AI is popping up everywhere these days, and your CRM is no exception. Tools that can think, summarize, and create content are quickly becoming standard for sales, marketing, and ops teams. HubSpot has obviously jumped into the ring, building its own set of AI tools right into the platform.
This guide is a straightforward, practical look at HubSpot AI Prompted Actions. We’ll break down what they are, show you how to use them to automate some of your work, and, most importantly, talk about the limitations and costs you should really be aware of before you dive in.
What are HubSpot AI Prompted Actions?
At its core, HubSpot AI Prompted Actions are AI-powered steps you can add to your HubSpot Workflows. Instead of just setting up rigid if/then rules, you can give the automation instructions in plain English (a "prompt") and let it figure things out. It’s like giving your workflow a bit of a brain.
This isn't just one feature, but a few different tools. Some are run by HubSpot’s own AI assistant, "Breeze," while others plug into big language models like OpenAI's GPT. These actions let you automate tasks that are a bit more nuanced than simple data entry, like summarizing call notes, fixing messy formatting, or even drafting a personalized email.
It's a cool idea, but here's the first catch: these tools are mostly for HubSpot’s Professional and Enterprise subscribers. So, right from the start, you’re looking at a higher price tag to even get access.
How HubSpot AI Prompted Actions work: Setup and core features
First things first, an admin in your HubSpot account has to switch on the generative AI features in the settings. Once that’s done (and you’ve double-checked you’re on the right subscription plan), you’ll see the new AI options inside the workflow editor.
The main HubSpot AI Prompted Actions you can use
HubSpot gives you a few different AI-powered actions to play with in your workflows:
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Data Agent: Custom prompt: This is the most open-ended one. You can write your own instruction for the AI to analyze, summarize, or sort data from whatever record is in the workflow (like a contact or a deal). You could tell it to, "Summarize the last three email chats with this contact." This action uses up "HubSpot Credits," which is their pay-as-you-go currency we’ll get into later.
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Data Agent: Research: This action is a little more specific. It’s built to pull out certain bits of information from a record's properties or from the five most recent call transcripts. For instance, you could use it to check if a customer mentioned a competitor on their last call.
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Connected app actions (like Ask OpenAI): HubSpot also lets you hook up external AI services. The "Ask OpenAI" action, for example, needs you to connect your own OpenAI account. You can then push data from a HubSpot deal over to GPT for some analysis and pull the answer back into your workflow.
An example of the HubSpot Workflows interface where users can build automations, including HubSpot AI Prompted Actions.Putting together a workflow with HubSpot AI Prompted Actions
Getting an AI-powered workflow up and running usually involves a few steps:
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First, you create a new workflow and decide what triggers it, like a deal’s "Last activity date" being updated.
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Next, you add an AI action, like the "Data Agent: Custom prompt."
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Then comes the most important part: writing a detailed prompt. You have to be super specific here. Give the AI context by pulling in data with personalization tokens like "[Deal name]" or "[Most recent note]".
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Finally, you add another action, like "Edit record," to save the AI's output to a custom field on the contact or deal.
Honestly, getting the prompt just right takes time and a lot of tweaking. You need to clearly spell out the task, maybe give examples of what you want the output to look like, and define the format. While it's flexible, it can easily turn into a long process of building, testing, and refining.
For teams that just want to get things working quickly, that can be a real roadblock. In contrast, platforms like eesel AI are designed to be incredibly easy to set up. You can connect your help desk with one click and have a working AI agent running in minutes, without having to build every single workflow from the ground up for common automation tasks.
Practical use cases for HubSpot AI Prompted Actions
When you do get them dialed in, these AI actions can take over tasks that used to be a manual slog. Here are a few real-world examples of how teams are putting them to work.
Sales and pipeline management
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Summarizing deal activity automatically: Picture this: every time a sales rep logs a call, a workflow kicks off. An AI prompt scans the latest notes and spits out a one-sentence summary, like "Buyer is waiting on legal review," and drops it into a "Next Step" field. This gives sales managers quick context during pipeline reviews without needing to read through every single activity.
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Qualifying new leads: If your lead forms have open-ended questions like, "What's your biggest challenge right now?," you can use an AI prompt to make sense of the answer. The AI can categorize the lead's main problem or assign an urgency score, helping reps figure out who to call first.
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Drafting outreach emails: You could trigger a workflow when a new lead comes in. The AI action can grab the contact's industry and job title, see which page they visited on your site, and then draft a personalized outreach email. It then creates a task for the sales rep to simply review, edit, and send.
A view of a sales pipeline in HubSpot, which can be managed using HubSpot AI Prompted Actions to automate tasks.Data hygiene and operations
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Cleaning up messy record data: Bad data can ruin your automation. An AI action can act as a data janitor. For instance, it can take a "job_title" field with entries like "V.P. of Marketing," "Marketing VP," and "vp marketing" and standardize them all to "VP of Marketing."
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Categorizing records on the fly: You can have an AI prompt read a company's description and automatically assign an industry or persona, which is great for segmentation.
These are all genuinely useful, but they all bump up against the same wall: they only work with data that’s already inside HubSpot. For most companies, the important context is spread out everywhere. The right answer to a customer's question might be in a Confluence doc, a Slack thread, or an old support ticket. HubSpot's AI is blind to all of that. A tool like eesel AI is built to solve this by connecting all your knowledge sources, giving its AI the full picture for much more accurate automation.
