Skip to content

Supercharge HubSpot with Operations Hub

The most recent addition to HubSpot's eco system is often not that well understood. And for good reason: it is not separately listed in the menu, and unlike the other hubs it has little to no use on it's own.
But many of the more advanced users consider it the hub with the highest ROI as it will allow you to take the automations to the next level.
In this article we hope to explain the difference between the tiers and provide the information to help you decide if a paid version of Operations Hub is the right investment. Because yes: if you have HubSpot you already have the free version of Operations Hub. That is part of the core of HubSpot.
If you have any integration using DataSync you are already using it without even needing to know what it is or how it works! Because that is how HubSpot created Operations Hub: to be as simple as you want or as complex as it needs to be.
For larger companies Operations hub is usually 'owned' by revenue operations.
Data-Sync-Illustration

Tiers

Like with all Hubs, Operations Hub has 4 tiers. Ranging from free to the enterprise level. With all hubs every tier upgrade also increases limits. This can be in the amount of reports, dashboards, lists, workflows etc. Limit increases are not cumulative. A quick example: In Operations Hub Pro the limit for calculated properties is 5. In Operations Hub Enterprise this is 200. If you already have any other hub on the enterprise level, your limit is already set to 200, so going for Operations Hub Pro or Enterprise makes no difference for this particular limit.
We have therefore decided to be incomplete and just summarise the most important features. Please refer to the pricing page for a full overview of the features and functions per tier.

Operations Hub Free and Starter

There is really only one feature in the free version: Data Sync. Many of the marketplace apps rely on that and it is a fast and efficient way to sync data. In every marketplace app you will find a quick and helpful overview to which fields sync and in which direction:

Datashare

So in the image above you can see the integration for Google Ads that syncs Ad performance to hubSpot, syncs the Tracking Pixel data both ways and has a sync for the Contact Lists and Tracking Code back to Google Ads Audiences.

In the free version only a limited amount of fields is available, where the starter version allows custom field mapping. Please refer to the integration you are using to see if this is something that is required or helpful.

Some integrations do sync with the free version, but can sync more fields with the starter+ versions.

Operations Hub Professional

This is the tier that takes automation to the next level!

There are quite a few no-code automations that we listed below, but we also want to emphasise the power of coded solutions. Here is a breakdown of the main features:

Workflows: Scheduled automation +
You can now set up time based triggers with zero code. This means running a workflow for instance every morning at 6:00 am that makes sure all data is synced. 
Another example is used in our programmable email: we trigger a daily check for all contacts to see if they should be receiving the newsletter that day. Super powerful, super easy.
Data Quality command center +

The data quality command center shows an overview of how data is stored in your HubSpot CRM, and highlights potential issues with your data. You can evaluate possible issues with your properties, records, data sync integrations, and workflows and in many cases create rules to correct the issues with the click of a button. From the command center, you can also drill down further into each asset and take action to improve the quality of your data.
Check out HubSpot's knowledge base or more information on the data quality command center.

Bulk Duplicate management +
Use artificial intelligence to identify duplicate contact and company records in bulk. You can set up rules based on that to help keep your database clean and your processes running smooth.
Programmable automation +

A little code goes a long way.

And with custom coded workflow actions and chatbot actions you can take automation to the next level.

Since custom coded workflow actions are the most common, we will walk you through some examples:

  • Email validation op a per-contact base instead of running your entire database through that (cost!). We even made a full tutorial on how to do this.
  • Cloning a deal with non-standard associations, or while recalculating the amount.
  • Copying over line items for a cloned deal.
  • Sync with external database.

And in all fairness: the list of possibilities is endless. We have seen people importing entire NPM packages into workflows. So if you can imagine it, it can probably be done.

Webhooks triggered by workflows +

Use webhooks in workflows to send or retrieve information between HubSpot and other external tools. There are a variety of uses for webhooks, examples of popular use cases for webhooks include:

  • Posting HubSpot contacts data to another system, such as a CRM, when that contact fills out a particular form on your site.
  • Sending deal data to an external shipment-handling system to create a purchase order.
  • Sending chat alerts from your external system to your company's chat stream to notify employees that something important has occurred.
  • Retrieving data from another system to update your HubSpot records.

You can send both POST and GET requests using workflows. HubSpot regulates webhook traffic separately from other workflow processes. This is done to streamline workflow and webhook performance. When a webhook is slow or times out, the workflow action may take longer than expected to execute.

Operations Hub Enterprise

Long story short: Ops Hub Enterprise has two features:

Snowflake Data Share: If you are using Snowflake this requires no introduction and using Operations Hub enterprise will be a no-brainer for you. Don't use Snowflake? Most Operations hub Enterprise users don't, so still keep reading :-)

The more common feature is Datasets. In a nutshell datasets allow you to both curate a dataset, as well as create formula based reporting only properties.
Curated datasets helps speed up the process of creating reports and limits the errors as users will have quick access to the right properties instead of trying to figure out which ones to use.