A deep dive into HubSpot AI summarize conversations in 2025

If you're in sales or support, you’ve probably had that moment: you open a customer's record and are hit with a wall of text. Endless email threads, scattered notes, long conversation histories… it's a lot to take in. Trying to get up to speed quickly often means you end up asking customers questions they’ve already answered. It slows things down and, let's be honest, it's frustrating for everyone involved.

This is where AI summarization promises to save the day. It can cut through the noise and give you the highlights in seconds. HubSpot's AI Summarize Conversations feature is a handy tool for teams already using its platform. But is it enough when your team has complex problems to solve or when your company’s knowledge is spread across a dozen different apps?

This guide will give you a straight-up look at the feature, where it shines, and where it falls short.

What is HubSpot AI Summarize Conversations?

HubSpot AI Summarize Conversations is a built-in feature that uses AI to create short summaries of your customer chats, emails, and records, all inside the HubSpot platform. The idea is to give your team the gist of a conversation without them having to read every single message.

It works in a couple of main ways:

• Inbox summaries: Right from the conversations inbox, an agent can click a button to get a summary of an entire thread. This is a lifesaver when you need to hand off a ticket to a colleague or escalate an issue. It ensures the next person gets the important details without starting from square one.

• Record summaries: The tool can also summarize entire contact, company, deal, or ticket records. It pulls info from logged activities and notes to paint a fuller picture of the customer's history.

The whole point is to save your team time. By cutting out the manual reading, agents can get the info they need to provide faster and more relevant support.

HubSpot AI Summarize Conversations: Key features and use cases

Before we get into the downsides, it's fair to say that for teams living and breathing HubSpot, this feature has some solid uses that can make a real difference.

Use cases for customer service teams

• Smoother handoffs: When a ticket needs to be escalated, the first agent can generate a quick summary. This gives the next person a clean, context-rich transfer, and the customer doesn't have to explain their problem for the third time.

• Getting new hires up to speed: New team members can understand a customer's history by reading an AI-generated summary instead of spending hours digging through past tickets.

• Faster first responses: When a new ticket lands, agents can figure out what's going on almost instantly. This helps them write a useful reply right away instead of spending the first ten minutes just playing catch-up.

Use cases for sales teams

• Better deal management: A sales rep taking over a lead can get a quick summary of all past interactions, from emails to call notes. It’s a good way to make sure no important details slip through the cracks.

• More informed follow-ups: Before jumping on a call, a rep can refresh their memory on a prospect’s needs and past conversations by reviewing a summary. This leads to more personal and effective chats that are more likely to move the deal forward.

Boosting productivity

Beyond just summarizing, HubSpot’s AI assistants can also help rewrite, shorten, or change the tone of an agent's reply. This can be helpful for keeping a consistent brand voice and making sure every message is professional.

How to set up HubSpot AI Summarize Conversations

One of the best things about HubSpot's native tools is that they're usually pretty simple to turn on. If you’re a super admin, getting the AI summarization up and running is no big deal.

Here’s a quick rundown:

1. Log in as a Super Admin and head to your account settings in HubSpot.

2. In the Account management section, find and click on AI.

3. Flip the main toggle on for "Give users access to generative AI tools and features."

4. Next, you’ll need to enable the specific data access toggles for "CRM data" and "Customer conversation data." This is what gives the AI permission to read the information it needs to write the summaries.

Once you’ve done that, you’re good to go. Your team will start seeing a button to generate a summary in the conversations inbox and on CRM records. It just takes a single click.

The catch: Limitations of HubSpot AI Summarize Conversations

While HubSpot's tool is convenient for basic stuff, teams often find it doesn't quite cut it as their support needs get more complicated. Here are a few big limitations to think about.

1. Your knowledge is stuck inside HubSpot

HubSpot's AI is smart, but it can only learn from what it can see, and it can only see what’s inside HubSpot. It looks at your CRM records, inbox, and logged activities, but that's it.

An infographic showing how a specialized AI tool can connect to various knowledge sources like Confluence, Google Docs, and Slack, which is a limitation of HubSpot AI Summarize Conversations.

