HubSpot is a customer platform built around a shared CRM. It was founded in 2006, has its global headquarters in Boston and its European headquarters in Dublin, and counts more than 306,000 customers.
The free CRM is free with no expiry, for up to two users and 1,000 contacts. On top of it sit the hubs: Marketing, Sales, Service and Content, plus Data Hub, formerly Operations Hub, and Revenue Hub for quotes, billing and payments. Each comes in Starter, Professional and Enterprise editions.
Breeze and outside assistants
Breeze Assistant is included with every HubSpot subscription. Agent Hub, part of every paid edition, adds AI agents for customer service, prospecting and data work.
Assistants outside HubSpot connect through its remote MCP server. Claude, ChatGPT and other MCP-compatible tools can read and update contacts, companies, deals and tickets, and each change stays within the signed-in user’s own HubSpot permissions.
Apps and data
More than 2,000 apps sit in the HubSpot Marketplace. Data sync, on every plan, keeps contacts and other records in step with tools like accounting and support software, usually within ten minutes of a change. HubSpot hosts data in Europe, the US, Canada and Australia.
Turning won deals into invoices
A deal closes in HubSpot, but the invoice has to exist in the accounts. HubSpot builds its own Xero integration, which syncs contacts, products, invoices and payments. Each can run both ways or in one direction only.
Inside HubSpot, a deal or quote can be converted into an invoice, and the sync carries it across to Xero. Only open invoices created or changed after the sync started make the trip, so older ones stay put. Payments come back from Xero, again only those made after connecting.
Tax rates come from Xero. They’re imported into HubSpot, but a rate created in HubSpot doesn’t travel to Xero. Timing differs by direction too: HubSpot’s changes reach Xero within minutes, while Xero is checked every 30 minutes.
QuickBooks Online connects through the same kind of sync, with credit memos added. Its recommended setup brings invoices one way, from QuickBooks into HubSpot, so payment details show on the deal.
One contact per email address
HubSpot recognizes a contact by its email address. A form or import with a known address updates the existing contact. A customer writing in from an address HubSpot hasn’t seen becomes a new one.
The accounting syncs lean on the same key. The most common reason an invoice won’t reach Xero is a HubSpot contact whose email doesn’t match the customer’s in Xero, and Xero also needs every contact name to be unique. QuickBooks Online needs unique display names: the first contact from a company takes the company’s name, so the next one from that company fails because the name is already in use.
Getting order history onto the contact
HubSpot’s Shopify sync puts orders and abandoned checkouts on the matching contact. Customers and products sync both ways. Orders only travel from Shopify to HubSpot, and can’t be edited on the HubSpot side.
The match is on email here as well. A setting limits the sync to customers who have an address, and HubSpot warns that records already imported into either system can sync again as duplicates. Orders from other channels can arrive through the Orders API, linked to the contact and its deal.
HubSpot’s CRM API
HubSpot’s CRM API covers contacts, companies, deals, tickets, products and dozens more objects, with custom objects on Enterprise. An app for a single account uses a static access token, and anything installed across several accounts uses OAuth.
Limits grow with the edition: an account on Professional can make 625,000 calls a day, and Enterprise a million, with an add-on for more. Search returns up to 10,000 results per query.
Since March 2026, HubSpot’s APIs carry dated versions, released every March and September and supported for at least 18 months each.
Webhooks and workflows
Apps can subscribe to webhooks for records being created, changed or deleted. Inside HubSpot, Data Hub Professional and Enterprise let workflows send a webhook or run custom code in JavaScript or Python.
For testing, developers can create up to ten test accounts, and Enterprise customers get standard sandboxes that mirror their live setup.
Where HubSpot meets the rest
HubSpot already connects to a long list of tools, and the gaps between those connections are where the opportunities sit. A won deal can create the invoice in Xero and bring its payment back, orders from every channel can land on the right contact, and support history can sit on the record alongside both.
The first decision is which system owns the customer and which owns the invoice, and an AI readiness scorecard starts there: ask HubSpot how many active customers you have, then ask Xero. Breeze agents and MCP connections act on whatever those records say, so the data work comes before the AI, and with HubSpot versioning its APIs twice a year, any custom connection needs someone who owns it after it ships.