Our thinking about HubSpot, AI, & removing silo'ed data

Updated May 2026 to reflect HubSpot's January 2026 program changes, the Deal-Based Tiers model launched November 2025, and the upcoming July 2026 threshold adjustments. As CEO of MO Agency, a HubSpot Elite Partner, I've seen first-hand how the HubSpot Partner Tier system shapes what clients can expect from their partner. Each tier, from untiered Solutions Partner up to Elite, reflects scale, customer retention performance, and sustained delivery within the HubSpot ecosystem. Whether you're evaluating partners in North

Every brand wants to be recommended when a buyer asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Perplexity for a vendor in their category. Almost no brand has a deliberate strategy for getting there. The mechanism that decides is citation - which sources an AI model has read about you, how those sources describe you, and how often the same description recurs. This is the playbook for building that citation profile. It is not a list of places to get backlinks. Citation strategy for AI engines overlaps with traditional digital PR but is distinctly different in what it rewards, what it ignores, and how it

Updated April 2026 · ~18 minute read · By Luke Marthinusen, CEO, MO Agency What's in this guide AEO in one sentence Why AEO now - the shift from search to answer engines AEO vs SEO vs GEO - what's

Most marketers know schema markup as an SEO enhancement - the thing that gets you star ratings in Google or a recipe carousel. That framing is now incomplete. Schema is no longer just structured data for search engines; it is the primary machine-readable layer that AI engines use to understand who you are, what you do, and why they should cite you. This is a practical guide, written for marketers and developers who need working code, not theory. Every schema type below comes with a copy-paste JSON-LD example, where to put it, and what it actually does for Answer Engine Optimisation. If you

Updated May 2026 · By Luke Marthinusen, CEO, MO Agency The acronyms around AI search are multiplying faster than anyone can keep up with. SEO, AEO, GEO, AIO, LLMO, CAIO - all referring to overlapping but not identical disciplines, often used interchangeably, and rarely defined with much rigour. This article sets out the most defensible definitions of SEO, AEO, and GEO, acknowledges where the industry is genuinely split, and explains what marketing teams should actually do about

One of the most common questions we get from prospects evaluating their CRM and marketing platform is simple: why does HubSpot cost so much more than Zoho? It's a fair question. The headline price difference is real, and it's significant. We've run this comparison dozens of times for clients across South Africa, the UK, Europe and the Middle East. The gap typically lands somewhere between 3× and 6× more expensive depending on which tiers you compare. But the pricing comparison only tells part of the story. Below, we break down the actual

Updated April 2026 Introduction HubSpot uses a seat-based pricing model across its entire product range. Understanding how seats work is the single biggest factor in getting your licensing right — and keeping it affordable as your team grows. Here's the short version: Some Hubs (Marketing, Content, and Data Hub) come with core seats already bundled in at their Professional and Enterprise tiers. Expanding beyond the included seats means purchasing

Updated April 2026 The short answer: HubSpot's free CRM is genuinely free forever, but in 2026 it's far more restrictive than the "1 million contacts, unlimited users" plan many older guides describe. Free accounts are now capped at 1,000 contacts, 2 users, 1 deal pipeline, 10 custom properties, and 2,000 marketing emails per month, and every email, landing page, meeting link and chat widget carries HubSpot branding. You still get a real CRM - contacts, deals,

Your website is probably being cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini answers right now. Your Google Analytics 4 property almost certainly can't see most of it. This isn't hyperbole. It's a structural measurement problem that's going to get worse before it gets better - and it's the single biggest blind spot in modern B2B marketing measurement. If you're investing in AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation), content marketing, or thought leadership, and you can't see which of that work is landing in AI-generated answers, you're flying blind on what's arguably the most important emerging