Why did HubSpot grade D on churn?

HubSpot scored 42 out of 100. The March 2024 seats-based pricing restructure is the defining churn event: existing customers reported 5x to 20x cost increases for equivalent functionality. Mid-year feature restrictions were framed as 'pay to restore.' The June 2024 security incident compounded trust damage. The product is competent. Billing and trust are where the grade falls.

What happened with HubSpot's 2024 pricing change?

In March 2024, HubSpot moved from contact-based pricing to seats-based pricing. Existing contracts carrying wide feature access got reconfigured. Users reported seeing 5x to 20x effective cost increases for the same functionality. Community outcry on Reddit and G2 was significant. The restructure drove comparison traffic to Pipedrive, Close.com, and Apollo.io.

What are the best HubSpot alternatives?

Depends on use case. For CRM-only needs: Pipedrive, Close.com, Zoho CRM. For inbound marketing: ActiveCampaign, Klaviyo, Customer.io. For enterprise CRM: Salesforce (at higher price). For founder-led revenue teams: Attio. The market has many HubSpot replacements; the switching cost is workflow rebuild, not product availability.

Is HubSpot still worth it for small teams?

The free tier remains strong for basic CRM. Mid-tier plans are where the pricing restructure hit hardest. Small teams below 5 seats with simple pipelines get value. Teams above 10 seats with feature requirements across Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub face the cost-escalation problem cited in public complaints.

What did the June 2024 HubSpot security incident involve?

Attackers accessed fewer than 50 HubSpot customer accounts by targeting employees' stolen credentials. HubSpot disclosed the breach publicly, notified affected customers, and reset sessions. The incident itself was not catastrophic in scope, but the timing (shortly after the pricing backlash) compounded trust damage across the public signal.

HubSpot's 5x Price Hike and the Tier Migration Backlash

A RetentionCheck churn teardown of HubSpot

TL;DR

Grade

D (42 / 100)

Sample

30+ public complaints (G2, Reddit, HN, security press)

Top driver

March 2024 seats-based pricing restructure

Existing customers report 5x-20x cost increases. Mid-year feature restrictions framed as 'pay to restore.' Plus June 2024 security incident.

Methodology: Public sources including HubSpot's own 2024 pricing-change announcement, HubSpot Community forum thread on pricing-model changes, Simple Strat analysis of the seats-based rollout, TLDV + EngageBay reviews covering pros/cons, CXToday + HubSpot IR statements on the June 2024 security incident. Analyzed with RetentionCheck.

HubSpot is a CRM category leader. HubSpot is also, per its own community forum, losing trust at a measurable rate. The 2024 pricing restructure produced the most-documented churn wave in the company's recent history.

The Churn Health Score

HubSpot scored 42/100, grade D. One critical, two high, two medium, one low.

The story is specific: March 5, 2024 pricing restructuring, followed by a June 2024 security incident, followed by mid-year feature restrictions that users described as "pay to restore" and considered the breaking point.

The 5 churn patterns

1. March 2024 pricing restructure (5x-20x for some users) (critical, 88%)

HubSpot rolled out a seats-based pricing model to all Hubs and subscription tiers on March 5, 2024. While HubSpot positioned it as "migration-related price increases of approximately 5% or less" in official communications, user reports tell a different story: many users saw 5x-20x cost increases for the same functional feature set after the bundling shifted.

The HubSpot Community forum thread "Pricing Model Changes leaves customers failing to deliver services" documents the backlash directly from paying customers.

2. Mid-year feature restrictions (high, 82%)

Users reported features being restricted partway through their paid subscription year, then being asked to pay more to restore them. This is a textbook bait-and-switch pattern and is the most-cited reason in negative reviews.

Once you pay for a subscription with feature X included, removing feature X mid-term and asking for more money is the kind of move that drives a customer to evaluate alternatives even if the alternative is worse.

3. Tier creep for core growth features (high, 78%)

Since the 2024 restructuring, core growth features like advanced automation, custom reporting, AI-powered workflows, and deeper integrations now typically require Professional or Enterprise tiers. Once you factor in contact tiers, additional seats, and add-ons like Data Hub, monthly costs scale faster than team size.

Small-to-mid teams that landed at HubSpot for the simple Starter Hub find themselves needing Professional or higher within 12 months to retain workflows they'd built.

4. June 2024 security incident (medium, 74%)

HubSpot disclosed a security incident on June 22, 2024 in which "bad actors were attempting to use stolen employee credentials to target customer accounts." Public IR statement and CXToday coverage confirm the event. While HubSpot's response was relatively fast and customers were impacted in limited ways, the incident added to the 2024 trust debt already created by the pricing changes.

5. Learning curve + occasional support horror stories (medium, 68%)

Users consistently cite the learning curve and occasional customer-support horror stories in reviews. These existed before 2024 but are now cited alongside pricing complaints as breaking points rather than individual issues.

6. Initial investment requirement at enterprise (low, 62%)

Enterprise contracts require meaningful upfront investment. Not unique to HubSpot; common in the category.

What HubSpot does right

Reviews consistently cite depth and automation capability as strengths. For teams that land in the right Hub at the right tier, HubSpot is widely regarded as powerful and mature. The platform's integrations, data infrastructure, and AI-workflow features are best-in-class when available at your tier.

Users who stay often cite the switching cost (months of workflow and integration work) as the decisive factor, not pure preference. That is a retention signal worth noting: HubSpot retains through investment lock-in more than pure satisfaction.

3 things HubSpot could fix

Grandfather existing customers through their contract term. The mid-year feature restriction pattern is the single most damaging trust signal. A public commitment to feature stability within a paid year would immediately halt that vector.
Publish a transparent post-mortem on June 2024 security incident. The IR statement was minimal. Customers in a trust-damaged moment benefit from overcommunication, not undercommunication.
Ceiling on migration-related price increases at contract renewal. "~5% or less" per HubSpot's announcement does not match user experience of 5x-20x. Either the math is different for different customers or the communication was wrong. Clarity helps.

What this means for your SaaS

The HubSpot story is a case study in how "small" pricing changes cascade through existing customer bases unpredictably. A seats-based model sounds simple. Applied to existing accounts with custom feature sets, it produces wildly different per-customer outcomes. Some see no change. Some see 5x. The ones who see 5x write reviews.

If you're considering a pricing restructure, the question is not what the median customer experiences. It's what the 90th-percentile customer experiences. Those are the customers who will write the reviews that shape your reputation.

If you have cancellation feedback sitting in a spreadsheet, run it through RetentionCheck in 30 seconds. The pattern is usually underneath the individual reasons.

Sources

Related teardowns

Asana + Notion: Both Graded F (Grade F) · 15 Trustpilot reviews, billing trust collapse
Notion's Mid-Life Crisis (Grade D) · 60+ HN complaints, feature bloat
Why Teams Are Leaving Linear (Grade B) · Narrow, bounded churn (the opposite story)
Figma's 2025 Pricing Hike (Grade C) · +33% + Penpot surge

Brian Farello is the founder of RetentionCheck. Other teardowns: Notion (D), Linear (B), Figma (C), Asana (D), Monday.com (C), Cursor (D), Evernote (F), Slack (C), Zoom (C).