Blog · Revenue Operations · October 20, 2026 · By Ahmad Zabir

GoHighLevel vs HubSpot: An Honest Comparison From Both Sides

Our own CRM runs on GoHighLevel and we build in HubSpot too. Here is who should pick which, what each costs in year one, and what breaks when you switch.

We build in both tools, and our own CRM runs on GoHighLevel, so we are biased. Every price comes from the vendor's own page, read on 20 October 2026, and every cost is a model with its inputs printed. One section covers where GoHighLevel is the wrong choice, and another covers where HubSpot is.

Our own CRM runs on GoHighLevel, so check our numbers

We read GoHighLevel's pricing page and HubSpot's Sales Hub pricing line by line, then the help guides, terms of service and status pages behind them. Several third party comparison pages still print GoHighLevel plan limits the official page no longer shows, so we did not use them for numbers.

A figure from an official page is stated plainly. A figure someone else reported carries their name. Anything we calculated is called a model, with the inputs beside it. All prices are in US dollars, as of October 2026.

When we say how you sell, we mean three things: where your leads come from, who closes them, and how many people at the buyer must say yes.

Each tool is shaped by who it was built to be resold by

HubSpot was founded in 2006 to help companies get found by buyers. It bills for people: marketing contacts (people you plan to send marketing email to), seats (paid logins that can edit records) and hubs (HubSpot sells its CRM as separate products: Sales Hub for the sales team, Marketing Hub for email and automation). Its resellers are Solutions Partners (HubSpot's certified agencies), who earn a share of your licence and sell onboarding on top.

GoHighLevel (the company calls itself HighLevel) was built to be resold by agencies. In a December 2018 interview, its founder said selling straight to small businesses was "very hard", so he sold follow up software to agencies instead. Today every plan includes unlimited users and contacts, and the $497 Agency Pro plan adds SaaS Mode, which lets an agency sell the platform under its own brand and charge clients a markup on texts and calls.

A CRM does two jobs. It keeps the record of where each deal stands, and it triggers the next action, such as a text back or a reminder. HubSpot is stronger at the record. GoHighLevel is stronger at the action.

So start with the job you keep failing at. If deals die because nobody replied for hours, that is an action problem (our speed to lead breakdown shows why minutes matter). If deals die because nobody can see which buyer went quiet or what will close this quarter, that is a record problem.

Both billing models have a blind spot. HubSpot charges for every contact you plan to email, so a messy list costs money. GoHighLevel makes a messy list free, and you pay later in hours spent cleaning it.

Year one costs from 5 to 30 people, priced the same way on both sides

First, what you are choosing between.

Now one firm: nine people, five of them selling, deals that close within a month.

Usage is what you pay GoHighLevel for each text, call minute and email your team sends. If you send none, Unlimited costs the plan price alone, $3,564 a year.

On GoHighLevel Unlimited, this firm pays $297 a month for the plan, $16 a month per seller in usage, $10.50 a month for A2P registration (the sign up US carriers require before any business texting) and $22.50 once to register. Year one: 12 × ($297 + $80 + $10.50) + $22.50 = $4,672.50.

On HubSpot Professional, the same firm pays $100 a month for each seller's Sales Hub seat, $890 a month for Marketing Hub Professional, $50 for one extra login, about $250 a month for up to 5,000 marketing contacts, and $4,500 of required onboarding. Year one: 12 × ($500 + $890 + $50 + $250) + $4,500 = $24,780.

The $16 assumes a busy seller. Each line is monthly volume times GoHighLevel's published phone and texting rates and email and automation rates:

• Texts: 200 sent at $0.0118 (the $0.00747 rate plus an average US carrier fee, the mobile network's own charge) and 100 received at $0.0132, about $3.68.
• Calls: 300 minutes out at $0.0166 and 100 in at $0.01165, about $6.15.
• Email: 3,000 sends at $0.675 per 1,000, about $2.03.
• One local phone number: $1.15.
• Premium workflow actions (automation steps billed per run): 300 at $0.01, $3.00.

If your people send a tenth of that, usage is about $1.60 a seller, under $5 a month for three sellers.

• $4,289 GoHighLevel Unlimited in year one, 20 people with 3 sellers (model)
• $21,780 HubSpot Sales plus Marketing Professional, same team (model)
• 15x HubSpot Professional against HubSpot Starter ($1,440) for that same team

Source: Contwre model on official pricing pages, month to month prices as of October 2026

The same sum for six team shapes. Find the row closest to yours.

