existing customers)

Bottom line?

Depends on the specifics of your use case and the extent to which you need to rely on HubSpot reporting. We often see Salesforce-integrated HubSpot portals abandon HubSpot default Lifecycle Stages in favor of Salesforce reporting.

@bradmin may care to elaborate further.