Limitations and pricing of HubSpot AI Prompted Actions
While the AI features sound great on paper, there are some pretty big practical issues that might make them a non-starter for a lot of businesses.
The real cost: Subscriptions and credits
First off, these advanced AI actions are locked behind HubSpot's Professional and Enterprise plans. These plans can run you anywhere from $800 to over $3,600 a month, and that's just to get in the door.
On top of that big subscription fee, HubSpot uses a "HubSpot Credits" system for many AI features. It's a pay-as-you-go model where every AI action chews up some credits. This makes it almost impossible to predict your monthly costs. If you have a busy month, you could get hit with a surprisingly big bill.
This is a huge difference from the straightforward pricing of a solution like eesel AI. Its plans are based on feature sets and a generous number of interactions per month, with no weird per-action fees. You know exactly what you’re paying, so you don't get punished for being successful and having a high volume of customer inquiries.
The risk of launching blind
Building a new AI workflow isn't something you want to mess up. A badly written prompt could cause the AI to overwrite good data with garbage or generate confusing messages.
A major weakness in HubSpot's toolset is the lack of a good simulation mode. You can't easily test your AI actions on old data to see how they would have worked before you unleash them on live customers. You're basically stuck testing on active records or going through the pain of setting up a totally separate sandbox account.
This is a key area where eesel AI stands out, as it gives you a powerful simulation mode. You can run your AI agent against thousands of your past support tickets in a safe space. This shows you an accurate forecast of its performance and points out where you can make improvements, so you can launch knowing it will actually work.
eesel AI's simulation mode, which allows testing automation on past data before going live, a feature missing from HubSpot AI Prompted Actions.Stuck in the HubSpot bubble
At the end of the day, HubSpot's AI is built to work with HubSpot data. It has no way of accessing the treasure trove of knowledge sitting in your help center, internal wikis, or past support tickets if they’re in another system like Zendesk or Intercom.
This creates a data silo that really holds the AI back. The best, most complete answers often come from pulling information from multiple places. This is exactly what eesel AI is designed for, instantly connecting to over 100 sources to give it the context it needs to be truly helpful.
An infographic showing how eesel AI connects to multiple knowledge sources, overcoming the data silos seen with HubSpot AI Prompted Actions.Pricing for HubSpot AI Prompted Actions
As we touched on, getting access to HubSpot's AI workflow actions means signing up for a Professional or Enterprise plan. The starting prices aren't cheap.
| Hub | Plan | Starting Price (Monthly) | Key AI Features Included |
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| Marketing Hub | Professional | $800/mo | AI in Workflows, Breeze Assistant |
| Marketing Hub | Enterprise | $3,600/mo | Advanced AI Actions, Customer Journey Analytics |
| Sales Hub | Professional | Varies | AI in Workflows |
| Sales Hub | Enterprise | Varies | Advanced AI Actions |
And remember, these prices are just the starting point. They don’t factor in the unpredictable cost of HubSpot Credits, which you'll need to run many of the "Data Agent" actions and can easily inflate your monthly bill.
HubSpot AI Prompted Actions: A powerful tool, but with strings attached
So, what's the verdict on HubSpot AI Prompted Actions? They offer a pretty powerful way for businesses already paying for HubSpot's top tiers to do more with automation. The ability to automate qualitative tasks right inside your CRM is a nice leap forward.
However, those benefits come with some serious strings attached: a high price of entry, unpredictable usage costs, a risky launch process with no good way to test, and a system that’s walled off from the rest of your company's knowledge. For many teams, those downsides are just too big to ignore.
If you need AI automation that’s more affordable, connects to everything, and lets you test without fear, what's the alternative?
A better way to automate with AI
eesel AI is built for teams that want powerful, easy-to-use AI without being locked into one ecosystem. You can get it up and running in minutes, not months, by connecting all your existing tools with one-click integrations. With transparent pricing and a solid simulation mode to guarantee performance, you can automate with confidence from the very beginning.
Ready to see what no-fuss AI automation feels like? Try eesel AI for free.
Frequently asked questions
HubSpot AI Prompted Actions are AI-powered steps you can add to your existing HubSpot Workflows. Unlike rigid if/then rules, they allow you to give the automation instructions in plain English, enabling more nuanced tasks like summarizing notes or cleaning data.
Access to HubSpot AI Prompted Actions is primarily available for Professional and Enterprise subscribers. These plans typically start at $800 to over $3,600 per month, serving as the initial entry cost.
Teams use HubSpot AI Prompted Actions to automate tasks like summarizing deal activity, qualifying new leads based on open-ended responses, drafting personalized outreach emails, cleaning up messy record data, and categorizing companies by industry.
Yes, beyond the Professional or Enterprise subscription, many HubSpot AI Prompted Actions, particularly the "Data Agent" features, consume "HubSpot Credits." This pay-as-you-go system makes monthly costs unpredictable and can increase your overall bill.
Key limitations include the high subscription cost, unpredictable "HubSpot Credits" for usage, a lack of robust simulation tools for testing, and the inability to access data outside of the HubSpot ecosystem, creating a data silo.
HubSpot's current toolset lacks a good simulation mode for HubSpot AI Prompted Actions, making it challenging to test them thoroughly on old data before deploying. This means testing often occurs on active records or requires a separate sandbox account.
No, HubSpot AI Prompted Actions are designed to work exclusively with data residing within HubSpot. They cannot access information from external systems like Confluence, Slack, Zendesk, or other help desk platforms, limiting their context.
