HubSpot Ideas

dan_sitton

What happened to Prospects?

Why does HubSpot no longer track pages visited on a company level in the Prospects tools? That was one of the most valuable parts of the Sales platform, and without that tool I am less likely to recommend Sales to one of our clients. I will send them to Leadlander instead - as they are still offering this information.

 

HubSpot could easily work around the GDPR but it appears that they are more interested in internal ease then building a product that continues to fulfill the needs of customers. This is the second time in two years (technically the third, if you count the Events beta that never worked right) that HubSpot has stripped down the Prospects tool. Why is HubSpot so against smart prospecting? Are they trying to push sales back into the cold-calling dark ages for new customer prospecting?

83 Replies
Glenn1
Member

Tracking visitors is the main reason we use HubSpot. We have a paid account, and this has been a very powerful tool.

 

HubSpot folks: I have been a brand advocate for you, recommending you to many of my own customers, who are also business people seeking business solutions. This has been one of the main features that brings value. I will start working with our marketing company to find an alternate now, but if you bring back this piece, it will make our life easier.

Thanks,

 

jameshammond
Member

I could not agree more.  This is is a cop out and a vitally important part of the product for me.  Very disappointing.

nphillippi
Participant

I am also disappointed that the page views are gone in prospects.  Like the rest of the feedback you are getting, I am really tired of HubSpot taking away features that we use ALL the time.  Another example was the ability to go to a website and see demographic data on the company based on the domain.  

 

Hubspot is making the software less attractive to me by the day.  When I am asked if we want to use our corporate platform of Act-On and Dynamics CRM, I have less reasons to stay with Hubspot.  

 

We use SalesPro and it still does not work.  In addition, Prospects in the new menu format does not load ANY data on our account. 

 

Really, really tired of this. 

vbijay
Member

Very disappointed to hear this - and I dont remember seeing any notifications from Hubspot about this. This Prospects tool was decent but needed some enhancements, but instead the capability has been pulled out.

 

Hubspot website visitor reports (now called Traffic activity) is just unusable - what we need is list of companies in a geography that visited our website, and when you select a company, we need to see activity list from the visitors belonging to the company.

 

Clicky.com does a better job of prospect reporting, and it costs just $120 per year. (but there's no HubSpot integration)

Pim
Member

I'm still so terribly annoyed over this ridiculous decision by Hubspot. 

nphillippi
Participant

This is the response I received from Support: 

 

Hello Nancy,

 

Thanks for reaching out to HubSpot Support and taking the time to provide this feedback on the recent prospects tool updates. This is a very valid concern and one that we have received from many customers. Our product team is aware of the demand for this feature to be returned but I will share that another customer has reached out. I'm sorry for how this update has impacted you!

To provide you with some more contact around this change, the prospects tool page activity data was being collected without direct consent from your website visitors, making this data not 100% GDPR compliant. For this reason, the decision to remove the prospects recent activities feature was executed for the time being. There is currently no plan in place to re-instate this feature but if this does occur, you should see it on our product updates page, here. The feature was not removed due to your specific GDPR compliance or other HubSpot customer portals, rather to ensure that HubSpot's analytics tracking and your data itself is compliant.

The reason this change was implemented across all prospects, not only EU based IPs is because the IP address is not a reliable identifier of a person’s actual location or citizenship e.g. if someone is using a VPN for example, it might not be their actual location. Also, if your audience is one that frequently flies for business, there is a chance that an EU citizen being in America and not seeing the privacy display as he/she should. There is no way for HubSpot to tell who's information we can share in the Prospects tool without their consent based on IP.

 

I know this is making a large impact on your use of HubSpot. If you would like to discuss this change further, I'd recommend reaching out to your account manager. If you need their contact details, please let me know.

 

I hope this helps to clarify, do let me know if you have any further questions on this at all, always happy to help.

 

Kind Regards,

Tricia Reinken

Glenn1
Member

Question regarding this comment: "To provide you with some more contact around this change, the prospects tool page activity data was being collected without direct consent from your website visitors, making this data not 100% GDPR compliant."

Can Hubspot cover themselves by adding in a certification that our business does not solicit any business from Europe and therefore are not subject to GDPR rules?

 

MissyBeynon
Participant

@Glenn1 I work for an insurance agency that can't write policies outside the USA, but they still won't let us be exempt from GDPR.  It's everyone or no one with them.

Demo
Member | Partner

The GDPR is applicable when working with data from people, I do not understand why it puts companies in the same place. An ip of a worker of a company IS NOT GDPR DATA.

DebbieF
Participant

Just as an update, we are now using NetFactor's VisitorTrack.  In addition to page views, they provide additional details about companies that visit your site, such as where they are located, how many times they've visited your site, etc. and they also have an option to search for possible contacts via their integration with Zoom.  They have a lot of flexibility with reporting, too, so for example you could run a report on all companies that have viewed a particular page on your website and when.  So far we are thrilled with the data we are receiving and our future with HubSpot remains to be seen.

dan_sitton
Contributor

Hi @DebbieF, what is the pricing for Netfactor's VisitorTrack tool? I can't seem to find it on their site.

dan_sitton
Contributor

.

MissyBeynon
Participant

@dan_sitton I had to click on the trial button to get to a pricing page, but here it is: https://app.visitor-track.com/PricePlan (And I know their service works because someone called us about an hour later.)

nphillippi
Participant

Our Corporate office uses Act-on and they have been pushing us to get on their account.  I have pushed back for about a year.  I have a call with Corp tomorrow to review it again.  We have too many websites - we are consolidating, but that takes time.  I have loved Hubspot, but I am very tired of the constant changes, and the are not always positive changes.    

jameshammond
Member

This is another tin eared move from Hubspot.  I may not add compneies to my list of prospects directly from this list, but it is enournously useful to me to see the patterns of heavy visitors from a given domain.  The justification is classic product manager doublespeak.  Ugh.

nphillippi
Participant

To HubSpot:  I don't have the budget to add yet another tool.  I appreciate your response and input.  Thank you! 

LizO
Top Contributor | Elite Partner

@bradmin, you mentioned there were already posts in the ideas forum for HubSpot to bring this feature back?  I can't find one in ideas.  I'll make it, just don't want to miss one that already has votes.  

In full agreement with other users that this needs to be brought back.  

bradmin
Key Advisor

Apologies, @LizO, I can't find anything either, and I'm not sure what I was referring to. If you're not seeing a match on the ideas board, please don't let me stop you from creating one. 

nphillippi
Participant

Maybe Hubspot should lower their price to accommodate this loss...and the fact that we have to FIND another solution.  Still very aggravated by this removal and their 'don't care' attitude.