Sonan Insights
What clients actually hire HubSpot partners for: 207 reviews, 2020 to 2026
Short answer: In 207 public reviews of HubSpot partners written between 2020 and 2026, the work clients praise has moved away from marketing and toward systems: workflows, reporting, sales process, migrations and training. The word inbound has been in decline for years. This is what that shift means if you are buying this kind of help.
All HubSpot policy details below come from HubSpot’s own knowledge base and product catalogue, linked inline, and were checked on 16 October 2026. HubSpot changes terms and prices, so confirm the current version before you act.
Where the data comes from
We analysed 207 written reviews of Canadian HubSpot and Salesforce consultancies, collected from public partner review pages and our own review data set, covering reviews dated 2020 to April 2026. Each review includes the reviewer’s company size, the cost band, and what they hired the firm to do.
What clients mention, by year
| What clients mention | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Workflows and automation | 0% | 10% | 16% | 6% | 32% | 15% |
| Reporting and dashboards | 0% | 5% | 4% | 6% | 11% | 8% |
| Sales process and pipeline | 0% | 5% | 0% | 6% | 21% | 12% |
| Migration | 4% | 10% | 0% | 12% | 11% | 8% |
| Training and adoption | 12% | 15% | 8% | 18% | 36% | 27% |
| Data cleanup | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 4% |
| Inbound, SEO and content | 4% | 10% | 16% | 35% | 36% | 23% |
| AI | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 4% |
Read the trend rather than the individual numbers. Workflows and automation, reporting, sales process, migrations and training are all rising. Marketing content has fallen by roughly two thirds. AI is still small, appearing in under 3% of reviews, which matches how rarely clients credit it.
What clients actually hired for
- Cost bands. 62 reviews sat under $10,000, 55 were $10,000 to $49,999, and 32 were $50,000 to $199,999. One-off projects in this market are mostly small.
- Company size. 87 reviews came from companies of 1 to 10 people and 68 from 11 to 50. Very few came from firms above 200.
- Ongoing work. 73 of 207 reviews describe an engagement that was still running when it was written.
- How they found the firm. 37 of the reviews that say how cite a referral, against 18 for online search. Referrals dominate.
What this means if you are buying
- The work worth paying for is the part that makes data usable: stage definitions, workflows that match how the team sells, reporting leadership trusts, and migration done properly.
- Plan for the ongoing piece. A large share of engagements are continuing ones, because systems drift after launch.
- Ask for referrals from people you know. That is how most of these engagements start.
- Be sceptical of AI as the headline. Clients rarely credit it, and the systems underneath matter more.
Method and limits: the sample is drawn from reviews firms have published or collected, which skews positive and towards work that finished well. Cost bands and company sizes are self-reported by the reviewer. The full coded data set is available on request.
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