Building a custom HubSpot partner portal can streamline your operations and improve your partner relationships.
To do this, you have two main options: developing directly on HubSpot using its native tools or using Softr for a more flexible solution.
This blog will guide you through both approaches, comparing their benefits, costs, and development processes to help you choose the best fit for your needs.
Options for building a custom HubSpot partner portal
1. Developing directly on HubSpot
Let’s look at the first approach where you can build a custom HubSpot partner portal within HubSpot.
Overview of Using HubSpot’s Tools and Features
HubSpot provides a comprehensive suite of tools designed to help you create and manage your partner portals directly within the platform. These tools include:
- CMS Hub: HubSpot’s CMS allow you to create and customize web pages, landing pages, and blogs without needing extensive coding knowledge. It offers drag-and-drop editors, pre-built themes, and a wide range of customizable modules.
- CRM Tools: HubSpot’s CRM features help in managing relationships with partners, tracking their activities, and maintaining detailed records. It also integrates with email and other communication tools to streamline interactions.
- Marketing Hub: This includes tools for email marketing, social media management, and automation, which can be used to communicate with partners and promote engagement.
- Sales Hub: Provides features for deal tracking, pipeline management, and sales automation, which are useful for managing partner relationships and tracking performance.
- Service Hub: Offers customer service tools like ticketing, live chat, and knowledge bases, which can enhance partner support and communication.
- App Marketplace: HubSpot’s marketplace offers various integrations and apps that can extend the functionality of the partner portal, including third-party tools for analytics, reporting, and collaboration.
Benefits and challenges of this approach
Here are the benefits you get with this approach:
- Using HubSpot ensures all your tools and data are within a single platform, which can streamline processes and reduce the need for multiple logins and integrations.
- HubSpot is known for its user-friendly interface and drag-and-drop functionality, making it accessible for users with varying levels of technical expertise.
- HubSpot provides robust analytics and reporting tools, allowing you to track the performance of your partner portal and make data-driven decisions.
- The CMS Hub offers extensive customization options, enabling you to tailor the portal to your specific needs and branding guidelines.
- HubSpot offers extensive support resources, including tutorials, documentation, and a community forum, which can be invaluable when building and maintaining your partner portal.
Look at the challenges you would face with this approach:
- HubSpot’s advanced features and comprehensive toolset can be expensive, especially for small businesses or startups.
- Although HubSpot offers extensive customization options, there may be limitations compared to building a completely bespoke solution from scratch.
- Developing directly on HubSpot means your portal is tied to their ecosystem, which can be a disadvantage if you need to migrate to a different platform in the future.
2. Using Softr
Let’s look at the second approach where you can build a custom HubSpot partner portal using Softr.
Overview of Softr and its integration with HubSpot
Softr offers a powerful no-code platform that allows you to build custom portals, tools, and forms by integrating CRM data with various other data sources.
This integration is particularly beneficial for small business owners, agencies, and operational leaders who need to create sophisticated systems without writing any code.
Here are the features of Softr integration with HubSpot:
- With Softr, you can effortlessly create personalized portals that cater to your clients and partners. These portals can be customized to display HubSpot CRM data in a user-friendly manner, facilitating better engagement and collaboration.
- Softr goes beyond basic lead capture forms. It allows you to create forms that integrate seamlessly with your workflows, ensuring that data captured through these forms is instantly available in your HubSpot CRM.
- The platform enables you to design simple and intuitive interfaces that connect various workflows. This helps streamline processes and ensures that your team can easily access and manage the information they need.
- Softr provides robust user authentication, roles, and permissions. This ensures that your team, clients, and partners can securely log in and collaborate within your custom apps.
- Any changes made in your HubSpot CRM are instantly reflected in your Softr app, and vice versa. This ensures that your data is always up-to-date across both platforms.
- You can craft interfaces that are specifically tailored to your HubSpot contacts at different stages of their buyer journey. This customization ensures that your app meets your unique business needs.