How to read it:

• Logins drive HubSpot's cost, not headcount. That is why the 20 person firm with 3 sellers costs the same on HubSpot Professional as the 5 person firm. GoHighLevel charges nothing per login.
• Paying annually cuts both. GoHighLevel bills 10 months for 12, which saves $594 a year on Unlimited. HubSpot drops to $90 a seat and $800 for Marketing Hub, which saves $1,440 a year for a team with 3 sellers, and you sign for 12 months to get it.
• It is close to like for like, not exact. GoHighLevel figures include texts, calls and email; HubSpot's include the plan's calling minutes but no texting.
• The $250 a month comes from HubSpot's own pricing guide, not its price page. Drop it if you email fewer than 2,000 people.

HubSpot Professional is the outlier, at five to six times GoHighLevel Unlimited in every row. Year two is kinder, because onboarding is paid once: $17,280 to $31,080. GoHighLevel lists no onboarding fee, though someone still has to build it.

HubSpot charges for logins, contacts and a required onboarding fee

HubSpot shows three prices for its Starter seat. $7 is a limited time price for new customers. Its CRM page quotes $15 a seat on annual billing. $20 is the month to month list price, which our model uses.

The jump after Starter is steep. Marketing Hub Professional is $890 a month on monthly billing, or $800 committed annually, with three seats included. Sales Hub Professional is $100 a seat against $20 on Starter.

Then the fee. The Sales Hub pricing page footnote reads "required, one-time Professional Onboarding for a fee of $1,500". Marketing Hub Pro carries $3,000, Sales Enterprise $3,500 and Marketing Enterprise $7,000. It applies at any team size, including when you upgrade from Starter later. Avidly, a HubSpot partner, describes it as coaching rather than building, so moving your data and setting up your automations cost extra.

Contacts are metered too. Marketing Hub Pro includes 2,000 marketing contacts, and the step to 5,000 costs roughly $250 a month by HubSpot's own figure. We could not find a published price above that.

HubSpot's contract terms matter as much as its prices. We read HubSpot's General Terms on 20 October 2026 (last modified 16 September 2026). "Current Term" there means the contract period you signed for. Three clauses matter most:

• Section 3.2: "we may increase your Subscription Fees up to our then-current list price", with notice "at least thirty (30) days in advance of your renewal". There is no percentage cap.
• Section 4.1: "you may not cancel your subscription prior to the end of your Current Term". The plan renews for "the shorter of the same duration as your prior term or one year".
• Section 2.5: "You are not permitted to downgrade your Subscription Service during your Current Term".

This is our reading of a public contract, not legal advice. Have someone read your own order form before you sign.

We did not read GoHighLevel's terms clause by clause. Its pricing page sells every plan month to month, with no long term contract and a 14 day trial during which usage charges may apply. Before signing either, ask three questions in writing: how do we cancel, how much notice do you give before a price rise, and how do we export everything when we leave?

Shared email senders can put your emails in spam, with your name on them

GoHighLevel's built in email service (it calls it LC Email) sends from a shared pool by default. Many companies send through the same servers, so when some send junk, inbox providers can filter everyone in the pool, and your prospect finds your firm's name in spam.

Here is a test you can run today. Send one email from your sending address to a Gmail account you control, and check whether it lands in the inbox or the spam folder.

We learned why that test matters on our own cold email in 2026, not on GoHighLevel. We sent to 2,250 people whose email runs on Google and expected some automatic out of office replies, because part of any list is always on leave. We got none, while 839 similar people emailed from our own Gmail inboxes sent back 9. Gmail does not send those automatic replies for mail it has put in spam, so the silence told us where our mail was going. Our mistake was starting to send two days after we began warming up (slowly building the reputation of) new mailboxes.

There are three fixes, and none is free:

• Separate sending domains. Send each kind of email (one to one, automations, newsletters) from its own domain or subdomain, so trouble with one does not drag down the rest.
• A dedicated IP, meaning a sending server address only you use. GoHighLevel charges $59 a month, only on the $297 and $497 plans, and sets volume thresholds before you qualify.
• Your own email provider, such as Postmark, Mailgun or Amazon SES, connected to GoHighLevel. We have not priced these.

