Sequenzy vs HubSpot: Which Email Automation Service is Better?

Two tools built around different records

HubSpot starts from the person. A contact belongs to a company, carries a lifecycle stage and can have a deal attached, and every email you send is one more entry on that timeline. For a consultant who sells engagements after a discovery call, that structure is the point, because the email sequence is a side effect of where the deal stands. HubSpot also lists free tools at no cost on its pricing page, which is how many solo operators first meet it.

Sequenzy starts from the event. Its pricing page names Stripe, Paddle, Lemon Squeezy, Polar, Creem and Dodo Payments among the integrations included on every plan, and its home page describes a flow that begins when Stripe reports invoice.payment_failed, with a dunning email and a card-update page. That is email only; retrying the card stays with the billing system. If you sell software or a monthly membership through one of those processors, those events are your business model. If you sell cohorts through calls, nothing in your business emits them.

So the decision here is not a feature count. It is whether your list is organised around deals or around subscriptions, and everything below tests that one question against real prices.

The two plans side by side

Sources: sequenzy.com/pricing and hubspot.com/pricing/marketing, read on 2026-10-07. HubSpot's plan prices are dollar figures per month; its page can switch currency, so you may see euros if you open it from Europe.

What HubSpot's three prices mean for a small seller

HubSpot's pricing page lists Starter at $7 per seat per month, Professional at $800 a month and Enterprise at $3,600 a month, and it states that Marketing Hub pricing is per seat. The $7 is real, but the line that matters for automation sits lower on the same page: email automation is up to 10 automated actions on Starter, unlimited, with omni-channel marketing automation, on both Professional and Enterprise. As we read that row, Starter covers a short welcome and a follow-up, not a long launch sequence with waits and branches for every offer. A coach whose sequences stay short can start on Starter, while one who wants unlimited actions is shopping for Professional, and the page shows no tier between $7 and $800.

That gap decides who should keep reading. If your plan is a CRM now and sequences later, Starter plus the free tools is a cheap place to keep contacts and deals. If your plan is sequences now, HubSpot's honest price is $800 a month, and the question becomes whether the CRM and the sales side are worth that to you. A two-person team with a coach and an assistant who both need seats will pay for each one.

What Sequenzy charges, and why list size barely matters

Sequenzy's pricing page is titled around one idea, pay for emails sent. The free plan covers 2,500 emails a month, then $19 buys 15,000, $29 buys 30,000, $49 buys 60,000 and $99 buys 120,000. Contacts and sending domains are unlimited on every plan, and the page says every feature is included on Free with no feature gates. Billed yearly, the 15,000-email plan is $205 against $228 for twelve months at the monthly rate.

That reverses the usual list-size logic. A 10,000-person list mailed once a month sends 10,000 emails and fits the $19 plan, while the same list mailed twice a week sends roughly 80,000 and needs $99. Cost follows how often you write, not how many people signed up, and for a coach who emails a large, quiet list that can be very cheap.

Cost at 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 contacts

To compare per-seat pricing with per-email pricing, assume a quiet month is 4 newsletters and a launch month adds a 3-email launch week, which makes 7 emails per contact. Sequenzy's volume is the list size multiplied by those sends, rounded up to the next plan.

Read the HubSpot columns with care. The prices above are the plan prices HubSpot lists, and they do not step up with list size in what its page shows. HubSpot also sets a contact tier for marketing contacts, so a quote for 10,000 contacts can come out above these figures; the calculator on HubSpot's own pricing page is the place to get that number, and this page does not guess it. Starter is per seat, so a coach plus an assistant is $14, not $7.

Two readings follow. On price alone Sequenzy sits far below HubSpot Professional at every size, with its worst case of $99 for a 10,000-person list in a launch month against $800. And HubSpot Starter is cheaper than any paid Sequenzy plan, but only if up to 10 automated actions are enough for you. A 500-person list on four newsletters sends 2,000 emails, which fits Sequenzy's free 2,500, so at that size the cheapest option is not HubSpot either.

Scenario 1: a coach who sells programs after discovery calls

Picture a business coach with 3,000 subscribers who sells a 12-week program through booked calls. The funnel is a lead magnet form, a nurture sequence, a booking, a follow-up after the call and an onboarding sequence once someone pays. The thing the whole funnel hangs on is the deal: when a call is booked, the nurture should stop, and when the proposal goes out, a different sequence should begin.

HubSpot models that directly. The form creates the contact, the booking can move the lifecycle stage, a deal is created at the stage you name, and the workflow that mails the nurture sequence can exit when the deal moves. The catch is the plan: going past 10 actions in that workflow takes Professional at $800 a month, and a solo coach will struggle to justify that on a 3,000-person list. The realistic HubSpot path for a solo coach is Starter with its 10 automated actions for a short welcome and follow-up, then an upgrade once revenue supports it.

