In short: we charge for our HubSpot assessment (USD 1,200, five business days) because a free assessment is almost always a proposal in disguise. A paid one goes into the real portal, ranks the ten findings by what they cost you today and hands you a plan you can run with anyone. If you hire the project within 30 days, the fee is credited in full.
In August we used Clay to map the tech stack of 105 B2B technology companies in Latin America: 57 already had HubSpot, 54%. Among SaaS and B2B product companies the share reached 74 to 75%. Those companies do not need someone to sell them "a HubSpot implementation". They already have one. What they need is to know what is broken, what it costs them and where to start. That is an assessment, and in September we decided to charge for it. This article explains why, what it includes and what it does not.
The "free audit" is a proposal in disguise
Most agencies offer a free HubSpot audit. The issue is not intent, it is economics. If the person doing the diagnosis is not paid, they need the diagnosis to end in a project to recover their hours. That pushes the conclusions in one direction: there is a lot to fix, and the people who ran the audit are the ones to fix it.
On the other side, the client gets a document they cannot use without that agency. The recommendations stay general ("clean up your properties", "review your workflows") because nobody went deep into the portal, and the detail arrives "in the proposal". Both sides pretend: one that it designs for free, the other that it received something useful.
Jonathan Stark puts it plainly: a conversation to check fit does not reduce the client's uncertainty, while a roadmap does, because it tells them what to do, what to avoid and how long each step takes (Stark, 2017). Double Your Freelancing simply calls it "paid discovery" (what is roadmapping). We keep the two apart.
What changes when the assessment is paid
When an assessment has a price, it also has a delivery date and a deliverable, and that changes the work. Ours starts the day we get access to the portal and lasts five business days. We review properties, pipelines and stages, workflows, lists, forms, integrations, permissions and data hygiene.
Then we compare the sales process as it actually happens against what the portal supports today. That is where the things a free audit rarely shows come up: the parts of the process that live outside the CRM, in a spreadsheet or in a rep's head.
The deliverable is the ten findings ranked by what they cost the business today, not a list of best practices, plus a remediation plan with the effort behind each item and what your team can do on its own. We close with a 60-minute session with your team. The plan is yours: you can run it with us, with another agency or in-house.
Assessment and self-assessment are not the same
To avoid confusion: we also have a free self-assessment. You answer a few questions in three minutes, with no call and no proposal, and get a snapshot of where your HubSpot stands. It tells you whether you have a problem and roughly how big it is.
The assessment is something else: it is us inside your portal, with real access, for a week. We are not against free tools; we are against the "free audit" that is really chapter one of a sales pitch.
| Self-assessment | Assessment | Typical "free audit" | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does it | You | Us, inside the portal | The agency, from outside or with partial access |
| Cost | Free | USD 1,200 | Free |
| Time | 3 minutes | 5 business days | Varies |
| Deliverable | General snapshot | 10 findings ranked by cost and a prioritized plan | General recommendations and a proposal |
| Usable without whoever made it | Yes | Yes | Rarely |
Why the project credit is the engine, not a concession
If you decide to hire the project within 30 days of the assessment, the USD 1,200 is credited in full. It may look like a discount to win you over. It is not: it is what makes the model work for both sides.
For you, it removes the risk of the small decision. You pay to know what is wrong before committing to something bigger, and if you continue, you did not pay twice. For us, the project conversation starts where you have already seen the problem measured, with options and prices on the table, not with "I'll send the proposal later".
What the assessment does not include matters too: we do not build anything during that week. If part of the plan needs to be built, it is quoted separately. Saying so up front avoids an awkward conversation on day five.
What is always free is 20 minutes to see whether it makes sense to talk. That is not design, it is judgment. If on that call we see your problem can be solved with a change you can make yourself, we tell you and that is the end of it.
What you can do this week
- Run the 30-second test. Open your pipeline and ask whether you can tell, without talking to anyone, which stage each deal is in and what the next step is. If you have to ask, that is your first finding. Our article on pipeline stages explains how to read it.
- List what lives outside the CRM. Ask your sales team which spreadsheets they use every week and what for. Each one is a part of the process HubSpot is not supporting.
- Ask anyone offering a free audit what exactly you get and whether you can use it without hiring them. If the answer is vague, you know what it is.
When do you actually need help?
If your portal is more than a year old, several people have configured it and nobody trusts the reports, an outside assessment saves weeks of internal debate. If your team is small and runs a single pipeline, the three steps above may be enough. When you want to see what the assessment includes and its terms, they are on our pricing page.
If you want to know where your HubSpot stands today, the free 3-minute self-assessment (in Spanish) is a good place to start.
Frequently asked questions
What access do you need to my HubSpot portal?
Super admin, or read access plus access to workflows, lists and reports. We also need one hour with whoever leads sales and 30 minutes with whoever manages the portal today. The five business days start when we receive access, not when the agreement is signed.
What happens if I do not hire the project afterwards?
Nothing. You keep the ten findings and the remediation plan, and you can run them in-house or with another agency. The project credit only applies if you decide to continue with us within 30 days of delivery.
How is it different from the free self-assessment?
You answer the self-assessment yourself in three minutes and get a general snapshot, with no call. We run the assessment inside your portal over five days, and it delivers specific findings ranked by cost with a prioritized plan. One tells you whether there is a problem; the other tells you which one and how to fix it.