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How to get out of a HubSpot contract: A step-by-step guide

5 mins read

 

So the day has finally come. There are dark clouds in the sky, there’s sad music playing in the background and you’ve decided to get out of your HubSpot contract. If you’ve already made up your mind, here’s how you can cancel the HubSpot product you’ve signed up for in seven easy steps.

  1. In your HubSpot account, click your account name and then access Account & Billing
  2. At the top, click the Subscriptions tab to view your subscription details
  3. Move to the subscription you want to cancel, then click Cancel
  4. In the right panel, click Cancel renewal
  5. Review the features that will be affected when you cancel, then select the I understand that all users connected to this HubSpot account will lose access to these features when my current commitment period ends checkbox
  6. Click Next
  7. Select your cancellation reasons then click Cancel my renewal

It’s as easy as that. But if you’re still on the fence a little, don’t cancel just yet. Let’s run through some of the reasons first and see if any of my advice can help solve your problems. First off, I’ll assume you want to cancel your HubSpot account for one of three reasons (just click the one most relevant to you to jump to that section).

  1. You’re unsure about how to manage HubSpot yourself
  2. You signed up to work with a HubSpot agency and they’ve let you down
  3. You don’t like the product

1. You’re unsure about how to manage HubSpot yourself

I get it. You’ve looked at HubSpot and thought, “This is exactly what our business needs. We can get prospects coming to us instead of us going to them, we can automate our marketing,” etc. I don’t blame you for going full steam ahead and signing up either. Your HubSpot login would have arrived; you spoke to your onboarding team a few times and got to work.

Fast forward three to six months: nothing is happening. Leads aren’t coming to you. Traffic is barely up. You’re thinking about cancelling your HubSpot contract.

Let me be frank here. In 99% of situations, HubSpot isn’t the problem.

I know that’s not great to hear, but the truth is HubSpot is a tool - nothing more, nothing less. In fact, it’s a fantastic, flexible, empowering and cohesive platform. It allows you to do everything involved with inbound marketing, sales service and website in one place. But like any tool, what makes or breaks it is the people operating it.

This isn’t aimed to offend anyone and it isn’t me saying you and your team are bad marketers. After all, you decided to go with HubSpot as you saw something in the platform, which puts you ahead of most. But in my experience, in-house teams that have struggled with HubSpot have either:

Underestimated how long it takes

Start by looking at the inbound methodology. Everything is there for a reason and there’s a lot of reasoning involved. Blogging once a month, having one content piece at each stage of the funnel or even forgetting about SEO won’t cut it. This is what will make your results come up short.

Inbound marketing is labour-intensive. It takes a lot of time, work, resources, attention and patience. So it’s understandable why it can be underestimated. 

Misjudged how much talent is needed

Time is one factor - and an important one at that. But it’s also about the individual skill sets. For any inbound marketing strategy to work effectively and to get the results you were initially hoping for when signing up for HubSpot, you need a range of experts in your team, including:

  • Content marketers
  • SEO experts
  • Email marketers
  • PPC experts
  • Social media team
  • Graphic designers
  • Data analysts
  • Strategists
  • Developers
  • Web designers (optional)
  • Media specialists, such as video and audio (optional)

Sure, one person could wear several hats if needed, but the roles should give you a real taste of the type of team and talent you need to make inbound and HubSpot work.

There’s no roadmap for success

Inbound success doesn’t happen just based on hard work. You need to know where you’re going and how to get there. If you don’t spend hours in the strategy phase across all channels, the setup and process, your campaigns are doomed from the get-go.

Here’s an insight into our transparent process:

Month one - Strategy

Examples tasks include: 

  • In-depth buyer persona research and formalisation 
  • Buyer’s journey documentation 
  • SEO audit and fixes 
  • Keyword research across all channels
  • Content audit
  • Style guide creation

Month two - Setup

Example tasks include:

  • HubSpot technical setup
  • Google Ads account structure 
  • On-page SEO
  • Landing page design
  • Blog design
  • Create and optimise social accounts

Month three - The 90-day process begins

  • Attract: Without enough footfall, your website won’t hit your goals. We use SEO, PPC, social and content marketing tactics to attract visitors
  • Convert: We generate leads from those not ready to buy just yet by using various forms of content, CTAs and landing pages. We then report on what worked and what didn’t, using it to optimise and plan future campaigns
  • Close: None of it matters without closing customers. We use features from the HubSpot Marketing Hub and email marketing to guide prospects through appropriate workflows
Delight: We continue nurturing customers, reassuring them they made the right decision. This involves creating superior content, using social channels and email to engage with customers, upselling and going above and beyond so they remain loyal


If you’ve jumped straight into writing on day one without persona research or any strategy, it’s unlikely your contact will make an impact - if it manages to find the right people.