Whichever you pick, set SPF, DKIM and DMARC. These are entries in your domain's public settings (DNS) that let inbox providers check the mail really comes from you. They do not make unwanted mail land in the inbox. We did not test where HubSpot's marketing email lands for this page.

Other GoHighLevel add ons, from its pricing page: AI Employee (its AI add on for chat and call replies) at $50 or $97 a month per sub account, WhatsApp at $10 per sub account plus Meta's own rates, and HIPAA support at $297 a month. SMS billing is a recurring theme in GoHighLevel's lowest Trustpilot reviews, so check the usage bill every week at first.

Getting your data out is the last hidden cost. Reviewers complain that a full export of every field is hard to get; one asks "What kind of CRM doesn't provide a simple way to execute a full fields export?" Supergood's API report card, checked October 2026, grades GoHighLevel's API a D and notes there is no bulk export. We did not test HubSpot's export for this page.

GoHighLevel is the wrong tool for a SaaS team with SDR to AE handoffs

In many software companies an SDR (sales development rep) books the first meeting and hands it to an AE (account executive), who runs the demo and closes. We would not put this kind of team on GoHighLevel, even though our own CRM runs on it.

Take a 35 person SaaS sales team: 34 people in sales roles and one operations person. GoHighLevel costs about $11,900 in year one in our model. HubSpot costs $42,900 to $58,980.

Six things make GoHighLevel the wrong fit here, and none of them is price:

• Deals with several buyers. A software deal often involves a signer, an internal champion and a purchasing team. GoHighLevel's help centre says its workflows (automations that run steps for you) act on a deal's primary contact only, the one main person on it.
• Loose permissions. GoHighLevel has two base roles, Admin and User, with on and off switches per feature, and it can limit a rep to their own records. But its help centre says a user with "View Only" pipeline access can still move deals, and custom roles are an open feature request. With SDRs, AEs and managers in one pipeline, the forecast is easy to break.
• No forecasting we could find in GoHighLevel's help centre (an absence, not proof). HubSpot sells forecasting from Sales Hub Professional, with 100 custom reports at that tier.
• A low cap on record types. Custom objects are record types beyond contacts and deals, such as subscriptions. GoHighLevel offers them on every plan, capped at 10 per location and 300,000 records each. HubSpot needs Enterprise for them, but a SaaS team syncing product usage hits GoHighLevel's cap first.
• Fewer integrations. HubSpot's CRM page lists more than 2,000 marketplace apps. GoHighLevel publishes no official count we could find.
• Downtime you cannot compare. GoHighLevel's status history shows its contacts, conversations and deals tools degraded (slow or partly failing) for 16 hours 20 minutes on 25 August 2026. HubSpot's public incident log gives no durations, so we cannot rank the two. Ask each vendor in writing what share of the time it promises the service will run.

For this team, add Marketing Hub Pro only if inbound is the main lead source. If outbound and referrals feed the pipeline, Sales Hub Pro alone is enough.

HubSpot is the wrong tool when your leads expect a text back

For a clinic, a contractor or a home services firm, leads arrive by phone and text and expect a reply in minutes.

HubSpot's texting is built for something else. Its SMS setup guide, updated 5 October 2026, says texting needs a paid add on plus Marketing Hub Professional or Enterprise, one number per account, and is not available to sole proprietors. Registration takes 6 to 8 business days. HubSpot's own product page says its texting "is not a cold outreach tool".

So a 5 person clinic texting leads from HubSpot starts at $890 a month for Marketing Hub, $3,000 of onboarding and an unpriced add on. On GoHighLevel it texts from a $97 plan at about a cent a text, carrier fees included.

Outside the US, HubSpot is out for texting. The guide says plainly: "You can only send SMS messages from US-based numbers." GoHighLevel's phone guide lists the same $0.00747 a segment (one chunk of a text; long texts count as several) for the US and Canada, but other routes cost far more. After a 13 May 2026 price change, an outbound text to Kenya costs $0.2923, about 39 times the US rate. We did not find UAE rates on GoHighLevel's published pages, so get them in writing before you budget. WhatsApp costs $10 a month per sub account plus Meta's per message rates.

Consent comes before any of these prices. It is set by law in each country, not by either vendor; Canada, for example, puts the burden of proving consent on the sender. Our guide to cold outreach rules by country covers email. Take texting and calling questions to your own counsel.

