Hubspot is one of the most used CRM platforms in the world. But it is also good for creating chatbots?
In this Hubspot review I will cover the Hubspot chatbot features, pros and cons, and pricing options. And I will share whether you should use it or not.
Let’s get started!
Our Verdict
Our Verdict
Would I recommend using HubSpot chatbot for your chatflow automations? I would say – no.
If you’re already using HubSpot, then you might as well use its chatbot. If you’re not, and you’re looking for a new chatbot platform, there are better options out there.
HubSpot is honestly too expensive for what it offers in terms of chatbots. The verdict might be different if I was talking about the platform as a whole, but as a chatbot, it’s a no from me.
Pros
- Easy to Use
- Unlimited custom fields & tags
- Publish your chatbot on websites & Facebook
- Built-In Live Chat
- Integrations with Zapier & Make
Cons
- Too basic features for the price you pay
- No keyword-recognition or AI
- Need to pay extra for integrations & analytics
- No marketing possibilities on Facebook
- No default bot analytics


Table of Contents
What is HubSpot?
HubSpot is an all-in-one CRM platform for growing your business.
The Hubspot Platform contains marketing, sales, service, operations, website-building and chatbot software you need to grow your business.
But this isn’t a full Hubspot CRM review. In this review, I will focus mostly on their chatbot feature for creating chat automations.
Using the HubSpot Chatbot Builder
Setting up a chatbot in HubSpot is fairly simple. In Hubspot, your chatbot consists of Chatflows. When you create your chatflow, HubSpot first asks on what channel you want to create it:
Once you’ve decided on the channel, you can get started with one of the HubSpot templates or start from scratch:
In this screen you can choose between “Live Chat and “Knowledge base + live chat”, and you have four kinds of pre-built chatbots available (which automatically gives you a preview on right):
- Concierge bot
- Qualify leads bot
- Meetings bot
- Offline bot
When you click on one of those and go “Next”, a chatflow is automatically made in the HubSpot chatbot builder.
When editing the chatflow, HubSpot has a flow builder that gives a good overview:
To edit an element, you can just click on it. And if you want to add an element, you can just click on the “+” button. It’s pretty intuitive.
In the flow builder, you can choose from three main blocks:
- Sending a message
- Asking a question
- If/then branch, which can be used to personalize the conversation
Once you have created your chatflow, you can use the Preview option to test the chatflow before it actually goes live:
Lastly, you can determine who you want to target. For example, you can determine the URL and some specifics about your target audience:
The editing of chatflows is really simple, and the platform is quite easy to use. By using one of the templates that HubSpot provides, you can get started pretty quickly with creating your chatbot.
Flow Builder | |
Ease of use | 4 |
Ease of setup | 4 |
Test chatbot |
Hubspot Chatbot elements
HubSpot does not have a huge number of chatbot elements. The fundamental ones are available, like we mentioned, sending a message, asking a question, and a conditional if/then element. All of these are the building blocks of a good chatflow.
However, what is missing is a “start chatflow” option. This is a clear drawback that limits the chatbot scalability. You can’t reuse existing automations. Instead, you have to make every new automation from scratch. Essentially, creating larger chatbots is next to impossible.
Image | |
Video | |
Audio | |
Attachment | |
Gallery (Horizontal List) | |
Quick reply | |
Button | |
Collect User Input | |
Condition | |
Delay | |
Start automation | |
Split traffic |
Contacts
In Hubspot, you can see all the contacts that have interacted with your chatbot:
When you click on any individual contact, you can see all the information about that contact:
In HubSpot, you can add your own custom fields and also determine tags that you can add to contacts.
Likewise, you can create your own segments and segment your audience by various criteria.
Contacts overview Can you see all the contacts that talked to your chatbot in one overview?
Custom field Store information from your chatbot users inside fields. For example, you can ask for someone's email and store it inside the "email" custom field.
Tags Add tags to users in your chatbot flows to organize and categorize contacts.
User Segments Can you create user segments based on custom fields and tags?
Hubspot AI Features
There is no keyword recognition or AI in HubSpot whatsoever.
If someone just types a question, Hubspot can’t do anything with that, which is disappointing. Hubspot only has flow-based chatbots.
You create the flow and people go through it, without being able to do anything outside of that flow.
In the screenshot below, if a user decided to type in the word “order” instead of clicking one of the two buttons, nothing would happen.
