HubSpot is a developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing and sales. It was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2006. Its products and services aim to provide tools for social media marketing, content management, web analytics and search engine optimization. The company grew from $255,000 in revenues in 2007 to $15.6 million in 2010. Later that year HubSpot acquired Oneforty, the Twitter app store founded by Laura Fitton. The company also introduced new software for personalizing websites to each visitor. According to Forbes, HubSpot started out targeting small companies but “moved steadily upmarket to serve larger businesses of up to 1000 employees.” HubSpot filed for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission on August 25, 2014 requesting they be listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol HUBS.
Software and services
HubSpot provides tools for social media marketing, content management, web analytics, landing pages and search engine optimization. HubSpot has integration features for salesforce.com, SugarCRM, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and others. There are also third-party services such as templates and extensions. Additionally, HubSpot offers consulting services and an online resource academy for learning inbound marketing tactics. It also hosts user group conferences and inbound marketing and certification programs. HubSpot promotes its inbound marketing concepts through its own marketing efforts and has earned a reputation as “a prolific creator of content,” including blogs, social media, webinars, and white papers.
In 2010, an article in the Harvard Business Review said that HubSpot’s most effective inbound marketing feature was its free online tools. One such tool, the Marketing Grader, assessed and scored website performance. The company introduced a Twitter tracking feature in 2011.
Tech industry reviews
HubSpot has been described as unique because it strives to provide its customers with an all-in-one approach. A 2012 review in CRM Search said HubSpot was not the best business solution in each category but that taken as a whole it was the best “marketing solution” that combined many tools into one package. It identified HubSpot’s “strengths” as the sophistication of its Call to Action (CTA) tool, its online ecosystem and its “ease of use.” Its weakness were described as having “more breadth than depth.” The review said the lack of customization and design tools could be limiting and that it was missing advanced features such as Business Process Management (BPM) tools to manage workflow.
