If you’ve spent time setting up HubSpot and it’s “working,” it’s tempting to think you can leave it be. But as your business evolves - and as HubSpot evolves - “good enough” quickly becomes a ceiling.
Here’s why settling for “just good enough” often ends up costing you - and what you should do instead.
In 2025, HubSpot introduced a major overhaul with the new Data Hub (formerly Operations Hub), which centralises structured, unstructured, and external data into your CRM - giving a fuller, richer view of customers and improving segmentation, reporting, and automation potential.
New AI-powered features (like Breeze Agents, AI-driven data enrichment, and smarter CRM views) are now available, helping teams automate tedious tasks, clean data, and get actionable insights quickly.
If your setup hasn’t been revisited in 12–24 months, you’re almost certainly missing tools that make your existing processes better - faster workflows, fewer errors, and deeper analytics.
Bottom line: HubSpot evolves. If your portal doesn’t, you fall behind - and you lose out on efficiencies you’ve already paid for.
Data degrades over time: duplicates, inconsistent values, outdated property options. These degrade reporting, skew segmentation, and cause automation errors.
Without regular data hygiene, clean-ups, and use of Data Hub’s cleaning/enrichment features, your CRM turns into a swamp. Automation misfires. Reports mislead. Teams lose trust.
Many businesses under-use HubSpot features - a common mistake is having a CRM but failing to consolidate or retire external martech tools, leading to overlapping subscriptions and wasted budget.
Reality check: Maintaining the minimum means paying for more than you use - in subscription spend, in staff time cleaning issues, in lost leads.
Maybe when you first setup HubSpot, you catered for a small team or simple pipeline. Now you’ve expanded. But if you didn’t revisit property schema, deal stages, life-cycle definitions - legacy assumptions can cripple scaling.
Workflows and automations built to support “basic” pipelines (or seasonal volume) often start breaking when volume spikes or when sales/marketing processes change. Some logic becomes obsolete or incorrect.
Without periodic audits, it’s impossible to know which workflows, properties, or integrations are redundant - or even harmful. Best-practice is to audit your portal at least annually (or after major business changes) to remove cruft, align processes, and optimise.
What it means: “Good enough” becomes “rigid and brittle.”
HubSpot’s newer AI-powered CRM enhancements (like Smart CRM, Data Hub, and Breeze Agents) help turn your data into actionable insight - but only if you actually enable and build around them.
Features like advanced segmentation, automated enrichment, analytics dashboards, and cross-hub data synchronisation rely on a clean, well-structured portal. Without revisiting your setup, you can’t unlock them.
A modernised portal lets you consolidate systems: reduce tool sprawl, cut subscription costs, improve team efficiency - instead of keeping a fragmented stack you never review.
Win potential: better data, smarter automation, fewer manual tasks - but only if you commit to evolving your setup.
Many teams buy or subscribe to a full HubSpot suite - marketing, sales, service - but only use a handful of features. That leaves huge parts of the platform dormant. As pointed out by analysis of common mistakes in CRM adoption, under-utilisation leads to missed insights, inconsistent data and poor ROI.
With the new Data Hub and AI tools, HubSpot is explicitly designed to handle much of the grunt work: data syncing, enrichment, cleaning, automated workflows. Using only basic features while paying for more means you’re leaving value on the table.
Reality: Paying for a full CRM platform - but using only part of it - is money wasted.
If your team doesn’t revisit setup - property schema, workflows, automations, integrations - you accumulate “tech debt.” Over time small misalignments become big problems: broken automations, data duplication, conflicting workflows, poor reporting.
That tech debt increases internal friction - Sales ignores CRM, marketing targets lists knowing data is messy, reporting becomes unreliable. Productivity and trust drop.
Without regular audits and optimisation, cleaning up becomes daunting - and most organisations never get there.
Here’s a practical plan to move from “good enough” to “optimised and future-proof”:
| Step | Action | Benefit |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Audit your portal (properties, workflows, integrations, user permissions, data quality) | Identify outdated or redundant elements, reduce data clutter |
| 2 | Clean and standardise data (use Data Hub tools + deduplication) | Accurate segmentation, clean automations, better reporting |
| 3 | Map your processes against what you actually use — prune unused workflows & tools | Reduce complexity, lower license costs, fewer errors |
| 4 | Enable relevant 2025+ tools (AI agents, Smart CRM, Data Hub, advanced workflows) | Save time, boost efficiency, unlock automation power |
| 5 | Document your setup, naming conventions, and process flows | Makes future changes easier, avoids chaos |
| 6 | Schedule regular reviews (quarterly or bi-annually) | Keeps setup aligned with business growth and strategy |
If re-auditing your entire Portal feels overwhelming - that’s where Profoundly steps in.
We connect you with vetted HubSpot experts who can:
Audit your existing setup
Clean data and deduplicate records
Map and streamline workflows & automations
Enable and configure new features (like Data Hub, AI agents, Smart CRM)
Build documentation & naming conventions for long-term clarity
Use Profoundly to turn “good enough” into “good to go” - without the stress.
Profoundly helps businesses get more out of HubSpot by pairing them with specialists who know how to build scalable, efficient, well-structured portals. From data hygiene to automation, from reporting to CRM architecture - Profoundly makes your HubSpot setup work better.
Emma Cooper is Marketing Manager at Profoundly. With more than 10 years in digital marketing and 5 years specializing in HubSpot, Emma brings deep expertise in implementation, troubleshooting, and optimization within agency environments. Her work focuses on helping clients unlock the full potential of HubSpot through practical strategy, clean architecture, and data-driven performance.
Why shouldn’t I just keep HubSpot how it is if it’s working fine?
Because “working fine” often masks underlying issues. Over time, messy data, outdated workflows, unused features, and new business needs will expose those cracks - and eventually they’ll become big problems.
Does updating and auditing the portal require a big investment?
Not necessarily. Some fixes are quick (data cleaning, pruning workflows), others require more setup (enabling new features). But the return - in saved time, better automation, improved insight and less wasted spend - usually outweighs effort.
Is it worth enabling new 2025 features like Data Hub or AI agents?
Yes - especially if your business is scaling. They help centralise data, automate mundane tasks, enrich CRM records, and unlock deeper analytics. But they’re only effective if the underlying CRM and data structure are sound.
How often should we review our HubSpot setup?
Quarterly is ideal, but at minimum once a year - or immediately after any major business changes (team growth, new products, new workflows).
Can we gradually improve rather than do a full overhaul?
Absolutely. Start with audit and clean-up. Then enable new tools or update processes incrementally. The key is consistency and intention - not “set and forget.”