What HubSpot Project Management Can and Cannot Do
HubSpot does not seem to be talked about much in project management due to its position as a marketing automation, sales pipeline, and customer care service tool. However, when using HubSpot already in their respective teams, a more realistic question to ask is whether it can be a good tool to handle client or internal projects. The answer is — yes, to a point. The project management features in HubSpot are adequate when used to monitor campaigns, marketing processes, and team coordination, which is not taxing. However, when you intend to settle down with it, replacing full-featured tools such as Asana, ClickUp, or Monday.com and engaging in multidimensional tasks, you will reach the wall early.
Project management customized to the HubSpot ecosystem is what is being offered. It implies that it is the most appropriate to use in controlling operations that pertain to CRM operations, campaign launches, onboarding processes, or team checklists. And when you live in HubSpot and you want to have everything centralized in one system, it makes sense to do project coordination in it as well to be closer to your marketing, sales, and customer data.
What HubSpot Project Management Actually Includes
In its essence, HubSpot project management enables you to make project plans, delegate work, and have due dates, project statuses, as well as create templates. It is possible to join tasks to a project, designate an owner, a due date, attachments, or notes, and monitor progress. It is possible to relate projects to some CRM records, such as companies, deals, or tickets, which assists in the level of visibility.
It has a catalog of ready-made templates, such as for campaign launches, planning blog content, or making sales follow-ups. These templates can also be customized, or you can design your own templates, which is particularly helpful when dealing with recurrent processes. As an example, you may launch a new client each week; in this case, you may templatize such a workflow and launch it in several seconds.
And a big plus is that the tasks created on a project may also appear on your global task view; in other words, your team will not lose sight of them, even when they do not directly check the project. It is also possible to follow the progress of the completed tasks, prioritize them, and make comments on tasks to discuss them within the company.
When It Works Well
HubSpot’s project management shines in specific scenarios. The projects tool in the portal helps marketing teams organize and track their internal work, especially when it comes to associated assets in the portal.
It also works for onboarding workflows. As an example, the service team will have to guide new clients through a 30-day launch process. You are able to implement that as a repeatable project with steps, have deadlines on it, and can track the progress of each client. Since you can link projects to CRM objects, your team will be able to view a contact or a company and immediately know what projects they are a part of.
An internal coordination between sales and marketing can also be an excellent use case. When both teams are working on a campaign (a new webinar, for example), all of its moving parts can be organized in a project: landing page creation, email writing, timing, speaker organization, and follow-ups. It is better than having to switch among various applications or use never-ending Slack messages.
Where It Falls Short
HubSpot Project Management is not designed as a space to do your most extensive and collaborative work. You will not get Gantt charts, Kanban boards, time tracking, automation rules across task dependencies, or detailed reporting. Also, you do not have native integration with external tools such as GitHub, Figma, or Google Drive with the task interface.
In cases where your projects must involve multiple stakeholders, shifting schedules, sprints, or pivoting often, the HubSpot system will leave much to be desired. There is no workflow automation to reduce repetitive tasks, such as when Task A is completed, move Task B to In Progress, or an alert is given when Task C is 3 days overdue. Such logic still needs the external project management software.
Even the task collaboration features are limited. There is no real-time chat, subtasks within tasks, or file versioning where comments can be added, however. The notifications are primarily via emails or through their interface, and thus, are not right for quick-moving teams.
A Smart Middle Ground: Integrating External Tools
The good thing is that HubSpot works with such tools as Asana, Trello, or ClickUp in case you have already been utilizing them. You may synchronize Python tasks, project creation based on deal stages, or deadlines to synchronize everything. It provides you with the optimal solution since you have HubSpot to manage your CRM-related activities and a dedicated tool to use when handling sophisticated projects.
A lot of teams prefer to utilize HubSpot when it comes to their lower-weight task management and something like Asana when it comes to the higher-weight. As an example, an editorial planning team may use HubSpot to coordinate, but develop production schedules in a more capacious system.
Final Thoughts
The project management tools offered by HubSpot are superb when you have a team that would like simple, central project tracking right to your marketing, sales, or service workflows. It minimizes the tool toggling, ensures that all the information is linked to CRM data, and assists in enforcing consistency in processes. However, when your business operates on complex projects or highly imminent ones, you cannot get all of that done in it. Be aware of when to use it and when not to use it, and never use it as a replacement; use it as part of a larger stack.