On Sequenzy the same coach would pay $29 a month, because 7 emails to 3,000 people is 21,000 sends, inside the 30,000-email plan. The sequence builder is there, but the deal is not: Zapier or a custom webhook would have to tell Sequenzy that a call was booked, and the proposal stage would live in a spreadsheet or another tool. That works for some people and is a constant source of drift for others.

Verdict for this reader: HubSpot, because the CRM is the funnel, as long as you are willing to start on Starter and treat Professional as a later step. If you are not going to use deal stages at all, this is a poor reason to pay for HubSpot, and a lighter creator tool is the better answer. Kit (formerly ConvertKit) lists its Creator plan at $33 a month at 1,000 subscribers and $75 at 5,000, billed yearly, with visual automations and unlimited sequences. The HubSpot alternatives page covers that route.

Scenario 2: a course creator whose product is a subscription

Now picture a creator with a 5,000-person list who sells a monthly community membership billed through Stripe, with a few hundred paying members. The email jobs change completely. A trial that is about to end needs a nudge, a failed card needs a dunning sequence, a cancellation needs a win-back, and a member who has hit a usage limit might be ready for the next tier.

This is the reader Sequenzy's pricing page is written for. With Stripe connected, an invoice.payment_failed event starts a dunning email flow with a card-update page, subscription.deleted starts a win-back, and usage limits can trigger an upsell. Its Stripe integration also lets you segment by MRR and LTV, so a launch email can leave out people who already pay. Four newsletters to 5,000 people is 20,000 emails, and the few hundred triggered emails fit comfortably inside the 30,000-email plan at $29 a month. Note the limits of the claim: Sequenzy sends the dunning emails, but retrying the charge is Stripe's or Paddle's job, and we do not claim any recovery rate.

HubSpot can run these journeys too, but it would take Professional at $800 a month and a billing connection you assemble yourself, since its pricing page lists no payment-event triggers. For this reader that is a lot of money and setup for a CRM they do not use.

Verdict for this reader: Sequenzy. This is the one case in this comparison where it wins outright, and it wins because billing events are the product, not because it is cheaper.

Moving from one to the other

Going from HubSpot to Sequenzy, export the contacts as a CSV with email, name and whatever subscription status you hold, and export unsubscribed and bounced addresses separately so they are suppressed from the first send. Lifecycle stages and deal history have no home in an email-only tool, so decide in advance which of them become tags or segments. Workflows do not move; rebuild each one by hand, starting with the one that earns money. Connect your billing system, then authenticate your sending domain before the first send. Sequenzy's pricing page lists SPF, DKIM and DMARC, and unlimited sending domains, so a second domain for transactional mail costs nothing extra.

Going the other way, map each billing field to a contact property before importing, because HubSpot will not receive subscription state from Stripe unless you connect it. Keep your old tool sending for a week while the new workflows run on a test segment, so a failed-card sequence is never switched off for a day.

Pitfalls that catch people on either side

• Reading $7 as the price of HubSpot automation. It is the price of up to 10 automated actions per seat; unlimited actions begin at Professional.
• Forgetting that Starter is per seat. An assistant, a VA and a co-coach each add one.
• Sending a one-off webinar blast to a 10,000-person list on Sequenzy. That is another 10,000 emails on top of your normal month, and it can push you past a plan boundary at 15,000, 30,000 or 60,000 emails. Leave headroom before a launch.
• Expecting Sequenzy to retry a failed card. It emails the customer; your billing system retries.
• Comparing currencies. HubSpot's page can show euros, and the dollar figures here come from its dollar view.

The verdict, both ways

HubSpot wins if you run a consulting or coaching practice where contacts, bookings and deals belong in one record, if more than one person touches the pipeline, and if you can either live on Starter's 10 automated actions for now or afford $800 a month when sequences become central. It is the safer pick because you will not outgrow its CRM, even though it is the more expensive of the two at every sequence-heavy size.

Sequenzy wins if you run a SaaS or subscription product billed through Stripe, Paddle or Lemon Squeezy and your most valuable emails are triggered by trials, failed payments and cancellations. It also wins on cost for a large, quietly mailed list. It does not win if your sales happen on calls and live in a pipeline.

Keep reading

• HubSpot vs Mailchimp for the CRM-versus-newsletter question without Sequenzy in it.
• HubSpot alternatives if $800 is the sticking point.
• Email automation for creators and for SaaS for audience-first recommendations.
• Trigger-based emails for how event-driven flows differ from scheduled ones.

Frequently asked questions