Our company provides IT and telecommunications services across the UK. We currently operate from two regional locations and want to expand once we establish solid marketing foundations. Right now we don’t have any dedicated marketing staff or campaigns running, but we realize it’s time to start investing in proper marketing strategies. I’ve been researching Hubspot Marketing Pro as a potential solution for our needs. Has anyone here successfully implemented Hubspot Marketing Pro for their MSP business? What challenges did you face during setup and what recommendations would you share with someone just starting out?
Been using HubSpot Marketing Pro for our MSP for two years. Biggest mistake? We tried migrating everything at once instead of starting fresh with their workflows. Don’t do that. Their MSP templates are solid but you’ll need heavy customization for telecom. Watch your contact costs - they add up fast if you’re not careful with database management. Only import contacts you actually need. Integrating with our ticketing system needed custom work that their docs didn’t cover well. Make sure you train your team properly - tons of features go unused otherwise. Took about four months to see real pipeline improvements, but it’s been worth it for our growth.
We rolled out HubSpot Marketing Pro 18 months ago and it completely changed our lead generation strategy. The hardest part was getting the initial setup right; it took us weeks to properly map our customer journey. Start with basic email workflows first and avoid jumping straight into complex automation. We found that CRM integration went smoother than expected, but tracking attribution across channels was somewhat problematic. The reporting features posed a steep learning curve that caught us off guard. It’s crucial to have someone dedicated to learning the platform, or else you’ll miss out on many of its advantages. We started seeing a return on investment around month six once we had enough data to optimize our campaigns.
hubspot is defo worth it! it’s kinda complex at first but once u get the hang of it, it’s super useful. we fumbled with our contact list too - a total mess in segmentation 
just make sure to clean things up first!
skip the pro version for now, alexlee. start with the free tier first. we jumped straight to pro without knowing what we actually needed - big mistake. the free version has enough to build basic campaigns and test if hubspot works for you. you can always upgrade once you figure out which features you’ll actually use.
HubSpot’s solid but the manual setup becomes a nightmare at scale. I’ve seen teams spend months just fixing workflows.
We had better luck automating the entire marketing funnel externally. Connected HubSpot to our CRM, email tools, and lead scoring without getting locked into their ecosystem.
You can still use HubSpot for what it’s good at while automating all the repetitive stuff that eats time. Lead qualification, follow-ups, data sync - it all runs itself.
For MSPs, you need something that handles complex service workflows without babysitting. Automate the connections between tools and HubSpot becomes way more powerful. Plus you skip those attribution headaches.
Set up automation first, then add HubSpot on top. Way smoother process and you’ll see results faster than the usual 4-6 months.