Leave a garden alone too long, and it becomes unruly and overgrown.
Leave your HubSpot portal running for a while, and the same thing happens. Automation starts to misfire, data gets untidy and your CRM starts to feel a little clunky.
This doesn’t happen overnight. It’s the result of year(s) spent adding quick fixes, building new processes and rarely stopping to reset.
We love HubSpot because of its flexibility, but this flexibility is what makes it so prone to drifting out of balance. This is why regular auditing matters – you need to keep your portal tidy and operational, ready to deliver the results you need.
In this blog, we’ll discuss what a “HubSpot audit” is and how you can audit your own portal when you’re ready. We’ll include some tips and tricks to help you get started, too.
What is a HubSpot audit?
A HubSpot audit is a structured review of how your portal is set up, how it’s being used and how well it supports your marketing, sales and service goals.
Think of it kinda like an MOT. There’s a good chance that, without an audit, you’d have no idea you’re driving a ticking time bomb.
Audits look beyond surface-level metrics and dig into the bits that really matter:
- Data quality
- Lifecycle logic
- Automation
- Pipelines
- Integrations
- Reporting
The goal of a HubSpot audit isn’t to rebuild your platform from scratch; it’s to identify where the friction is and fix what’s broken.
Why does my HubSpot portal need auditing?
Most businesses only consider auditing their HubSpot when things go wrong.
This is a mistake.
Regular audits allow you to be proactive. Again, think of your MOT; we need to spot small problems before they become big, crash-causing issues.
Here are the benefits of regular HubSpot audits:
1. Get more value from what you’re already paying for
I could describe HubSpot using many words.
“Cheap” isn’t one of them.
Most teams only end up using a fraction of what they’re licensed for, often because they weren’t onboarded properly, or they never configured their tools in the right way.
An audit shines a light on underused tools, redundant manual processes and silly little inefficiencies that have become “the way we do things”. It ensures that you’re getting what you’re paying for, and that you can be confident in the results HubSpot’s delivering.
2. Fix data issues before they distort decisions
No CRM fails explosively. They almost always subtly fall apart, hardly noticeable until one day, nothing works right.
This is usually because of data issues like duplicate records and misapplied properties. This might make your reporting look trustworthy, while it’s actually useless.
An audit addresses these issues by cleaning your contact and company data. We’ll align your properties to real business processes, meaning you can be confident in your dashboards and forecasts.
3. Reduce friction across marketing and sales
Marketing and sales feel the pain before anyone else, be that because of stuck leads, unclear ownership or anything in between.
By auditing your workflows, pipelines and handoff processes, you can expose where things no longer reflect how your teams operate.
An audit will help make marketing and sales move faster, focusing on revenue rather than admin.
Here are 10 things you need to do during your HubSpot audit
1. Review your contact database and clean bad data
Everything in HubSpot starts with contacts, which makes data quality non-negotiable.
Begin by identifying hard bounces and invalid email addresses and removing or suppressing them. These contacts damage email deliverability and inflate list sizes without adding value.
Next, deal with duplicates. HubSpot’s deduplication tools are useful, but only if records are actively merged rather than ignored.
Finally, review engagement. Contacts who have not opened emails or visited your site in years skew reporting and attribution. Segment or archive them so active lists reflect genuine interest.
2. Audit lifecycle stages and lead statuses
Lifecycle stages often make sense on day one, but can easily become useless after 6-12 months.
Check whether stages are being applied consistently. Look for contacts stuck in the wrong stage or skipping stages entirely. These patterns usually point to unclear definitions or broken automation.
Then review Lead Status from a sales perspective. Are statuses meaningful and used properly, or are reps defaulting to one option? Clear lifecycle logic reduces friction between marketing and sales and improves pipeline visibility. You need to ensure that handoffs are being handled painlessly, as friction here can negatively impact the buyer journey.
3. Clean up your deal pipelines
Pipelines tend to multiply over time, especially in growing businesses.
Archive pipelines that are no longer in use and remove deals that have been sitting idle with no activity. If a deal has not moved in months and no one is chasing it, it does not belong in your forecast.
Review stage definitions and probabilities to ensure they reflect how deals progress. This is critical if leadership relies on HubSpot for revenue forecasting.
4. Review and optimise workflows
Workflows are one of HubSpot’s biggest strengths and one of the easiest things to overbuild.
Open every active workflow and assess whether it is still needed. Review enrolment triggers, branches and actions to ensure nothing is outdated or broken. Pay particular attention to workflows created for one-off campaigns that were never switched off.
Check performance metrics such as enrolment volume and completion. If a workflow has not enrolled contacts in months, it either needs fixing or retiring.
5. Audit email templates and sequences
Email assets age quickly, especially in fast-moving industries.
Review marketing email templates for branding, tone and relevance. Remove anything tied to outdated messaging or offers. Look at open and click rates to identify underperforming templates.
Sales sequences deserve the same scrutiny. Are they aligned with how your sales process works today? Are reps actually using them? Often, small changes to subject lines or opening emails can really help improve performance.
6. Review forms and lead capture points
Forms are a common source of poor data and missed opportunities.
Audit all active forms and remove those linked to old landing pages or campaigns. Test submissions to ensure the user experience is smooth and that fields map correctly into HubSpot.
Review progressive profiling to balance data collection with conversion rates. Finally, confirm consent and GDPR settings are correctly configured across all forms.
7. Assess website and landing page performance in HubSpot CMS
If you use HubSpot CMS, your website plays a direct role in CRM performance.
Review your highest traffic pages from the past year and identify where conversions drop off. Check for broken links, outdated content and CTAs pointing to inactive offers.
SEO basics such as page titles and meta descriptions are often overlooked after launch. Tidying these up can deliver quick wins ahead of peak search periods.
8. Audit reporting dashboards
Dashboards often reflect how the business used to operate, not how it operates now.
Remove unused or duplicated dashboards and reports. They create noise and reduce focus. Then assess whether existing dashboards support current goals, particularly for pipeline health, attribution and campaign ROI.
Validate the data behind key reports. If numbers feel off, trace filters and properties back to the source. Reporting issues almost always originate upstream.
9. Review integrations and connected apps
Integrations quietly introduce risk when left unchecked.
List all connected apps and remove anything no longer required. For active integrations, check sync health and error logs. Pay close attention to field mappings to avoid overwritten or inconsistent data.
Permissions and API usage should also be reviewed to ensure security and platform limits are not being strained.
10. Align permissions, teams and users
User management is rarely urgent until something goes wrong.
Remove old user accounts and review access levels across teams. People often accumulate permissions they no longer need, which increases risk and confusion.
Ensure new team members are set up correctly and that team structures reflect how the business actually works today.
How often should you audit your HubSpot portal?
In a perfect world, you’d put regular checks into place that prevent things from ever straying.
This isn’t a perfect world, though, we get that.
So that’s why we recommend a complete audit once a year, preferably before your busy periods begin. We usually get lots of requests for audits around January and throughout Q1, as businesses reevaluate their processes and plan for the new financial year.
Whether you’re a fairly new HubSpot user or you’ve had HubSpot for years, regular auditing is a good habit that you should start now.
Worried about getting all this done yourself? Don’t worry – we can help.
We’re HubSpot Diamond Partners and 4x HubSpot Impact Award winners. We help businesses just like yours get more value from their HubSpot. The first step is to book your free HubSpot audit. It’s quick and easy to get started; just click the link below, and we’ll be in touch.