Agencies hit a harder wall. On our reading, HubSpot's General Terms contain no right to resell or white label the product (sell it under your own brand), and its partner programme pays a 20% revenue share instead. On GoHighLevel, Unlimited and Agency Pro include unlimited sub accounts, so Agency Pro's $497 a month works out at $49.70 per client with 10 clients and $19.88 with 25, before usage. You set the markup on the texts and calls you rebill. We did not check client billing or offboarding, so ask before you sign clients onto it.

HubSpot is still the right answer for the smallest teams. HubSpot's CRM page, read 20 October 2026, says the free CRM covers up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts. If that is all you need, start there and move to Starter later.

Trustpilot scores GoHighLevel 3.4 stars higher, and only GoHighLevel has been inviting reviews

On Trustpilot, HighLevel scores 4.9 from 15,271 reviews, 97% of them five star. HubSpot scores 1.5 from 1,181, and 51% are one star.

That gap is at least partly about collection. Trustpilot's page says HighLevel invites its customers to review, while the HubSpot reviews it shows are labelled unprompted (written without an invitation) and HubSpot has not recently invited any. We could not split either page by invite status, so we cannot say how much of the gap this explains.

G2 and Capterra are software review sites that vet reviewers as product users. On G2, HighLevel scores 4.6 from about 650 reviews and HubSpot Sales Hub 4.4 from about 14,347. G2 blocked our reader, so those figures come from its listing text in search results, September and October 2026. Capterra, also read through search listings, puts HubSpot's Sales Hub ahead.

The one star reviews are more useful than the averages. GoHighLevel's, from July to October 2026, cluster on cancellation, SMS billing, phone number verification, exports and support. HubSpot's cluster on support, auto renewal and overselling. A firm that texts every lead should weigh the first list. A firm about to sign an annual contract should weigh the second.

Reddit threads such as "GHL as Primary CRM? Or should we stick to Hubspot/Pipedrive?" (GHL is GoHighLevel's nickname) run the same argument: agencies defend the price, and people from a traditional CRM call the record thin.

Switching a live pipeline breaks the automations first and the texting second

Most migration guides cover HubSpot to GoHighLevel. Here is what breaks going the other way, ranked by pain.

1. Automations. Neither tool imports the other's workflows. Even GoHighLevel's own guide for importing from HubSpot has you rebuild them by hand. Budget 2 to 4 hours each.
2. Texting registration. GoHighLevel's number migration guide is blunt: "A successful number transfer does not automatically complete messaging compliance." On HubSpot you also need Marketing Hub Pro, a US number and 6 to 8 business days.
3. Conversation history, meaning the texts and emails with each contact. We found no official GoHighLevel export for conversations, and HubSpot's import tool cannot update existing emails, meetings, notes or tasks. Keep the old system readable as an archive.
4. Calendars and booking links already sitting in sent emails, ads and website buttons.
5. Embedded forms and tracking code on your site.
6. Custom record types, which need HubSpot Enterprise.
7. The phone number itself. GoHighLevel's built in phone service (LC Phone) can move numbers to your own Twilio account through support, "typically approximately 1 to 2 business days" once support has everything. A move to any other carrier is not documented.

Your automation count drives most of the hours, so count yours and multiply by 2 to 4. For the firm in the table, the move takes about 2 to 4 calendar weeks and, with $1,500 to $4,500 of HubSpot onboarding, about $5,000 to $15,400.

Outside quotes run wider. Insidea, a HubSpot partner, prices tool based migrations at $500 to $5,000 and standard ones at $8,000 to $30,000. Meticulosity, whose guide blocked our reader, calls this direction high complexity at 3 to 12 weeks, with 12 of its 56 mapped features carrying over intact (from a search summary). All of them sell migrations; treat their ranges as sales anchors.

One pick per way of selling, and the test that flips it

Three tests need numbers you can pull this week:

• Your sales cycle: the days from first call to signed contract, averaged over your last 10 deals.
• Your sign offs: the people who approved each of your last three deals. If it was more than two, read the HubSpot rows first.
• Your reply speed: export the form time and first reply time for your last 30 leads, and take the middle value.

If you have both problems, slow replies and no view of the pipeline, fix the reply speed first. A lead lost in the first hour never reaches a report.

Before you switch anything, check that the tool is the problem.

If adoption is fine and the tool still fails, here are our picks.

