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by Alkan Balkaya · Last updated: 2026-08-16Yes, you can switch from HubSpot email marketing to Mailsoftly and keep every email feature you actually use: the drag-and-drop builder, automation, segmentation, A/B testing, and reporting. If email is your main channel, Mailsoftly starts at $39/mo annual versus HubSpot Professional at $890/mo, with no annual contract and free hands-on migration.
HubSpot Marketing Hub is a powerful platform. It handles CRM, sales pipelines, landing pages, social scheduling, and somewhere in the middle of all that, email marketing. The problem is that many businesses signed up for HubSpot primarily to send emails, and now they are paying hundreds or thousands per month for a suite of tools they rarely open.
If your team logs into HubSpot mostly to build campaigns, check open rates, and manage contact lists, you are not alone. We have onboarded hundreds of teams who switched from HubSpot to Mailsoftly after realizing they were spending 10x more than necessary on email marketing alone, including a free human-assisted migration where we rebuild your templates and automations with you. This guide walks you through when the switch makes sense, what the migration actually looks like, and exactly how much you can save.
This is not a hit piece on HubSpot. It is a genuinely useful platform for companies that need a full CRM and marketing suite. But if email is your primary channel and you are looking for a HubSpot email alternative that does the job without the overhead, read on.
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Key Takeaways
HubSpot Marketing Hub is overkill when email is your main channel but you are paying Professional or Enterprise prices for a suite of tools you rarely open. If your team logs in mainly to build campaigns and manage lists, you are funding landing page builders, social tools, ad tracking, and SEO features that sit unused.
Here are the signals that you have outgrown your need for HubSpot Marketing Hub but not outgrown email marketing itself:
None of this means HubSpot is a bad product. It means that using HubSpot exclusively for email marketing is like leasing a commercial truck to pick up groceries. The vehicle works. It is just wildly more than the job requires.
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For the email features 90% of marketing teams use daily, Mailsoftly matches HubSpot: builder, automation, segmentation, A/B testing, personalization, analytics, and list management. The real difference is everything else HubSpot bundles in and the price you pay for that bundle. If you are evaluating a HubSpot marketing hub alternative strictly for email, here is an honest feature-by-feature breakdown.
| Email Feature | HubSpot Professional | Mailsoftly |
|---|---|---|
| Drag-and-drop email builder | Yes | Yes |
| Email automation workflows | Yes (complex) | Yes (streamlined) |
| Contact segmentation | Yes | Yes |
| A/B testing | Yes | Yes |
| Email analytics & reporting | Yes | Yes |
| Personalization tokens | Yes | Yes |
| AI-powered subject lines | Yes | Yes |
| List management | Yes | Yes |
| Dedicated IP | Enterprise only | Available as add-on |
| Full CRM & sales pipeline | Yes (bundled) | No (email-focused) |
| Monthly contract available | No (annual only) | Yes |
The pattern is clear. For the email features that 90% of marketing teams use daily, Mailsoftly matches HubSpot. The difference is everything else HubSpot bundles in, and the price you pay for that bundle.
HubSpot’s email builder is solid, but it is one screen inside a platform with dozens. Mailsoftly’s builder is front and center because email is the entire product. That focus means faster campaign creation, less navigation, and a learning curve measured in minutes rather than weeks.
If you are weighing several tools at once, our roundup of the best email marketing services compares every major platform side by side so you can see exactly where HubSpot and Mailsoftly land.
At 5,000 contacts, HubSpot Professional runs $890/mo on an annual contract while Mailsoftly Basic covers the same list for $39/mo (annual), a difference of over $10,000 per year. This is where the switch from HubSpot becomes difficult to ignore. All prices below are current as of 2026-04-15. You can cross-check the HubSpot figures on HubSpot’s official Marketing Hub pricing page.
The gap only widens as your contact list grows. At 10,000 contacts, HubSpot Starter alone reaches $465/mo while Mailsoftly Business covers up to 15,000 contacts at $79/mo (annual). At 25,000 contacts on HubSpot Starter, you are looking at $1,215/mo, while Mailsoftly Premium handles up to 30,000 contacts for $159/mo.
There is a deeper cost issue as well. HubSpot Starter looks affordable at first glance, but it restricts the automation features most teams need. Once you hit the ceiling on workflows, send limits, or reporting depth, the jump to Professional is steep and sudden. Mailsoftly does not gate core email marketing features behind enterprise tiers. You can see the full breakdown on our pricing page.
You keep everything that powers email: contacts with custom fields, segmentation, templates, automations, A/B testing, deliverability, and reporting. You lose the non-email tools HubSpot bundles in, such as in-app CRM deal tracking, the landing page builder, social scheduling, and multi-channel attribution. Whether that trade works depends entirely on how much of that second list you actually touch.
Look at the right column. If your team actively uses three or more of those features, HubSpot might still be the right all-in-one platform for you. But if you read that list and thought “we do not use most of those,” then you are paying for shelf space you will never fill.
