You may have received an email or a notification on your portal that your account is going to be migrated to the new pricing model. (If you haven't receive this yet, you will with a 30 to 60 days anticipation, trust me). This means that you are going to migrate into the new seats scheme. What does that mean and how does it impact your business? Read on.

Understanding the Structure of HubSpot's New Seats Model

HubSpot's new seats model (since March 2024) is designed to offer a more streamlined and intuitive user experience. This model allows businesses to assign seats based on specific roles and needs, ensuring that every team member has access to the tools and features they require to perform their tasks efficiently.

The structure is built to be both scalable and flexible, accommodating the dynamic needs of growing businesses. Whether you're a small startup or a large enterprise, the new seats model can be tailored to fit your organizational structure seamlessly. This means that if you have team of 3 sales reps, you no longer need to buy Sales Hub PRO with 5 minimum seats, just the 3 you need, and pay only for those ones.

Customization and Flexibility in Seat Allocation

One of the standout features of HubSpot's new seats model is its high degree of customization. Businesses can now allocate seats based on individual user requirements, ensuring that everyone has the right access without unnecessary extras. This flexibility extends to adjusting seats as roles change within the organization, making it easier to manage and adapt to evolving business needs. This will allow to have users with PRO functionalities and also users with Enterprise functionalities, giving you access to all Enterprise features for the price of just 1 seat.

Let's not forget that in addition to the types of seats, you will continue to have the types of permissions to further customise the roles and responsibilities of each user.

Cost Efficiency and Scalability Benefits

The new seats model is not just about flexibility; it also offers significant cost efficiency benefits. By allowing businesses to pay only for the seats they need, HubSpot ensures that you're getting the most value for your investment. This model eliminates the need for blanket subscriptions that often include features and tools that go unused, making it a more economical choice.

Scalability is another major advantage. As your business grows, you can easily add more seats and adjust access levels without the hassle of reconfiguring your entire system. This ensures that your CRM can grow with you, providing continuous support as your needs evolve. 

Let's take a look at the seats types:

• View only seats: no edition permissions, just being able to access the portal and see the information set in their permissions. This is ideal for admin teams that just check info for invoicing or for business owner that just consult reports and dashboards once a month. Remember is just view, no editing. There are also some tools that are not going to be accesible with this type of seat.
• Core Seats: this type of seat is designed especially for the marketing, rev ops and operations teams who are constantly working on the portal running campaigns and curating data. This type of seat is essential for editing properties, creating reports and automations.
• Sales and Service Seats: these are the traditional seats for sales and service teams and, like the core seats, have the ability to edit records and activities, of course in their assigned hub. 
  
• Partner Seat: a free seat that gives eligible HubSpot Solutions Partner and provider employees access to all features in a client's account. This has no extra seat cost for your company, its just a different access for the agency you are working with.
  

Remember that for core, sales and service seats permissions need to be set to have superadmin or restricted records views.

Enhancements in User Management and Permissions

The updated system provides a more granular level of control, allowing administrators to assign specific permissions sets based on individual roles. This ensures that each user has access to the exact tools and data they need, enhancing both security and efficiency.

Impact of the New Model on Business Growth and User Experience

All new customers from 2024 onwards fall under this new seating scheme, but what about existing customers? You are going to be migrated into this new model between the end of 2024 and during 2025. 

So why should you care about this?

If you are a small company with few users, you will probably benefit from the migration.
If you are a medium or large company with multiple marketing users, then you need to start evaluating it because each of those users will become paid.

Of course HubSpot is making the migration process as smooth as possible so that users do not feel the impact and the costs of current contracts are likely to be respected. At the moment of migration HubSpot's team will analyze your active users and give free seats to most of them so that there is no change in your costs.

But you have to keep in mind that after the renewal, the price you pay for the licenses might change, so you should start estimating this for future annual budgets.

In addition, you have to consider that each new team member you need after the migration will have to fit into one of these types of seats and their respective costs.

Are any other modifications related?

No, Marketing contacts and any other add-on that you had previously purchased is not going to be affected, just the user's related ones.

Regarding to functionalities, you will not loose any current functionality available, but if you used to have legacy contracts you might win some new ones, for example, for those who had a sales legacy contract you will now have access to the new Prospecting and sales workspace. 

If you need help understanding this new model and how its going to work for your company, we can help you, book now your portal's users audit here.