2. You signed up to work with a HubSpot agency and they’ve let you down

There are a lot of agencies out there to choose from. If you signed up to work with one because they came highly recommended or you wanted to work with them from the get-go and they let you down, it’s a terrible situation to be in. But don’t let it put you off as there’s an easy fix.

HubSpot isn’t the problem. The agency is. You just need to find an agency that’s the right fit for what you need. You don’t want to pay the HubSpot license fee each month and then the agency fee on top of that when the relationship is sour and you want to cancel. My advice is to separate HubSpot from the agency.

Despite being a HubSpot partner and a huge advocate, being an official partner isn’t a huge badge of honour (sorry, HubSpot). That’s because anyone can sign up to be one. What is an honour is moving up the different tiers, from partner to Elite status. First, take the time to work through the partner directory, as it’ll help guide you to a safe pair of hands.

Here’s a quick rundown of what each tier means:

  • HubSpot Partner: no HubSpot experience is needed
  • Silver Partner: manage three to four HubSpot accounts
  • Gold Partner: manage six to seven HubSpot accounts
  • Platinum Partner: the agency needs to manage 20-22 HubSpot accounts
  • Diamond Partner: manage 50 to 52 HubSpot accounts

  • Elite Partner: manage over 52 HubSpot accounts

The Elite status is the newest and most exclusive tier added to the directory. It signifies the agency’s experience and proficiency with HubSpot, helping customers scale and transform their businesses through the HubSpot CRM platform. It’s the pinnacle for any agency as right now, being an Elite partner means they’d be in the 0.1% of agencies in the world.

Of course, there are good partners at all levels. Every agency needs to start somewhere. But if you’ve had a bad experience with a partner, find a reliable one in the Elite tier. They’re more likely to have the skills, bodies, resources and expertise you need to get the results you want.

3. You don’t like the product

I’ve been in the world of HubSpot for around eight years now and I’ve never heard this before. That’s the truth.

HubSpot has been designed so it’s easy to use for everyone. It means you don’t need to rope in your developers for even the tiniest of fixes. It’s catered to every department, from marketers and developers right through to IT teams. It isn’t a bunch of platforms squished together and forced to try and work.

It does what most people need it to do, even with constant updates, improvements and upgrades. HubSpot hasn’t diverted from the user-friendliness and hasn’t compromised how powerful the tools are either - across all Hubs. I urge you to look at what else could have gone wrong first, rather than blaming HubSpot directly. You might find HubSpot wasn’t to blame after all.

How to get out of a hubspot contract

Now let’s address the elephant in the room. Yes, I run a HubSpot agency, so I understand if you assume some bias here. But my advice is honest and what I’ve found to be true from my own first-hand experience. Believe it or not, my team and I have never and won’t ever talk someone into using HubSpot if it isn’t right for them.

Part of our sales process sometimes involves the somewhat awkward conversation of telling companies HubSpot won’t suit their companies just yet. 

You don’t have to just try to make it yourself either. If you don’t want to work with another agency just yet, you still have plenty of learning opportunities, such as:

But if you need a second opinion on what you can still achieve with HubSpot, you’d be better off speaking to the experts...

Don’t want to give up on HubSpot just yet? Get in touch to have another try

Everyone deserves a second chance and HubSpot is no different. At Digital 22, we’re all about growing, learning and sharing with our clients. We also want HubSpot users to get the most out of the platform, so we would hate to see you cancel it before identifying a solution to your problem.

Before deciding not to renew, give this playbook a read to decide what the best next steps are for your business. We can help set you back on the right HubSpot path. Get your copy below.