Navigating HubSpot Seats: View-Only vs. Core User Explained

Figuring out who needs what kind of access in HubSpot can feel a bit like trying to solve a puzzle, especially with all the different “seats” and permissions. But don’t worry, once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to optimize your team’s workflow and make sure you’re not overpaying for features people don’t actually need. This guide will break down the key differences between HubSpot’s View-Only seats and Core seats, along with how they fit into the bigger picture of HubSpot’s pricing and user management. Understanding these distinctions is super important for keeping your HubSpot portal efficient, secure, and budget-friendly.

HubSpot recently shook things up with a new seat-based pricing model, which officially kicked in on March 5, 2024, for all its Hubs – from Starter to Professional and Enterprise. This change was all about giving businesses more flexibility and control over costs, letting you scale your usage more precisely to your team’s needs. Basically, instead of just paying for a Hub and getting a vague number of users, you now pay per user “seat.” This is where the whole “View-Only” versus “Core” discussion becomes critical.

What’s the Big Deal About HubSpot Seats?

Before March 2024, HubSpot’s pricing often involved minimum seat requirements for things like Sales Hub or Service Hub, which could mean smaller teams paid for more users than they actually needed. The new model changed that. Now, every user in your HubSpot account needs an assigned seat type. This isn’t just about what they can do, but also about what you pay.

HubSpot now offers several types of seats to fit different roles:

• Core Seats: These are your main active users.
• View-Only Seats: These are for observers.
• Sales Hub Seats / Service Hub Seats: These are for your specialized customer-facing teams.
• Partner Seats: These are free seats for certified HubSpot partners working on your account.

The goal here is pretty simple: get rid of unnecessary costs and make sure everyone has just the right tools for their job. Let’s dig into the most common types you’ll encounter.

The Powerhouse: HubSpot Core Seats

Think of a HubSpot Core Seat as your team’s workhorse. If someone needs to actually do things in HubSpot—like create, edit, or manage data and tools—they likely need a Core Seat. These seats are designed for active users who are hands-on with the platform daily. Unlocking Your Video’s True Potential: A Deep Dive into HubSpot Video Analytics

What a Core Seat User Can Do

With a Core Seat, users get editing access across all the HubSpot Hubs you’ve purchased, along with full interaction with the Smart CRM. This means they can:

• Manage CRM Data: Create, edit, and manage contacts, companies, deals, and tickets. They can log emails, calls, and tasks, and schedule meetings.
• Develop & Execute Marketing: Create marketing campaigns, build website content, and manage workflows.
• Handle Operations: Oversee various operational tasks, manage integrations, and custom reports.
• General Administration: Users with Core Seats are often in roles like CRM administrators, marketing managers, operations specialists, or website developers.

For example, a marketing manager would use a Core Seat to build landing pages, set up email sequences, and analyze campaign performance. An operations specialist might use it to manage data imports, create custom properties, and build automation workflows.

Cost Implications of Core Seats

While Core Seats offer a ton of functionality, they aren’t free beyond a certain allowance. Each HubSpot Hub Starter, Professional, Enterprise comes with a standard number of Core Seats included. For instance, a free-tier HubSpot portal typically includes five Core Seats. However, if you need more, you’ll need to purchase additional ones. The cost for these extra Core Seats depends on your highest HubSpot Hub tier: it could be around $15 per month for Starter plans, $45 per month for Professional plans, or $75 per month for Enterprise plans, when billed annually.

It’s a really important decision because assigning too many Core Seats when they’re not needed can definitely impact your budget.

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The Observer: HubSpot View-Only Seats

Now, let’s talk about the View-Only Seat. This is for folks who need to see what’s going on in HubSpot but don’t actually need to change anything. They’re like an audience member, not a performer.

What a View-Only Seat User Can Do

The biggest perk? View-Only seats are completely free and unlimited for all paid HubSpot portals. This is a huge win for managing costs. These users can:

• Access Data & Reports: View all your dashboards, reports, KPIs, campaigns, lists, and individual records contacts, companies, deals, tickets.
• Monitor Progress: Keep an eye on sales pipelines, marketing campaign performance, service ticket statuses, and overall CRM data.
• Log Notes: Interestingly, View-Only users can still log notes on CRM records. However, they can’t do this through the HubSpot mobile app without ‘Communicate’ permissions, which require a Core Seat.

