If you’re in the business world, you’ve probably heard about HubSpot’s new suite of AI tools, branded as Breeze. The star of the show is the HubSpot AI agent, which HubSpot positions as an autonomous team member that can tackle marketing, sales, and customer service tasks.
But with all the marketing buzz, it can be tough to figure out what these agents actually do, what they really cost, and whether they make sense for a company that uses a mix of different tools.
This guide cuts through the noise. We’ll give you a straightforward look at the HubSpot AI agent the different types, what they’re used for, the tricky pricing, and their biggest downsides. We’ll also show you a more flexible alternative that might be a better fit for your team.
What is a HubSpot AI agent?
A HubSpot AI agent is an AI tool that lives inside the HubSpot platform and is built to handle complete workflows on its own. It’s a central piece of the larger Breeze ecosystem, which includes the Breeze Copilot (an AI assistant) and Breeze Intelligence (a data tool).
The main idea, which HubSpot really pushed at its INBOUND 2024 event, is to create a sort of "professional network for AI agents" where you can find and deploy AI helpers for specific jobs. Think of them less like basic chatbots and more like specialized AI employees. They’re designed to manage multi-step jobs, like qualifying sales leads or resolving support tickets, freeing up your human team for more important work.
A breakdown of the main HubSpot AI agent types and use cases
HubSpot has introduced agents tailored for marketing, sales, and service teams. Each one is designed to automate common tasks, as long as those tasks happen within the HubSpot platform.
HubSpot AI agent for marketing
Content Agent
This agent is meant to help your creative team produce more content. You can feed it reference files, and it will generate drafts for blog posts, landing pages, and case studies in your brand’s voice. It also handles some of the tedious pre-publishing steps, like writing meta descriptions and adding internal links.
Social Media Agent
This one acts as an AI social media manager. It’s designed to look at performance data and then create and schedule social posts. The goal is to help your team keep up a steady online presence without the manual grind of crafting every single update.
A quick note on these marketing agents: while they’re useful for creating content inside HubSpot, they can only pull performance data from the platform itself. This means they miss out on valuable context from other analytics tools or customer feedback channels, which can limit how strategic they can actually be.
HubSpot AI agent for sales
Prospecting Agent
This agent acts like an AI-powered sales development rep (SDR). It digs into target accounts, uses your predefined selling profiles to personalize outreach, and can even engage with leads to help fill your sales pipeline.
Company Research Agent
This tool is all about automating the time-sucking work of pre-call research. It generates multi-page reports on target companies by pulling info from public sources. Your sales reps can even ask it specific questions, like, "Does this company sell a subscription product?" to get fast answers.
Here’s a simplified look at how the Prospecting Agent’s workflow is meant to operate:
HubSpot AI agent for customer service
Customer Agent
This is your 24/7 front-line support specialist. It’s trained on your website and knowledge base content to answer customer questions around the clock. HubSpot says the agent can resolve over half of all support tickets and works across email and WhatsApp.
Knowledge Base Agent
This agent partners with the Customer Agent to improve your self-service options. It spots gaps in your knowledge base by looking at incoming support tickets and then drafts new help articles to fill those gaps, keeping your documentation up-to-date.
The big limitation here is that these service agents can only learn from what’s officially documented on your website or in your HubSpot knowledge base. They can’t tap into the goldmine of unstructured knowledge buried in past support tickets from help desks like Zendesk or in your team’s internal chats on Slack.
The real cost of using a HubSpot AI agent
Getting your hands on HubSpot’s AI agents isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. The pricing is complicated and can be a major hurdle, especially if you aren’t already a high-tier HubSpot customer.
First, you need an expensive subscription for a HubSpot AI agent
You can’t get a HubSpot AI agent with their standard plans. To use any of them, you need to be on a Professional or Enterprise plan. According to one independent analysis, the Professional Customer Platform plan starts at around $1,170 per month. That high entry point immediately puts these AI tools out of reach for many small and mid-sized businesses.
Then, you have to deal with credits for the HubSpot AI agent
Even after forking over a hefty monthly subscription fee, you’re not done paying. Many of the AI features that the agents rely on, particularly those under the Breeze Intelligence umbrella, operate on a separate credit system.
This creates a confusing, two-layered pricing model. You pay a high flat fee for access, and then you have to pay again for usage. It makes costs unpredictable a successful marketing campaign or a busy week for support could cause your bill to jump unexpectedly.
| Provider | Pricing Model | Key Takeaway |
|---|---|---|
| HubSpot AI Agent | High-cost monthly subscription (Pro/Enterprise) + pay-as-you-go credits. | Complicated, unpredictable, and expensive to get started. |
| eesel AI | Simple, interactions-based monthly plans. All core products included. | Transparent and scalable. You pay for what you actually use. |
Key limitations of relying only on a HubSpot AI agent
While HubSpot’s agents are decent within their own environment, their biggest weakness becomes obvious when you consider how modern businesses actually work: with a mix of different, specialized tools.
