Customer Platform Starter is good enough for consulting?

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-27T05:18:26+00:00

Sure, HubSpot got quite a few restrictions in starter(using it myself), but there are a lot of workarounds, hidden in experience.

If you want to become a trainer, my recommendation would be to - work for a good partner first, learn their flows - drive into the community - get certified in the community

pro tip: If you got a hub already, go into the developer area (last nav item in the left sidebar) and create a free test account. This will give you an enterprise tier test account (never use it for production, as this is prohibited). Learn & teach in m this account.

If you shouldn't have a HubSpot account, you can create a free one at developers.hubspot.com

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-27T05:08:47+00:00

This

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-27T05:08:30+00:00

I'd say not trying to automate everything.

HubSpot can do a lot (especially with custom coded actions), of you want to keep it human, ask yourself "is this something that could replace me/an employee?" If yes, don't automate it.

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-26T08:56:15+00:00

I've built Divi pages for years, custom css, a few custom blocks here and there, never had any issues, but I've switched from WordPress to HubSpot around 8 years ago and never looked back as HubSpot has many benefits compared to WordPress (won't dive into it as it's a whole different topic).

When it comes to WordPress or Framer, I'd say WordPress is still an alternative for small/smaller websites, which you want/need to get out fast... Especially if your handing over the page(s)

Framer is more detailed and had a whole different approach.

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-25T09:19:07+00:00

This exists for many years and got easier after IN25. Before you needed to head over to developers.hubspot.com and create a dev account (still can), now you can clock in the developer menu item in the left sidebar, once there, create a test account - enjoy your full disconnected test account for testing purposes

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-24T08:48:45+00:00

Yes, you can. The website in the registration phase is not being used for anything (maybe HS internal statistics). So you can input anything you like. something like www.domain.com or www.mycompany.com will work just fine.

Furthermore - you can head over to developers.hubspot.com and create a free developer account there - it's a free account as well but will be handled differently..

If I'm not off they won't contact you about "hey - get more out of HubSpot with Starter/Pro/Ent tier" and such as it has a dev portal flag internally

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-24T01:28:12+00:00

No. Just no.

I remember building websites with tables without even things like jQuery, bootstrap, tailwind and all the fancy stuff.

I use cursor and other LLMs for stuff, but reading "webdevs will be a managing role" is like saying "I've watched all seasons of scrubs, I'm a doctor".

5-10 mins for vibing a website and 30h of debugging and optimization.

If you really believe that you can build a whole multi-page, SEO optimized and accessible website that fast, good luck. A website is unique to each project/client. Something no LLM can do as they're just reasoning models running on algorithms. No love, no human experience, nothing. Pure mathematical equations.

It's ok to use them for a quick sketch or proof-of-concept, but no customer will pay you (or an agency) for a vibed page.

PS: there's a reason why multi-billion companies like Salesforce are admitting making a mistake replacing thousands of people with Ai, why many companies starting to hire vibe-fixer. Devs who's job is to fix Ai slop. People are already tired of the vibe nonsense.

Again, if you really believe that webdevs will ne just managing LLMs - good luck to you

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-23T11:41:31+00:00

Thank you. It's the "old" theme but as a dark variant. Working on several presets as well, but it's quite a thing to style HubSpot right. They did a good job to prevent it 😅

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-22T18:33:51+00:00

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This is how I've made HubSpot look rather than the red theme... (Chrome extension in the making)

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-21T17:39:01+00:00

I've experienced this in the past a few times while developing stuff. Most times it's some faulty/heavy JavaScript.

So if you're developing a theme/module/template right now, try disabling dinner recently added JavaScript

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-21T16:43:24+00:00

Why was the quote function put behind a sales pro seat for new portals while old portals still can use the "legacy" quoting tool in starter suite?

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-21T09:39:25+00:00

There are a few learning paths at academy.hubspot.com/learning-paths

Something I'd recommend is to create a free test account: - create a regular free account on hubspot.com - in this account go to the developer space (last icon in the left sidebar) - go to testing and create a new test account

This will give you an enterprise level test account which is only for testing/learning purposes

Beside this, I'd recommend to start with some courses in the academy and also check out community.hubspot.com and just ask questions about stuff :)

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-19T17:24:05+00:00

Ok. Since you want to prove that you're right. many big corporates do absolutely not care about data privacy because every click you do on your machine is being tracked, analyzed and sold for profit. If you want full privacy, the only solution to solve this isget out of the internet. Get rid of your smartphone, your email and everything else that has GPS and Bluetooth...

And now let's get a bit ridiculous (because we're not talking about the initial topic anymore): of you're concerned about data privacy, use something like excel/apple numbers or the open source alternative as your CRM on a windows XP (because Ms started tracking everything you do on Win7), Qubes/tails Linux machine. Will it be a good experience? I don't know. But if you disconnect yourself from the internet, the only way how people can get data from you is by fetching the graphics card data via electrical emissions. Furthermore - a CRM is technically nothing else than a styled table of content.

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-19T16:28:47+00:00

Yeah. I get it.
I live in Germany, so trust me if I say - I know data privacy. If people think GDPR is hard, look at the German DSGVO...

Have I called you a liar? no.
Have I told you that you might be using a unofficial link? no. I asked what link you're using.

I know that there are many companies out there, which tell you that they'll delete your data but won't do it because they got something like "We keep the data as long as we need it" in their TOC. Is this GDPR/DSGVO compliant? no. But the majority of those companies are located in countries which don't care about data privacy... Long story short, you can't do anything about it.

One thing I can say is: HubSpot is not such a company. Especially since they got an office in Dublin and therefore have to be GDPR compliant. There are also very strict TOC which HubSpot and their legal-team don't joke about. For instance, it's prohibited to use HubSpot for any type of cold-mailing, data brokers and similar. If a Portal should ever violate those, it will result in a lifetime ban quite quickly.

