The HubSpot partner ANZ teams keep for years, not projects.

What does a HubSpot Solutions Partner do?

A HubSpot Solutions Partner sets up, configures and supports HubSpot for the businesses that use it. Partners are certified through HubSpot's Solutions Partner Program and listed in HubSpot's Solutions Directory, where you can check their tier, certifications and reviews.

The work usually falls into five areas:

• Onboarding. Properties, pipelines, lifecycle stages, automation and reporting, set up around how your business sells and delivers.
• Migration. Moving contacts, companies, deals, notes and activity from Salesforce, Pipedrive, Freshsales, Zoho, Copper or Mailchimp.
• Integrations. Connecting HubSpot to the tools you already rely on, such as Xero, PandaDoc, calling tools and your website.
• Training. Role-based sessions so each team knows how to do its own work in HubSpot.
• Ongoing support. Fixes, new builds and portal management after go-live.

Many partners can also manage your HubSpot subscription, so licensing and support sit in one place. We do both, and we'll help you work out which hubs you actually need before you buy them. Often that means starting with your sales team, then adding marketing, then service.

Do you need a HubSpot partner, or can you set HubSpot up yourself?

You can set HubSpot up yourself. HubSpot's own tools and Academy courses are good, and a small team with a simple sales process can do well on its own. A partner earns its fee when the setup has to fit something HubSpot doesn't assume by default.

In our experience, that usually means one or more of these:

• You're moving from another CRM and can't afford to lose deal history or activity.
• Your sales process runs across more than one pipeline, product line or entity.
• Leadership wants reporting it can trust from day one.
• HubSpot needs to connect to finance, quoting or product data.
• Nobody on the team has time to own the build properly.

Fixing a portal a year after it went live on the defaults tends to cost more than setting it up properly at the start. Lifecycle stages stop matching how you sell, reports stop matching what sales is seeing, and the spreadsheets creep back in.

What do HubSpot partner tiers mean?

HubSpot ranks its Solutions Partners in four tiers: Gold, Platinum, Diamond and Elite. Tiers are based on points a partner earns from the HubSpot customers it brings in, assists and manages. Diamond and Elite also require a minimum customer retention rate, and every tiered partner needs a current Solutions Partner certification.

A tier measures volume and retention. It doesn't tell you who will work in your portal, or whether they've built for a business like yours. Read the reviews, and ask those questions directly.

What should you ask a HubSpot partner before you sign?

Ask the questions that show you who does the work and what happens when something doesn't go to plan. These are the ones we'd ask any partner, including us.

1. Who scopes the project, and who builds it?
2. Will the same people be in our portal after go-live?
3. What won't come across from our old system?
4. Have you worked with a business model like ours, not only our industry?
5. Can you give examples of portals you've cleaned up, not only ones you've built?
6. Is ongoing support optional, or built into the deal?
7. What documentation do we own at handover?

Should you choose a boutique HubSpot partner or a large agency?

Choose a boutique partner when continuity and senior attention matter most. Choose a large agency when you need a big team working across many regions at once. For a B2B team in Australia or New Zealand that wants the same people on its portal year after year, a boutique partner tends to be the better fit.

Small by design. Senior on every account. That's the trade-off we've chosen, and we'll tell you if your project needs something different.

How much does a HubSpot partner cost in Australia?

The cost of a HubSpot partner depends on scope, not on where the partner is based. Any partner should scope your project before quoting it. These are the variables that move the number most:

• How many hubs and seats you're setting up
• How much data you're migrating, and from which system
• How many integrations you need
• Whether your model needs custom objects, which require an Enterprise subscription
• How much training your team needs
• Whether you want ongoing support after go-live

Timing follows the same variables. In our projects, onboarding takes about 12 weeks, a migration combined with onboarding takes 12 to 16 weeks, and a clean-up of an existing portal takes 4 to 8 weeks at minimum. Plan on 2 to 3 hours a week from your side during onboarding.

What happens after go-live?

After go-live, you should be able to run HubSpot without your partner. We hand over documentation your team owns, and ongoing support is optional.

Clients who want help after handover keep us on for fixes, new builds, integrations and portal management. HubSpot changes and so does your business, and it helps to call people who already know how your portal is built.

Who does OTM work with?

We work with B2B businesses of about 5 to 125 people across Australia and New Zealand. Most of our clients are vertical SaaS companies, financial services and advisory firms, and professional services businesses. Some recent work:

• A Sydney RegTech company, on a four-year retainer, with more than 100 landing pages and the campaigns behind its inbound lead flow.
• A Sydney financial services firm, moved from Freshsales to HubSpot with a power dialer and full visibility of call activity.
• A Gold Coast construction software company, with lifecycle stage workflows and source reporting across the full customer journey.
• A property company, migrated from Copper CRM, with a redeveloped sales process, lead prioritisation and more than 10 nurture journeys.