Keyword recognition | |
Intents | |
Entities | |
AI Knowledge Base | |
NLP integrations | |
LLM integrations |
Live Chat
HubSpot has a built-in live chat, that allows you to hand off the conversation from the chatbot to a human agent:
Unfortunately, you cannot set up auto-assignment rules with the live chat. HubSpot just picks the least busy available agent.
Built-in live chat | |
Live chat integration | |
Auto-Assignment Rules |
Channels
HubSpot only allows you to have a chatbot in two places:
- Your Website
- Facebook Messenger
The fact that you can only use two channels is a potential drawback for companies that want to deliver an omnichannel chatbot experience to their customers.
Website | |
Facebook | |
Instagram | |
Whatsapp | |
Telegram | |
SMS | |
Slack | |
Email | |
Merge contacts across channels |
Marketing
With HubSpot, it is not possible to send broadcasts or sequences (sequences are available in the HubSpot CRM but not with the chatbot). This is a huge drawback, because this is the basis for most marketing chatbots (where HubSpot is focused on).
But you can add a widget to your website, so customers can communicate with your chatbot.
You can customize this widget to your own branding, and also send proactive messages that trigger on specific events:
Although you can create a chatbot on Facebook, you don’t have access to any of Facebook’s marketing tools, which is a definite drawback.
What you can do is add a widget your website and send proactive messages on your website.
Broadcasts | |
Sequences | |
Rules | |
Website widget | |
Send proactive messages on website | |
Facebook Ref URL | |
Auto-Reply to Facebook Comments | |
One-Time Notification | |
Recurring Notifications | |
Facebook Ads | |
Sponsored messages | |
Auto-Reply to Instagram Comments | |
Instagram Story Mention Reply | |
WhatsApp Message Templates |
Integrations
HubSpot has an App Marketplace with over 1600 direct integrations. You can basically pick an app and connect it directly to HubSpot:
They also have direct integrations with Zapier and Make, which allows you to connect HubSpot to almost any other software application on earth.
Likewise, you can also call APIs inside your chat flows to connect with other applications.
Direct integrations | 250+ |
Zapier | |
Make | |
Make API Calls | |
Webhooks |
Hubspot Pricing
HubSpot comes with a free plan and a free trial, so you have plenty of room to test out their platform before you start paying.
After the free plan, the pricing structure is a bit complicated. The Service Hub Professional plan costs $100 per month (90 if paid annually).
However, what is a little bit strange to me, is that they mention that “Conversational bots” (aka chatbots) are part of their “Free Forever” plan. But when you use the chatbot, you do not always have the permissions to use to the full potential:
For example, when I wanted to add the “Webhook”, I got this:
So if you want to use the full range of features, you need to upgrade to the Operations Hub Professional plan, which costs $800 per month.
This is obviously a huge price increase.
Therefore, I do not know precisely which elements you can truly use when building a chatbot in HubSpot, because you need other parts of the CRM, which may cost you more money.
Free trial | |
Free plan | |
Price per month | $100 |
Monthly pricing available? | |
Money back guarantee |
Analytics
I always say: If a chatbot platform doesn’t have analytics, do not use it.
And that applies here. HubSpot does not provide any built-in analytics for your chatbot at all. You can create your own custom reports, but that costs (too much) money.
To make your custom reports, you will be greeted with this:
The button “Create report” is obviously the one to click, but again, it costs you extra to make custom reports.
Dashboard | |
Flow analytics | |
User input | |
Sent messages | |
Open rate | |
Click rate | |
Conversion rate | |
Fall back rate | |
Agent analytics | |
Custom event tracking | |
Custom dashboards/reports |
Templates & Cloning
HubSpot provides four templates to make your chatbot, which are all free.
But, it’s not possible to make these templates yourself and share these with others.
Number of templates | 4 |
Make template | |
Share template |
Support
HubSpot provides decent documentation and customer support to help you further. They don’t seem to have tutorials on their platform though.
Tutorials | |
Documentation | |
Customer support |
Is the HubSpot Chatbot Worth It?
So, should you use the HubSpot Chatbot to create your chat automations?
I will be honest with you, I will not recommend this platform to you when building your chatbot. The software lacks too much basic features like analytics, recognizing keywords, broadcasts & sequences and marketing possibilities on Facebook.
So when you should you use it then? I think this software is great when you are already using the HubSpot software as your CRM and want to try chatbots for the first time. It is really easy to setup a chatbot in just a few minutes in which you can automatically qualify your leads or let people book an appointment with you.
Great write up, your blog has saved me the stress to what I have been looking for. Now I know what HubSpot is all about. Thanks for the wonderful tips you gave on your blog.
Thank you 🙂