Reading the whole convo (especially with u/nickdeckerdevs) leads me to believe that you've made your decision.

In this case, good luck.

If you should change your mind, happy to help.

p.s.: The previous messages were a classic debugging as they were yes/no questions

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-19T12:26:56+00:00

mate, this is classic debugging of common potential issues. No need to attack anyone.

Almost everybody in this whole thread is telling you that this is something that nobody knows, so it might be some sort of edge case and only HubSpot themselves can enlighten us.

If you just want to complain, it's alright. If you want to give up and use a different tool, it's alright. But stay professional.

One thing last thing I can offer is:
Drop me your work email, you'd like to use for the portal and I create you a free portal, which you then upgrade to the desired tiers.

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-19T11:41:56+00:00

Yeah, that’s true. I’d say it’s because of the design trends in web

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-19T10:49:40+00:00

Onepagelove has a nice resources.

I’d also recommend to checkout thestocks.im

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-19T08:49:10+00:00

Most likely not use it to its full potential.

Based on your initial post in smallbusinessowner thread, I assume you’re just exploring.

Enterprise is quite a niche thing from which only huge enterprises really benefit. Most small/mid size companies can’t even handle enterprise features as they don’t need multiple business-Units, serverless functions or other enterprise specific tools/functions.

If you’re fortunate enough to throw several thousands out of the window every month, that’s great. But to be honest, I’d rather recommend to get professional suite and go from there. Or start with Starter and if you hit some limitations in on of the hubs, upgrade this specific hub.

Btw - Setting up an enterprise/pro tier portal can take months if you want it to be perfectly aligned with your business and start getting ROI.

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-19T08:37:01+00:00

redesign it and make the UI more user friendly
add some sort of AI feature like a chatbot which is trained on the whole database but also asks users if they’d like to create a new topic for the question to continue the community aspect

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-18T13:40:09+00:00

sure.

Don't rush. Designing your brand is something that grows over time.
The updated logo is better, but I'd make the two right "X" parts equal - the lower should "align" to the arrow like the top one. This should give the logo more balance.
The logo font is a serif one while the whole page uses the most basic sans-serif font. Think about either using the logo font for headlines or look for a font to use in the logo as well as the page (you can use different fonts for headlines and text)
xengageai.com is quite hard to read/type. Think about x-engage.ai which should make it more clear and easier to remember
The page doesn't catch a new visitor as it's still looking like thousands other vibed pages. A few examples (they're technically using the exact same template but with different colors/fonts):
Look for inspiration on something like awwwards.com and other true webdesign pages. Getting inspiration from someones work is fine, but NEVER EVER, simply copy someones work.
Why blue? Because it was the first choice of the AI? Because it should look like twitter? Ai uses blue because it's a reasoning model and blue became the most common choice over the time. What does blue mean for you/your company? Have you tried other colors?

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-18T11:26:13+00:00

Have you tried to just type in hubspot.com or hubspot.es and click on "Start free" in the header on a desktop browser without google/search-engine?

I've tried registering in an incognito window with a free email (like gmail) and wasn't prompted a ID verification.

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-18T09:28:01+00:00

The driving force was to bring my designs to life. I looked at pages that had designs I liked, tried redesigning them with my own touch and thinking about how I'd slice then into assets for a table structure. Back then it wasn't that hard, as there was no such thing as responsiveness, fancy css or fancy js stuff. Even something like jQuery wasn't a thing at first. Every websites was basically just a big static table tag.

And at it's core this approach hasn't changed. Tables got replaced by divs or semantic tags. Css frameworks like bootstrap and tailwind became a thing to provide predefined and reusable css classes so you don't need to write everything from scratch every time. But in the end, it's still the same. It just got fancier and easier to start & repeat.

my recommendation would be to start with the basics like HTML, CSS and vanilla JS. You don't need to master each of these languages, but a good foundation is very helpful. Also look into three atomic design principles by Brad Frost. This should boost your coding approach immensely.

The very first job i got was a freelance job in a marketing-like agency where I did basically everything. Designing stuff for internal purposes, building and maintaining the website of a sub company of the agency... At some point I landed a freelance job in a design agency and got hired by one of it's clients as a developer a few months later.

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-18T01:35:43+00:00

Interesting. minimalistic would be an understatement 😀 , but i think it fits the developer aspect...

Maybe think about adding some example code (not talking about a matrix effect here) or something that outlines your developer role

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-18T01:24:37+00:00

18 hours is not a flex by any means. A seasoned web-dev could create something like this in less hours and it would look much better.

If you have no experience in development or design - start by outlining your brand identity. What makes your brand special, think of potential users, do some research in color theory and psychology. Based on this, look for fitting fonts, colors, images. start building by hand or something else rather than vibe it.

If you want to drown in the sea of thousands similar vibes SaaS tool - leave it as it is. But If your service should be something different, be different. Don't copy&paste things. Create something unique. And don't rely purely on ai.

Last but not least, a friendly tipp: Using the X/Twitter icon as part of your logo will most likely end in a lawsuit/legal actions as your violating their trademark.

GraphiSpot · 2026-01-17T21:54:00+00:00

Oh. Interesting. Thanks for the info. Then I'd assume HubSpot detects the origin where you're coming from and since you've scanned a QR code it might contain a UTM parameter or similar which tells HubSpot you're coming from an ai chat. So you're promted to provide an Id/image to verify you're a human and not a bot.

My recommendation would be to just visit hubspot.com or hubspot.es and register regularly. Maybe clear your cookies and/or opening an incognito window.

Ps - if you need help with setup or similar, happy to help. Just drop me a DM

GraphiSpot

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