Considering HubSpot but not sure where to begin? This practical guide walks you through the key decisions and early steps – without the fluff.

First, the basics: HubSpot is an inbound marketing platform, used by around 248,000 businesses across more than 135 countries. It helps teams connect the dots across marketing, sales, and service. 

It’s a powerful platform – but can feel overwhelming when you first log in.

At its core, HubSpot is about automation, integration and insight. It helps businesses streamline processes, improve visibility and maintain a single view of the customer. If you’re looking for a cloud-based tool to help you attract, convert and retain the right audience, HubSpot is a serious contender.

Implemented well, it can become the central nervous system of your marketing operation.

Start with an audit

Because HubSpot is so endlessly configurable, no two setups are quite the same. Yours will need to reflect your business goals, team structure, customer journeys and data flows.

That’s why the first step is usually an audit. 

A HubSpot-fluent agency – such as Lesniak Swann – can assess your current systems, data and processes, mapping where and how HubSpot should plug in. They’ll highlight any gaps, risks or inefficiencies and design a setup tailored to your needs.

From integrations to workflows, contact lifecycle stages to custom reporting, the aim is to get HubSpot working the way your teams work – not the other way around.

Get clear on what HubSpot will do

You don’t need all the answers right away. But it helps to map out what tasks you want the platform to handle for your business.  

Ask yourself:

• What specific tasks could and should HubSpot automate or simplify?
• What will your HubSpot workflows and sequences do – and how will they connect?
• How will you manage content and campaigns within the platform?
• Will you run paid ads or biddable campaigns through HubSpot?
• Who will be responsible for keeping contacts and data clean?
• Are there any live chat tools or self-service functions that need integrating?

You’ll also want to think about SEO, lead scoring, content personalisation and how the sales and marketing teams will share insights.

The connectedness and complexity of your current systems matters too. If you’re working with legacy software or siloed teams, HubSpot’s flexibility will help you improve things – but the integration strategy still needs to be watertight.

Finally, before anything goes live, your databases will need cleaning, mapping and migrating. This is your moment to sort out those dodgy duplicates and long-forgotten leads.

Understand the costs

HubSpot pricing in 2025 offers flexibility, particularly for UK businesses. You can build your plan from individual Hubs, or bundle them under a Customer Platform plan.

Some typical costs:

• Starter – from around £18–£20 a month per seat
• Professional – around £1,130 a month
• Enterprise – from £3,740 a month

Your final cost depends on the number of marketing contacts, hubs required and usage levels. Unlimited view-only seats are now standard across all tiers.

Training and onboarding are usually handled in one of two ways:

• Internal onboarding via HubSpot’s Power User model
• Partner-led implementation, tailored to your systems and team

The right approach will depend on your in-house expertise, platform goals and timescales.

What’s new in Hubspot?

HubSpot has introduced a suite of AI-powered features that now come baked into the platform:

• Campaign Assistant – quickly generates ads, emails, social posts and landing pages
• Breeze AI Agents – task-based agents for content creation, customer service, knowledge management and prospecting
• Customer Agent – available via HubSpot Credits, this AI agent resolves more than 50% of support tickets unaided
• Built-in ad tools – create LinkedIn and Facebook ad copy using AI prompts, with up to 1,000 uses per day

These tools are designed for small and mid-sized teams who want to move faster, reduce manual effort and keep everything in one place.

Time to make it real

Make no mistake, HubSpot isn’t a quick plug-and-play solution – and that’s a good thing. A thoughtful implementation will pay dividends in the long term, helping you scale your marketing in a way that’s measurable, consistent and aligned to business outcomes.

At Lesniak Swann, we’ve supported clients across construction, tech, telecoms, engineering and manufacturing to set up HubSpot in a way that fits how they work. We can do the same for your teams, too.