If you sell to law firms or healthcare groups

Start on HubSpot Starter. Your deals pass through several people at the client, you do not need texting, and Starter keeps a clean record of each deal and its contacts for $1,440 in year one at 20 people with 3 sellers. As the pipeline grows you will likely want automated follow up and forecasting, which means Sales Hub Pro and its $1,500 onboarding fee.

Before either vendor touches client or patient data, send this question in writing: "Will you sign a business associate agreement (the contract a vendor signs to handle patient data under HIPAA, the US health privacy law) for the plan we are buying?" GoHighLevel sells a HIPAA add on at $297 a month. We have not asked either vendor for this page, so get both answers dated and on file.

If you run paid ads, GoHighLevel reports deal stages to Meta and HubSpot does not

Skip this section if you buy no Meta or Google ads.

If you do, the CRM decides whether you can see which ad made the sale. That takes offline conversion tracking: telling the ad platform when a lead later becomes a good prospect or a customer, so it learns which clicks become buyers.

From HubSpot's Meta sync guide (updated 9 September 2026), its Google sync guide, and GoHighLevel's Meta Conversion Leads walkthrough (1 June 2026) and Google Ads action:

In plain words: GoHighLevel is closer for Meta, because it can report a deal moving through your pipeline. Neither sends a real deal amount to Google without paid custom development. Our offline conversion tracking guide walks through the setup on both.

Questions people ask

Is GoHighLevel better than HubSpot?

Neither is better across the board. For fast follow up on phone, text and form leads, and for agencies that resell software, GoHighLevel does more for less money. For deals with several decision makers, separate people booking and closing, or teams past about 15 to 20 sellers, HubSpot keeps a better record.

Is GoHighLevel cheaper than HubSpot?

Against HubSpot Professional, yes: about five to six times cheaper in year one in our model, for example $4,289 against $21,780 for a 20 person firm with 3 sellers, both billed monthly. Against HubSpot Starter it often is not, because the same firm pays $1,440 on Starter. Prices are as of October 2026 and the figures are models, not quotes.

Does GoHighLevel charge per user?

No. Every plan from the $97 Starter up includes unlimited users and contacts, as of October 2026. You pay for the plan plus usage: texts, calls, email and AI. On HubSpot, anyone who edits records needs a paid seat, while view only seats are free.

Is HubSpot onboarding mandatory?

Yes, for Professional and Enterprise, at any team size. HubSpot lists a required one time fee of $1,500 for Sales Hub Professional, $3,000 for Marketing Hub Professional, $3,500 for Sales Hub Enterprise and $7,000 for Marketing Hub Enterprise. GoHighLevel lists no onboarding fee.

Can you white label HubSpot like GoHighLevel?

Not on our reading of HubSpot's General Terms, which contain no right to resell or sell the product under your own brand; its partner programme pays a 20% revenue share instead. GoHighLevel's Agency Pro plan at $497 a month adds SaaS Mode for exactly that, plus a markup you set on the texts and calls you resell.

What happens to your phone numbers and A2P registration if you leave GoHighLevel?

GoHighLevel support can move its phone numbers to your own Twilio account (Twilio is a phone network provider), typically in 1 to 2 business days once support has everything it needs. Your A2P registration, the carrier sign up for business texting, does not travel with the number, so you redo it on the new side. A move to a carrier other than Twilio is not documented.

How long does a GoHighLevel to HubSpot migration take?

Our model for a 9 person firm comes to 59 to 109 hours, about 2 to 4 calendar weeks, most of it spent rebuilding automations by hand. One migration seller quotes 3 to 12 weeks for this direction. Run both systems in parallel for two weeks and move phone numbers last.

Can GoHighLevel or HubSpot send closed sales back to Meta and Google?

Partly. GoHighLevel can tell Meta when a deal moves to a new pipeline stage, but passes a sale value only on a stage named Purchase, and sends Google a fixed value. HubSpot tells Meta about lifecycle stages, forms and page views rather than deal stages, and no longer sends Google the deal amount. Sending real deal values to Google takes paid custom development on either tool.

Before you buy either, pull the last 20 deals that went quiet and ask two questions of each: did someone follow up within one working day, and did you reach a person who could say yes? If most answers are no, no CRM on this page will save those deals, and switching will only move the problem.

If the answers point at your process rather than your software, that is the part we fix, so book a call with us.

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