With a HubSpot AI agent, your knowledge gets locked inside HubSpot
The biggest issue with any HubSpot AI agent] is that it can’t access information that lives outside the HubSpot platform. This is a massive problem because, for most companies, the most valuable knowledge isn’t just sitting in their CRM.
It’s scattered across all the other tools you use every day:
- In thousands of solved support tickets in help desks like Zendesk or Freshdesk.
- In detailed technical docs and project plans in Confluence or Google Docs.
- In all the informal, day-to-day problem-solving that happens in Slack.
A HubSpot AI agent can’t learn from any of that. You end up with an AI that only sees a small piece of the puzzle, which means it gives incomplete answers and can’t solve tricky, real-world customer problems.
The HubSpot AI agent is a rigid platform that encourages vendor lock-in
HubSpot’s strategy is pretty clear: pull your entire business into its platform. To get the full benefit of its AI, you’re constantly nudged to move your sales, marketing, and service functions into their ecosystem. This approach leads to vendor lock-in and often means a disruptive and expensive migration project that just isn’t practical for businesses that are happy with the tools they already have.
A flexible AI layer like eesel AI does the exact opposite. It’s built to work with the tools you already use. It connects to your existing systems and unlocks their value without forcing you into a painful migration.
eesel AI: The flexible and connected alternative to a HubSpot AI agent
Unlike HubSpot’s closed-off system, eesel AI is an open and flexible AI layer that connects to all of your essential business apps. It was built on a simple idea: for an AI to be truly helpful, it needs to see the same information your best human employees do.
- Unlock all your data: eesel AI plugs directly into your help desks, wikis, and chat tools. It learns from your past tickets in Zendesk, your help docs in Confluence, and your product data in Shopify to provide automation that is comprehensive, accurate, and genuinely useful.
- Simple & transparent pricing: With eesel AI, there are no confusing credit systems or pricey platform tiers. All our core products including the AI Agent, AI Copilot, and AI Triage are included in our straightforward, interactions-based plans. You get the full power of the platform with no hidden fees.
- Full-stack support automation: While HubSpot’s agents are siloed into different functions, eesel AI offers a complete suite for customer support automation. It handles everything from frontline ticket resolution and agent assistance to automated ticket triage and internal team Q&A.
| Feature | HubSpot AI Agent | eesel AI |
|---|---|---|
| Integration Philosophy | A feature locked inside the HubSpot platform. | A flexible layer that connects to your existing tools. |
| Primary Data Sources | HubSpot CRM data and public web data. | Your company’s actual knowledge, wherever it lives (Zendesk, Confluence, Slack, etc.). |
| Primary Use Case | Sales, marketing, and support automation inside HubSpot. | Complete customer support and internal help automation across all your apps. |
| Pricing Model | Expensive subscription + confusing credits. | Transparent, interactions-based plans with all features included. |
Making the right choice for your HubSpot AI agent strategy
A HubSpot AI agent can be a solid tool for businesses that are all-in on the HubSpot ecosystem and don’t mind the premium price. If your team lives and breathes HubSpot, the agents offer decent, native automation.
But for most companies today that rely on a mix of best-in-class tools, HubSpot’s "walled garden" approach and complicated pricing are major downsides.
A dedicated, flexible AI layer like eesel AI offers a more practical and effective path to automation. It respects your current tool stack and taps into the full breadth of your company’s knowledge, which results in much more accurate and helpful AI where you need it most.
Ready to see what a truly connected AI can do for your team? Sign up for a free trial of eesel AI or schedule a demo with our team to unlock the power of your existing knowledge.
Frequently asked questions
You will need to pay extra. The agent requires an expensive Professional or Enterprise plan subscription, and many of its features also consume credits, creating a two-layered cost that can be unpredictable.
No, it cannot. The agent is restricted to learning only from data that lives inside the HubSpot platform, which is its biggest limitation for companies that use a mix of specialized tools.
Think of it as a more autonomous employee. A HubSpot AI agent is designed to manage entire multi-step workflows on its own, like prospecting accounts or resolving tickets, rather than just assisting with one-off tasks.
To get the most value from the agent, you are strongly encouraged to use HubSpot for more of your business functions. This strategy can lead to vendor lock-in, making it difficult to use other best-in-class tools.
It’s generally a better fit for larger enterprises. The requirement of a high-tier Professional or Enterprise plan puts the starting cost out of reach for many small and mid-sized businesses.
The agent is trained automatically on your HubSpot knowledge base and website content. Its effectiveness depends entirely on how complete that information is, as it can’t learn from valuable external sources like past support conversations.