Cost Comparison: Softr vs. HubSpot licenses
Here’s a quick cost comparison of both the approaches:
HubSpot Pricing Overview:
HubSpot offers various services divided into four main hubs: Marketing, Sales, Service, and Growth. Each hub has multiple pricing tiers, designed to meet the needs of different businesses.
- HubSpot Sales Hub:
- Starts at $20 per month ($15 per month if paid annually) for two users.
- Features include sales automation, video messaging, meeting scheduling, and more.
- HubSpot Marketing Hub:
- Starts at $20 per month ($15 per month if paid annually) for 1,000 leads.
- Features include email automation, landing pages, A/B testing, and more.
- HubSpot Customer Service Hub:
- Starts at $20 per month ($15 per month if paid annually) for two users.
- Features include AI chatbot, ticket automation, customer portals, and more.
- HubSpot CRM Suite:
- Starts at $20 per month ($15 per month if paid annually).
- Includes tools for marketing, sales, content management, operations, and customer service.
Softr Pricing Overview:
Softr's pricing is generally more straightforward, focusing on providing access to its no-code platform for building custom apps and portals.
Softr Forever-Free Plan:
- Ideal for small projects.
- Includes 1 published app, 10 users, and two user groups
Softr Basic Plan:
- Starts at $49 per month.
- Includes three published apps and 20 app users
- Allows custom code, Kanban and Payment modules, and the ability to embed apps externally
Softr Professional Plan:
- Priced at $139 per month.
- Unlocks features like conditional forms, charts, and comments
- Supports 100 users and unlimited published apps
- Best for building internal client and partner portals
- Allows the use of PWA builder
Softr Business Plan:
- Available for $269 per month.
- Supports 2,500 app users and unlimited apps
- Provides advanced building blocks like org charts and timelines, downloadable mobile apps, enhanced security, and higher user limits.
Comparative Summary:
- Starting Costs: HubSpot's starting cost is lower at $20 per month for its hubs, compared to Softr's Basic Plan at $49 per month.
- Free Plan: Softr offers a comprehensive free plan, while HubSpot’s features are more limited at the lower price points.
- Advanced Features: Softr’s higher-tier plans offer advanced app-building features and higher user limits, while HubSpot focuses on robust marketing, sales, service, and CRM functionalities.
- Ideal Use Cases: HubSpot is suitable for businesses needing comprehensive marketing, sales, and service tools, whereas Softr is ideal for those looking to build custom apps and portals with no-code solutions.
Steps to Develop a Partner Portal on HubSpot
Here’s how you can create custom HubSpot partner portal within HubSpot:
- Define Your Partner Program Structure: Outline your partner program's structure, including different partnership tiers and the specific benefits and requirements for each.
- Determine levels such as Silver, Gold, and Platinum, each with distinct benefits and qualifications.
- Specify what partners need to achieve to qualify for each tier and the benefits they receive.
- Decide the Type of Partner Portal: Decide on the main function of your portal, whether it's for deal tracking or resource management.
- Create a dedicated deal pipeline in HubSpot for partner deals, customizing deal stages to reflect your sales process.
- Focus on managing and organizing content if the portal will serve mainly as a resource hub.
- Develop a Comprehensive Onboarding Process: Create a structured onboarding process to help new partners get started smoothly.
- Provide new partners with essential information about your company, products, and partnership benefits.
- Develop training materials, including video tutorials, webinars, and documentation, to educate partners about your products and services.
- Organize Resources Effectively: Ensure your portal is a one-stop-shop for all partner needs by organizing resources efficiently.
- Use HubSpot’s CMS to create a well-organized resource library with marketing materials, product information, case studies, and training documents.
- Segment content based on partner tiers and roles to ensure relevance.
- Establish Clear Communication Channels: Maintain effective communication with partners through various channels.
- Create customizable email templates for newsletters, product updates, and promotional offers.
- Set up a partner-only forum or community where partners can interact, share experiences, and seek advice.
