Anyone can generate the email.
Ours is told what happens if it guesses.
You are probably here because a free CRM ran out. Two users, a thousand contacts, HubSpot's logo on your mail, and the automation you actually came for sitting behind Professional and an onboarding invoice.
“Eleven people filled in the form on our site last week. Work out which ones are real, then draft me a first email for each.”
- The eleven
It looked all eleven companies up.
What they do, roughly how big they are, what they sell. The ten minutes of searching you would have done before each call.
- Who wrote in
It worked out who actually filled in the form.
The owner, the office manager, or somebody collecting prices for their boss. Three were students, and it said so rather than drafting them a sales email.
- The placeholder
It checked your field names before writing one.
Because it is told in writing that an unknown placeholder is not an error and renders as empty text. That is the difference between eight good drafts and eight emails that open with a greeting and no name.
- The stop
Eight drafts. Nothing sent.
It is instructed to confirm a recipient list before sending to many people, and told that a send cannot be undone.
Before it touches anything
The generated email is easy.
Not ruining the list is not.
Every CRM has an AI layer now, HubSpot's included. What is not standard is the written briefing handed to your assistant before it may send anything. Quoted from ours:
Always call listEmailTemplateVariables instead of guessing a field name, or you will silently send “Hi ,” to everyone
A mail merge that greets five hundred customers by no name at all.
Confirm the recipient list with the user before sending to many people
An assistant that decides on its own who the campaign goes to.
Nothing has been delivered when the call returns
Being told the send worked before a single message has left.
A template stores the tableId it was written for and can only be sent to records of that object
A deal template fired at people, filling in nothing.
Every one of these is a real way to embarrass yourself in front of your entire customer list, and none of them is expressible as a tool definition. This is the part of an agentic CRM that takes years rather than a sprint, because it is not a feature. It is a list of the ways this product has actually been got wrong.
Quoted from our own server, 10 September 2026. Connect it and read the rest. We have not printed what anyone else hands their assistant, because we cannot read their server without an account, and a claim about it would be worth nothing.
The other half of the bill
You are not paying for a CRM.
You are paying for six hubs.
HubSpot sells Marketing, Sales, Service, Content, Data and Agent hubs on one platform. Priced for a go-to-market team, sold to a five-person company. This is roughly what a small team never opens.
- Attribution reporting
- Lookalike audience lists
- CPQ and quote approvals
- Conversation intelligence
- SLA management
- Custom behavioural events
- Playbooks
- Forecasting
- Content and blog hosting
- Social scheduling
- Ad audience sync
- Customer portal
- Omnichannel inbox
- Lead scoring models
- Contact records
- Deal pipelines
- Email and templates
- Meeting booking
4 av 18. The four lit ones are the CRM, and they are the four a five-person company opens. The rest is the platform. On Professional it arrives whether anyone opens it or not, and the bill is the same either way.
The bill
Five people, one year,
annual billing on both sides.
We quote Sales Hub Professional, because it is the cheapest HubSpot plan with workflows, and workflows are usually the whole reason anyone leaves a spreadsheet. Starter is $7 and does not have them.
HubSpot Sales Hub Professional
5 seats · 12 months
- Professional, per seat per monthAnnual commitment. $100 if you pay monthly.$90
- Five seats, twelve months$5,400
- OnboardingOne-time, and mandatory at this tier.$1,500
Starter is $7 a seat annually with no workflows. Enterprise is $150 with a mandatory $3,500 onboarding. Professional and Enterprise also price on two axes, tier and seat type, so seats are not the only thing that moves the bill.
SoftSync Pro
5 seats · 12 months
- Pro, per seat per monthAnnual billing. $39 if you pay monthly.$29
- Five seats, twelve months$1,740
- OnboardingNo onboarding fee at any tier, Business included.$0
Automation is on every tier here, including the free one.
HubSpot's figures are their own, from their Sales Hub pricing page at annual commitment, read 10 September 2026. The onboarding fees are published on that same page. Ours are on our pricing page. hubspot.com/pricing/sales · softsync.ai/pricing
Both sides
A CRM against
a platform.
HubSpot is not really our competitor. It is a much larger product that contains one, and the second column is long for exactly that reason.
What we do that HubSpot does not6
- Written skill guidance for your assistantPrinted above.
- Three free seats, not twoTwo is the founder and one other person.
- 25,000 records free, per objectHubSpot Free is a thousand contacts.
- No vendor logo on your mailTheir free tier brands your assets. Nothing we send carries our name.
- No onboarding fee, everTheirs is $1,500 at Professional and $3,500 at Enterprise.
- Automation on the free planWorkflows start at HubSpot Professional.
What HubSpot does that we do not6
- Marketing, service and content on one recordA CMS, a help desk, campaigns. We are a CRM. Different product, not a gap we are closing.
- The biggest ecosystem in the categoryA marketplace, and a certified partner in your city. Ours does not exist.
- HubSpot AcademyFree training your next hire probably already has.
- A cheaper paid entryStarter at $7 is well under our $29.
- Reporting and forecasting depthMore than ours at Professional and above.
- Thousands of independent reviewsWe have none.
True of both4
- A permanent free planNot a trial, either side. The caps differ.
- Published per-seat pricingYou can work out the bill without a call.
- Self-serve signupNeither of us requires talking to anyone.
- An AI layerBreeze on their side. Both real, and this page is about what each is told.
Pick HubSpot instead if
Marketing is the job. Landing pages, campaigns, segmentation and attribution on the same contact record, or a service desk beside it. HubSpot is genuinely bigger than us and no price advantage substitutes for it. Pick them too if your team is already trained, because that is worth more than the difference in the bill.
Every figure about them is from their own published pricing page, read 10 September 2026. Tell hello@softsync.ai if one is wrong and we will fix it and re-date it.
Fair questions.
HubSpot is free. Why would we pay you?
HubSpot has Breeze. How is your agent different?
Is the onboarding fee really mandatory?
We use HubSpot for marketing too.
Check what your free plan
stopped letting you do.
Most people find us after a free CRM ran out. If the next step is Professional and an onboarding invoice, spend twenty minutes here first.