HubSpot Chatbot Review 2025: Features, Pros and Cons, Pricing

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By Joren Wouters Updated on

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
hubspot-logo
Go to HubSpot
3.0
Plans Cost
$90 to $2500
Introductory Offer
Free plan & free trial on paid plans
Standout Features
Ease of Use, Live Chat, Website Widget

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:

Hubspot Chatflow - choosing between Website and Facebook

Once you’ve decided on the channel, you can get started with one of the HubSpot templates or start from scratch:

Hubspot - Selecting a chatflow

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):

  1. Concierge bot
  2. Qualify leads bot
  3. Meetings bot
  4. Offline bot

 

Selecting a chatbot on Hubspot

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:

 

A welcome message in Hubspot chatflows

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:

  1. Sending a message
  2. Asking a question
  3. If/then branch, which can be used to personalize the conversation

Creating a new chatflow on Hubspot

Once you have created your chatflow, you can use the Preview option to test the chatflow before it actually goes live:

Preview your chatflow in Hubspot

Lastly, you can determine who you want to target. For example, you can determine the URL and some specifics about your target audience:

Target audience in Hubspot chatflows

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
Create chatbot dialogs with a visual flow builder.
Ease of use
How easy is it to use the platform? On a scale of 1 to 5.
4
Ease of setup
How easy is it to set up your chatbot? On a scale of 1 to 5.
4
Test chatbot
Is it possible to test the chatbot before putting your new flows or changes live?

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
Can you send images via your chatbot?
Video
Can you send video via your chatbot?
Audio
Can you send audio via your chatbot?
Attachment
Can you send attachments via your chatbot?
Gallery (Horizontal List)
Show a gallery of cards inside your chatbot. A card consists of an image, title, subtitle and button.
Quick reply
Can you add quick replies to your chatbot where users can click on?
Button
Can you add buttons to your chatbot where users can click on?
Collect User Input
Can you collect input from users and store it in fields?
Condition
Make checks in your chatbot flow based on if-then logic. For example, if the user has not given their email, ask for their email.
Delay
Use delays between messages in your chatbot
Start automation
Can you refer from one automation to another and thereby reuse your automations?
Split traffic
Can you split your trafic inside a chatbot flow? Often used for A/B testing.

Contacts

In Hubspot, you can see all the contacts that have interacted with your chatbot:

Contacts windows in Hubspot

When you click on any individual contact, you can see all the information about that contact:

Individual contact details in Hubspot

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.

Hubspot Chatbot live preview

Keyword recognition
Trigger chatbot flow based on certain words or phrases a user says to the chatbot.
Intents
Trigger a chatbot flow by understanding the intent of the user.
Entities
Capture specific information from sentences. For example, if a user says "veggie pizza", the chatbot can understand it's not a regular pizza, but a veggie pizza.
AI Knowledge Base
Can you train your chatbot on a knowledge base (like your website or articles) and then your chatbot automatically answer questions about it?
NLP integrations
Does it have a direct integration with NLP platforms, such as Dialogflow?
LLM integrations
Does it have a direct integration with LLM platforms, such as ChatGPT and Claude?

Live Chat

HubSpot has a built-in live chat, that allows you to hand off the conversation from the chatbot to a human agent:

Livechat feature in HubSpot

Unfortunately, you cannot set up auto-assignment rules with the live chat. HubSpot just picks the least busy available agent.

Built-in live chat
Does it have a built-in live chat, so you can hand over a conversation to a support agent?
Live chat integration
Does it have a direct integration with a third-party livechat application?
Auto-Assignment Rules
Can you set up rules so that conversations get automatically assigned to agents in livechat?