There are two common scenarios we see:
Scenario A: Full switch. Your team uses HubSpot almost exclusively for email marketing. You might use the free CRM casually, but you do not rely on deals, pipelines, or sales tools. In this case, move everything to Mailsoftly and cancel HubSpot Marketing Hub entirely. You can still use HubSpot’s free CRM if you want.
Scenario B: Hybrid approach. Your sales team depends on HubSpot CRM for deal management and pipeline tracking, but your marketing team only needs email. Keep HubSpot CRM (free or Starter) for sales. Move all email marketing to Mailsoftly. Drop your Marketing Hub subscription. This is the most common path we see, and it cuts costs dramatically while keeping your sales team unaffected. If you want the wider context, read our guide on CRM email marketing.
You migrate in five steps: export your HubSpot contacts as a CSV, import them into Mailsoftly with lifecycle stages mapped to tags, recreate your active workflows, authenticate your sending domain, then send your first campaign. Most teams complete the whole process in one to two working days, and our team can do the heavy lifting with you.
A note on timing: if you are currently mid-contract with HubSpot, start the migration process now but plan to fully cut over when your annual term ends. There is no reason to pay for two platforms simultaneously for longer than a brief overlap period.
You keep HubSpot CRM for deals and pipelines while Mailsoftly handles all email, and the two systems stay connected through contact sync. New contacts flow from HubSpot into Mailsoftly with the right tags, and email engagement flows back so your sales reps stay informed. This hybrid setup is the most popular path for teams that switch from HubSpot email.
Here is how this works in practice:
This setup gives you the best of both worlds. Sales gets their CRM. Marketing gets a purpose-built email platform. And your company saves hundreds per month by dropping the Marketing Hub subscription. For a deeper look at connecting the two disciplines, see our platform comparison page.
You should not switch if HubSpot is genuinely the engine of a multi-channel strategy, not just your email tool. Teams that rely on HubSpot landing pages, cross-channel attribution, complex lead scoring, or deep certified training usually get more value from staying put. Here are the specific cases where staying with HubSpot Marketing Hub makes more sense:
If two or more of those apply, HubSpot is probably worth the premium for your organization. But if you read that list and none of it resonated, you are likely a strong candidate for the switch.
Teams choose Mailsoftly after HubSpot for three consistent reasons: faster campaign creation, easier onboarding for new hires, and no lingering guilt about paying for features they never touch. When email is the whole product rather than one tab among fifty, the day-to-day work simply moves quicker.
Faster campaign creation. When email is the whole product, not one feature among fifty, the interface is built for speed. Teams report cutting their campaign creation time by 40% or more because they are not navigating through CRM menus to find the email tool.
Better onboarding for new team members. A new marketing hire can be sending campaigns in Mailsoftly within their first hour. HubSpot’s learning curve, even for just the email features, typically takes days of training and certification videos.
No feature anxiety. With HubSpot, there is always a nagging sense that you should be using more of the platform to justify the cost. With Mailsoftly, you are paying for exactly what you use. Every feature in your plan is relevant to your daily work.
Looking for a simpler Hubspot alternative? See why teams switch to Mailsoftly as a Hubspot alternative — free hands-on migration in 1-2 hours, no contracts, real human support.
Yes. This is the most common setup for teams switching from HubSpot email. You keep HubSpot CRM (free or Starter tier) for sales pipeline management and use Mailsoftly for all email marketing. Contacts sync between the two platforms, so your sales team stays informed about email engagement without needing access to Mailsoftly directly.
Navigate to Contacts in your HubSpot account, select the contacts you want to export, click “Export” and choose CSV format. Include all custom properties and list memberships in the export. HubSpot allows you to export up to 1 million contacts at a time. Upload the CSV to Mailsoftly and map the fields during import. The entire process takes about 15 minutes for most contact lists.
Mailsoftly matches HubSpot on all core email marketing features: drag-and-drop email builder, automation workflows, contact segmentation, A/B testing, personalization, analytics, and list management. The features Mailsoftly does not replicate are HubSpot’s non-email tools like CRM deal tracking, landing page builder, social scheduling, and multi-channel attribution reporting.
Your deliverability depends on your sending domain reputation, not the platform you send from. As long as you properly authenticate your domain with SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records in Mailsoftly (the same setup you did for HubSpot), your deliverability will remain the same. We recommend a brief parallel sending period where you gradually shift volume from HubSpot to Mailsoftly to ensure a smooth transition.
Yes, dramatically. A growing business with 5,000 contacts pays $890/mo for HubSpot Professional or $215/mo for HubSpot Starter, while the equivalent Mailsoftly Basic plan is $39/mo on an annual plan or $49/mo month-to-month. There is no onboarding fee and no annual contract, so a growing team can start on the free plan (500 contacts, 2,000 emails per month) and scale only when they need to.
HubSpot Professional and Enterprise plans require annual commitments, and early cancellation typically means paying the remaining balance. We recommend starting your Mailsoftly migration before your HubSpot contract renewal date, running both platforms during the overlap, and letting HubSpot expire naturally. Set a calendar reminder 60 days before your renewal to avoid auto-renewal.
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If you are comparing HubSpot alternatives alongside other platforms, these guides cover the migration process step by step:
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