What a View-Only Seat User Cannot Do

The limitations are pretty straightforward: a View-Only user cannot make any changes to the account. This includes:

• Editing or Creating Records: They can’t create new contacts, companies, deals, or tickets, nor can they edit existing ones.
• Engaging in Direct Communication: They can’t use the BCC functionality to log emails, even if you, as a Core user, can use it without personal email access. They also can’t create or edit tasks.
• Automation & Workflows: They can’t set up, edit, or activate workflows, sequences, or other automation.
• Import/Export: They generally lack the ability to import or extensively export CRM data.

Ideal Users for View-Only Seats

This seat type is perfect for:

• Executives and Managers: They need to see high-level performance metrics, review reports, and understand overall business health without getting bogged down in daily operational tasks.
• Stakeholders: Investors, board members, or external partners who require visibility into your business activities and results.
• Auditors or Consultants: People who need to examine data without altering it.
• Casual Observers: Anyone who just needs to stay informed and aligned with business activities on the platform.

Using View-Only seats wisely can help you save a lot of money, especially for larger organizations with many people who just need to consume information. Getting Noticed by a HubSpot Recruiter: Your Inside Track to Landing a Role

The Specialists: Sales & Service Hub Seats

Beyond the Core and View-Only seats, HubSpot offers specialized Sales Hub Seats and Service Hub Seats for those frontline teams that need advanced, role-specific tools. These seats essentially build on the Core Seat functionalities by adding powerful features tailored for direct customer interaction.

What Sales & Service Hub Seats Offer

If your team members are constantly engaging with leads or customers one-on-one, they probably need one of these specialized seats. They include everything a Core Seat offers, plus extra features like:

• Sales Hub Seats: Designed for sales professionals, these seats unlock features like sales sequences, playbooks, calling functionality, advanced sales automation, lead rotation, deal automation, and forecasting tools. These are crucial for sales reps, business development representatives SDRs, and sales managers to manage their pipelines and close deals effectively.
• Service Hub Seats: Tailored for customer service teams, these provide access to tools such as help desk automation, knowledge base management, customer feedback surveys, service-specific playbooks, calling, and Service Level Agreements SLAs. These are vital for customer service representatives CSRs to manage tickets, provide support, and improve customer satisfaction.

Pricing Comparison for Specialized Seats

These specialized seats come at a higher cost than a standard Core Seat. For example, a Sales Hub Professional seat or a Service Hub Professional seat can cost around $100 per month per user, with Enterprise tiers being even higher. The number of these seats you need directly impacts your overall HubSpot subscription cost.

It’s all about matching the tools to the job. Don’t pay for advanced Sales Hub features for your marketing team if they won’t use them, and don’t hobble your sales reps by giving them only a Core Seat if they rely on sequences and playbooks every day. Veronica Huber: Mastering Your Practice with Essential Business Tools

It’s Not Just About Seats: Understanding Permissions & Roles

You’ve picked the right seat type for everyone. But that’s not the end of the story! Within each seat—especially Core and specialized Hub seats—you can fine-tune what users can see and do using granular permissions.

Think of it this way: the seat is the type of car you get e.g., a sedan, a sports car, a bus, and permissions are the specific keys you have and what functions you can access inside that car e.g., can you drive it, open the trunk, turn on the AC?.

HubSpot’s “Users & Teams” settings is where you’ll find all this. As an admin, you can customize permissions for individual users or create permission sets especially useful in Professional and Enterprise accounts to apply a consistent set of permissions to multiple users or roles.