Channels

HubSpot only allows you to have a chatbot in two places:

  1. Your Website
  2. 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
Can you publish your chatbot on your website?
Facebook
Can you publish your chatbot on Facebook?
Instagram
Can you publish your chatbot on Instagram?
Whatsapp
Can you publish your chatbot on WhatsApp?
Telegram
Can you publish your chatbot on Telegram?
SMS
Can you publish your chatbot on SMS?
Slack
Can you publish your chatbot on Slack?
Email
Can you publish your chatbot on email?
Merge contacts across channels
Can you merge contacts across channels, when the same person contacts you over multiple 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:

Tweaking the chatbot in Hubspot

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
Send a message to all or a part of your chatbot users at a specific date and time
Sequences
Send messages on a pre-defined schedule with a certain time interval between those messages
Rules
Trigger events based on if-then logic. For example, if email is given by the user, send it to your CRM.
Website widget
Embed your chatbot as a widget on your website (with your own branding & colors).
Send proactive messages on website
Can you send pro-active messages on your website with your chatbot?
Facebook Ref URL
Can you create a URL that goes to a specific flow inside your Facebook chatbot?
Auto-Reply to Facebook Comments
Automatically reply with your chatbot to users who comment on your Facebook Posts
One-Time Notification
Send one-time notifications via Facebook Messenger for a topic that a chatbot user has opted-in for
Recurring Notifications
Send recurring notifications via Facebook Messenger for a topic that a chatbot user has opted-in for
Facebook Ads
Start a conversation with your chatbot when someone clicks on a Facebook Ad
Sponsored messages
Send paid messages via Facebook Messenger outside the 24-hour window
Auto-Reply to Instagram Comments
Automatically reply with your chatbot to users who comment on your Instagram Posts
Instagram Story Mention Reply
Send auto replies to Instagram users who mention your Instagram handle in their Instagram Stories
WhatsApp Message Templates
Can you initiate conversations with Message Templates on WhatsApp?

Integrations

HubSpot has an App Marketplace with over 1600 direct integrations. You can basically pick an app and connect it directly to HubSpot:

App marketplace in hte Hubspot platform

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
How many direct integrations does it have with other applications?
250+
Zapier
Direct integration with Zapier, one of the largest integration platforms in the world.
Make
Direct integration with Make (formerly Integromat), one of the largest integration platforms in the world.
Make API Calls
Can you call an API inside your chatbot flow to send or get data from other applications?
Webhooks
Can the platform send automatic notifications of all the messages and events going on in your chatbot?

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).

Hubspot pricing options - Service Hub

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:

Hubspot chatflow: trigerring a webhook

 

For example, when I wanted to add the “Webhook”, I got this:

Hubspot Operations Hub Professional plan required

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.

hubspot-operations-hub-professional-pricing

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
Does the chatbot platform provide a free trial?
Free plan
Does the chatbot platform provide a free plan?
Price per month
What is the lowest price per month to create a chatbot with this platform? In US Dollars.
$100
Monthly pricing available?
Is it possible to pay monthly?
Money back guarantee
Is there a money-back guarantee in case you are not satisfied with the platform?

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:

Hubspot reports - no built-in analytics for chatbots

The button “Create report” is obviously the one to click, but again, it costs you extra to make custom reports.

Dashboard
Dashboard that provides general analytics of your chatbot.
Flow analytics
Can you analyze how users are going through your chatbot flows?
User input
Get the input from users that your chatbot didn't understand.
Sent messages
The number of messages that were sent by your chatbot.
Open rate
The percentage of chatbot users that opened a message inside your chatbot.
Click rate
The percentage of chatbot users that click on a button inside your chatbot.
Conversion rate
The percentage of users that converted through your chatbot. For example, the percentage of users that gave their email address
Fall back rate
The percentage of interactions where the chatbot did not know an answer to a question.
Agent analytics
Can you analyze the performance of live chat agents?
Custom event tracking
Can you create custom events and analyze how many times these happened?
Custom dashboards/reports
Can you create your own dashboard or 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
How many pre-built templates does the chatbot platform provide?
4
Make template
Can you make templates yourself?
Share template
Can you share self-created templates with others?

Support

HubSpot provides decent documentation and customer support to help you further. They don’t seem to have tutorials on their platform though.

Tutorials
Does the chatbot platform provide tutorials on how to use its platform?
Documentation
Does the chatbot platform provide documentation on how to use its platform?
Customer support
Does the chatbot platform provide 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.

Go to HubSpot

Comments (2)

  1. German David

    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.

    1. Joren Wouters

      Thank you 🙂

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