- Manage Access and Permissions: Ensure partners have access to the appropriate information and tools.
- Set permissions based on partner tiers to ensure sensitive information is only accessible to authorized partners.
- Track Performance and Generate Reports: Use HubSpot’s reporting tools to track partner performance and identify improvement areas.
- Create dashboards to track key metrics such as deal volume, revenue generated, and resource engagement.
- Generate regular reports to share with partners, highlighting their performance and growth areas.
- Customize and Brand Your Portal: Customize the portal to reflect your company’s branding and ensure it is user-friendly.
- Ensure the portal is easy to navigate with a clean and intuitive design. Test with partners to gather feedback and make adjustments.
- Provide Ongoing Support and Maintenance: Keep the portal relevant and useful by providing ongoing support and updates.
- Set up a help desk or support system to assist partners with any issues or questions.
- Maintain an up-to-date FAQ section to address common questions and issues.
- Regularly update resources, add new features, and remove outdated information to keep the portal fresh.
Steps to Develop a Partner Portal Using Softr
Here’s how you can create a custom HubSpot partner portal using Softr:
- Get Started with Softr: Start by signing up here. Once logged in, add HubSpot as a new data source and authenticate your HubSpot account.
- Create a New Application: Start from scratch in Softr Studio, where you can build your app by adding blocks.
These blocks can be static for general info or dynamic to pull data directly from HubSpot.
- Add and Configure Data Fields: Create pages, like a "Contacts" page, and connect it to HubSpot data.
Customize fields to display contact information, such as images, names, and last activity dates.
- Manage User Access: Add internal and external users by generating magic links for easy authentication.
Create user groups (e.g., "BDR External" and "Internal") to control who sees what data.
- Set Page Visibility and Permissions: Ensure pages are only visible to logged-in users. Configure permissions so that external contractors can view specific data but not make unauthorized changes.
- Create Detailed Views: Set up detailed pages for individual records where users can view more information and log notes.
Implement conditional filters to ensure users only see notes related to their assigned contacts.
- Manage Record Visibility: Ensure external users only access records they own by filtering data based on third-party owner properties.
By following these steps, you can create a fully functional partner portal using Softr that integrates seamlessly with HubSpot. This portal will allow external contractors or business development teams to access and interact with the necessary data without needing to be HubSpot users.
Advantages of using Softr
Here are the advantages you get by using Softr to create partner portals:
- Comparison of development time and resources
Softr significantly reduces development time and resources by enabling users to build web applications and portals without coding. This no-code platform offers pre-built partner portal templates and drag-and-drop functionality, allowing for rapid deployment compared to traditional development methods.
- Ease of customization and maintenance
Softr offers an intuitive interface that makes customization easy. Users can easily modify designs, add features, and update content without technical expertise, ensuring that the application remains current and functional without extensive maintenance efforts.
- Flexibility to adapt to changing requirements
Softr's modular design and flexible architecture make it easy to adapt to changing business needs. Users can quickly implement changes, integrate new tools, and scale their applications as requirements shift, ensuring long-term viability and responsiveness.
Conclusion
HubSpot provides tools like CMS Hub, CRM, Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub. The benefits include a user-friendly interface, robust analytics, and customization options. However, challenges include higher costs and some customization limitations.
Softr offers a no-code platform that integrates with HubSpot. The benefits include rapid development, easy customization, and flexibility. It is ideal for creating sophisticated systems without coding and keeping data updated.
Choose based on your specific needs, budget, and technical expertise. For a flexible, no-code solution, consider signing up for Softr.
What is Softr
Softr is the easiest way to turn your data into powerful business apps—no code required. Connect to your spreadsheet or database, customize layout and logic, and share with your team or clients.
Join 700,000+ users worldwide, building client portals, internal tools, CRMs, dashboards, project management systems, inventory management apps, and more—all without code.
Join 700,000+ users worldwide, building client portals, internal tools, CRMs, dashboards, project management systems, inventory management apps, and more—all without code.
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Aanchal Parmar
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