Here’s a glimpse of what you can control with permissions: Mastering Your Message: How HubSpot Helps Craft a Killer Value Proposition

• CRM Object Permissions: For contacts, companies, deals, tickets, and custom objects, you can specify if a user can view, edit, create, or delete records. You can even limit this further to “All ,” “Their team’s ,” or “Their ” meaning only records they own.
• Marketing Tools: Control access to specific marketing tools like email, landing pages, blog posts, forms, lists segments, ads, and social media. You can define if a user can just view, edit drafts, or publish content. For instance, a junior marketer might have “Edit” permission for emails to create drafts but not “Publish” permission to send them out.
• Sales & Service Tools: Restrict access to sales dashboards, forecasts, service queues, and more.
• Admin Access: This is where you control who can manage users, property settings, integrations, billing, and even set contacts as “marketing contacts”.
• Bulk Actions: You can grant permission for bulk deleting records or importing data, which are powerful actions you might want to restrict to only a few trusted users.

The “least privilege” principle is a golden rule here: only give users the absolute minimum access they need to do their job. This boosts security, prevents accidental mistakes, and keeps your portal clean and organized. Even a Core Seat user could be restricted from deleting contacts if you set their permissions correctly.

HubSpot Views and “Standard Views”: More Than Just Looking

You might hear about “HubSpot views” or “standard views” and wonder how they fit into all this seat talk. While the term “view-only seat” sounds similar, a “view” in HubSpot like a custom view or a standard view is actually a way to filter and organize your data for analysis, not a type of user access.

Imagine you’re looking at your contact list. A “view” lets you filter that list to only see, say, “All contacts created this month” or “Marketing contacts in New York.” HubSpot comes with a bunch of Standard Views right out of the box, like “All contacts,” “My contacts,” or “Marketing contacts”. You can also create your own Custom Views based on specific criteria.

Any user, including those with a View-Only Seat, can use these views to analyze data. For example, an executive with a View-Only Seat could access a custom view showing “Deals in Negotiation Stage” or “Website Pages with High Engagement”. Viewing Your Leads in HubSpot: Your Ultimate Guide

However, there’s a crucial distinction: while views help you see information, they generally don’t let you perform actions on that information, like enrolling contacts in a marketing email or an automation workflow. You can do some bulk editing of property values or enroll contacts into sales sequences directly from a view, but for most other actions, you’d typically need a Core Seat with the appropriate permissions.

A Note on Marketing Contacts and Views

This is a great place to mention marketing contacts. HubSpot’s Marketing Hub pricing is tied to the number of “marketing contacts” you have – these are the contacts you actively market to through emails, ads, or other initiatives. You’re only charged for these, not for every single contact in your CRM.

You can easily use views to filter for “Marketing Contact Status” to see who you’re actively paying for. While a View-Only user can see this information, actually setting a contact as marketing or non-marketing requires specific permissions, usually tied to a Core Seat with “Marketing contacts access”. This is a prime example of how views help everyone understand the data, but only specific users with the right seat and permissions can act on it.

Making Smart Choices: Who Gets What Seat?

you’ve got a handle on the different seat types. Now, how do you actually decide who needs what in your team? This is where strategic thinking comes in, helping you save money and keep your HubSpot portal running smoothly. The Ultimate Guide to HubSpot UI Extensions and GitHub Integration

Scenarios to Consider:

1. Your Marketing Team:

   • Marketing Managers/Specialists: Definitely Core Seats. They’re creating campaigns, building workflows, updating content, and managing ads. They need full editing capabilities.
   • Content Creators e.g., Blog Authors: A Core Seat with specific permissions could work. You might give them edit access to blog posts but restrict publishing to a marketing manager.
   • SEO Specialists: Often need Core Seats to access website pages, blog content, and analytics tools for optimization.

2. Your Sales Team:

   • Sales Representatives/SDRs: Almost always need Sales Hub Seats. They rely on advanced features like sequences, playbooks, calling, and deal forecasting to do their jobs effectively.
   • Sales Managers: Might need Sales Hub Seats if they’re actively managing pipelines and using advanced sales tools. If they’re mainly reviewing performance and dashboards, a Core Seat might suffice, but they’d miss out on some advanced managerial sales features.

3. Your Service Team:

   • Customer Service Agents: Best suited for Service Hub Seats. They need ticketing systems, live chat, knowledge base access, and service automation tools.
   • Service Managers: Similar to Sales Managers, it depends on their hands-on involvement. A Service Hub Seat if they’re deeply involved in ticket management, or a Core Seat if they’re primarily monitoring reports and team performance.