The problem is, real work doesn't just happen in one app. What about the detailed troubleshooting guides your engineers wrote in Confluence? Or the official company policies you keep in Google Docs? What about all the quick problem-solving that happens in Slack? HubSpot's AI is completely blind to all of that. This means the summaries it generates can be incomplete or too generic, missing the deep context your team needs to solve tough problems.

2. Limited customization

HubSpot’s AI settings are mostly just on/off switches. That's fine for getting started, but it's not enough for teams that need more control. What if you want to give the AI a specific persona to match your brand's voice? Or what if you need it to do custom tasks, like looking up an order status in Shopify or creating a new ticket in Jira?

A screenshot showing advanced customization options, such as setting AI personas and custom actions, which are not available in HubSpot AI Summarize Conversations.

This one-size-fits-all model doesn't work for specialized support. You’re stuck with the actions and workflows that HubSpot gives you, which means you can't build an AI assistant that truly fits the way your team works.

3. No pre-launch testing

Turning on a new AI tool for your customers can be a bit nerve-wracking. How do you know it will work well? Will it give the right answers? How many tickets can it actually handle? With HubSpot, you don't really know until you flip the switch.

eesel AI’s simulation mode, which allows testing on past tickets before deployment, a feature missing from HubSpot AI Summarize Conversations.

There’s no simulation mode to test its performance on your past tickets. You can't get a forecast of how many issues it might resolve, spot gaps in your knowledge, or just get comfortable with it before it starts interacting with paying customers. It’s an all-or-nothing move that can be risky if the AI isn't quite ready.

HubSpot AI Summarize Conversations pricing

Many of HubSpot's AI features, including summarization, are available on all its plans. However, if you want the more powerful AI tools and higher usage limits, you'll have to open your wallet for their pricier plans.

For instance, the Marketing Hub Professional plan kicks off at $800 per month, and the Enterprise plan is a steep $3,600 per month. While you might get basic summarization on a cheaper plan, the really interesting features are often locked away in these expensive tiers.

So, while you can dip your toes into AI on any plan, really leaning into it with HubSpot can get expensive fast. It often means you have to buy into their entire ecosystem, which might not be the most flexible or specialized setup for your team.

A better route for advanced AI: eesel AI

For teams hitting the limits of their CRM's built-in tools, a dedicated AI platform like eesel AI often makes more sense. Instead of making you move everything over, eesel AI connects directly with your existing helpdesk (like HubSpot, Zendesk, or Freshdesk) and all your other knowledge sources. This gives you a much more capable and flexible setup.

eesel AI’s copilot drafting a response in a helpdesk, showcasing an advanced alternative to HubSpot AI Summarize Conversations.

Here’s a quick comparison:

Feature	HubSpot AI Summarize Conversations	eesel AI
Knowledge Sources	Limited to data inside HubSpot.	Connects to over 100 sources like Confluence, Google Docs, Slack, and past tickets.
Setup & Onboarding	Simple, but part of a huge platform.	You can get it running yourself in minutes without talking to a salesperson.
Customization	Basic on/off settings.	Fully customizable prompts, AI personas, and custom actions (e.g., check order status).
Testing & Simulation	Not available. You test it live.	Powerful simulation mode lets you test on thousands of past tickets before you launch.
Automation Control	Limited to HubSpot's predefined workflows.	You get to choose exactly which types of tickets to automate and which to escalate.
Pricing Model	Bundled into expensive platform plans.	Clear, predictable pricing with no fees per ticket resolved.

Simply put, eesel AI gives you the power and control that growing teams need. It lets you build a smart support system that learns from all of your company’s knowledge, not just what's sitting in your CRM.

Start with HubSpot AI Summarize Conversations, but plan to scale

Look, HubSpot AI Summarize Conversations is a decent feature for teams who are all-in on the HubSpot platform and just need a simple way to summarize conversations. It’s easy to turn on and can definitely help with basic productivity.

But for teams that depend on external knowledge, need to customize how their AI works, and want to test things safely before going live, HubSpot’s tool just doesn't go far enough. To build a truly intelligent support system that works with the tools you already use and love, a specialized platform like eesel AI is the way forward.