4. Operations & CRM Administration:

   • CRM Admins/Operations Managers: Definitely Core Seats and often Super Admin permissions. They manage data, users, properties, integrations, and overall portal health.

5. Leadership & External Stakeholders: Mastering HubSpot User Permissions & the API: Your Ultimate Guide

   • CEOs, Directors, Department Heads, External Consultants: View-Only Seats are often perfect here. They need to see performance, review reports, and stay informed without the ability to change critical data. This is a fantastic way to give visibility without incurring extra costs.

Optimizing Your HubSpot Investment

• Audit Regularly: Your team changes, and so do roles. Periodically review who has what seat and adjust as needed. Are people using the advanced features they’re paying for? If not, downgrade them to a Core Seat or even View-Only.
• Don’t Overspend: It’s tempting to give everyone a Core Seat “just in case,” but those costs add up quickly. Utilize those free, unlimited View-Only seats whenever possible.
• Leverage Granular Permissions: Even for Core Seat users, don’t just grant “Super Admin” access unless absolutely necessary. Use specific permissions to lock down sensitive areas, like bulk deletion or certain settings. This doesn’t affect pricing but does affect security and data integrity.
• Start Lean: If you’re a new HubSpot customer, the new pricing model allows you to start with a few Core Seats five are included with free portals! and scale up as your needs change.

By carefully considering each team member’s role and responsibilities, you can assign the right seat type, configure appropriate permissions, and truly maximize your HubSpot investment without breaking the bank. It’s all about getting the right tools to the right people at the right price.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a view-only user edit anything in HubSpot?

No, a View-Only user cannot edit anything in HubSpot. Their access is strictly for viewing data, dashboards, reports, and records. While they can log notes on CRM records, they cannot create new contacts, companies, deals, or tasks, nor can they use features like BCC for logging emails.

Do I need a Core Seat to manage marketing contacts in HubSpot?

Yes, generally, you’ll need a Core Seat with specific “Marketing contacts access” permissions to actively manage marketing contacts. This includes setting contacts as marketing or non-marketing. A View-Only user can view the marketing contact status on a record or in a filtered list, but they can’t change it. The concept of “marketing contacts” is important for Marketing Hub billing, as you only pay for the contacts you actively market to. HubSpot Use Messages: Your Complete Guide to Engaging Customers

What’s the difference between a View-Only Seat and a free HubSpot CRM user?

A View-Only Seat is a specific type of free user access within a paid HubSpot portal. It allows viewing capabilities for all the Hubs purchased by that portal. A “free HubSpot CRM user” generally refers to someone using the completely free HubSpot CRM tools without any paid Hub subscriptions. While the basic free CRM also offers some limited editing functionality, with the new pricing model, even free-tier portals include five Core Seats, which have editing access. Essentially, View-Only is a restriction for viewing only, available in any paid portal, whereas the free CRM itself might offer more basic editing to its included users.

Are “standard views” the same as a “view-only” seat?

No, “standard views” are not the same as a “View-Only Seat”. Standard views are pre-built filtered lists or dashboards that HubSpot provides for objects like contacts, companies, deals, or tickets. They help organize and display data for analysis. A View-Only Seat refers to a user’s level of access that restricts them to only viewing, regardless of whether they are looking at a standard view or a custom view. All users, including those with a View-Only Seat, can access and use standard views to look at data.

How does HubSpot’s seat-based pricing impact my existing subscription?

If you purchased your HubSpot license before March 5, 2024, the new pricing model may not apply to you immediately. HubSpot typically implements the new pricing at your next contract renewal, with a commitment to not exceeding a 5% price increase. Existing users are automatically assigned to the new seat types e.g., paid Sales/Service Hub users become Sales/Service seats, non-paying users become Core or View-Only based on activity. HubSpot will notify customers in advance of these changes. However, if you upgrade to a new package with HubSpot, you will move to the new seat-based model, and any previously unlimited free user functionality for editing may change, requiring you to assign Core Seats where needed.

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