5 min read
May 21, 2025
Ask Achan: What tools have you successfully integrated with HubSpot?
5:18

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the latest edition of Ask Achan. Who’s Achan, you ask? He’s our in-house HubSpot expert and the Chief Growth Officer here at Concentrate.  He also leads our team of talented HubSpot experts, many of which are well-experienced in HubSpot integrations. Why do I mention that?  Well, this edition we have a great question to Ask Achan:

Here's a good question I came across:

“Hey everyone, I just got HubSpot CRM for my business, and it's pretty awesome! But I know there's so much more potential if I can connect it to the other tools I use every day. The problem is, I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by all the integration options. Their guide has some great info, but I'd love to hear from the HubSpot community directly! Here's my question: What tools have YOU successfully integrated with HubSpot CRM?”

Curious HupSpotter

 

Integrating with HubSpot

Concentrate - Ask Achan (1)

My top tip:

"Start with your why — what business problem are you actually trying to solve? 

- Achan Bedi, Chief Growth Officer
Hi Achan, firstly, tell us about integrations you've completed recently, their use case, challenges and results.

Sure, I can think of two recent and significant HubSpot integration projects Concentrate has recently completed with two amazing companies; Enable and Prime Fluid.

Enable

“With Enable, the goal was to automate and streamline a really complex post-sale process. Once a deal hit closed-won in HubSpot, there was a lot of downstream work that needed to happen — and it was all happening across three different systems: Zendesk, Dynamics 365, and Business Central.

This included things like working with civil contractors to lay cables for new builds, setting up network connections, and managing service delivery. HubSpot needed to be right in the middle of it all, but the data wasn’t flowing across those platforms in real time. So there was a lot of friction — delays, manual handovers, and lost context between teams.

We built a custom integration using APIs to connect HubSpot with all three systems and set up two-way data syncs between them. That way, when something changes in Zendesk or Dynamics, it flows back to HubSpot — and vice versa.

The result has been massive. The process is way more seamless now. Less double-handling, better visibility for the whole team, and a much faster time to value for the customer. That’s the real win.”

Prime Fluid

“Another big one was Prime Fluid and the use case here was quite similar to Enable’s, just with a different tech stack. We integrated HubSpot with CIN7, which is their ERP/MRP system.

HubSpot was doing all the heavy lifting on the front end — generating leads, handling the website, and managing the deal flow. But once a deal was marked as closed-won, they needed it to trigger a whole downstream process: creating a sales order, managing inventory, and kicking off fulfilment and shipping.

That wasn't happening efficiently before. There was a disconnect between sales and ops, and a risk of delays or mistakes in the order process. So we built a custom integration between HubSpot and CIN7 to sync that data and automate the handoff from sales to fulfilment.

We’re also the ongoing guardians of that integration — if the team needs enhancements or updates, we manage those too. The result? Much smoother operations, better inventory control, and faster delivery to customers. It’s taken a lot of manual admin off their plate and made the whole post-sale process far more scalable.”

In your experience, what’s better—native HubSpot integrations or using middleware like Zapier/Make? Why?

Short answer: Native when you can, middleware when you must.

Native integrations are always our first choice if they get the job done — they’re more
stable, secure, and often supported directly by HubSpot or the third-party app. They’re
plug-and-play, which means faster time to value and less ongoing maintenance. But they’re not perfect. Native integrations often lack flexibility — limited field mapping, very little custom logic, or they can’t handle complex workflows. That’s where middleware like Zapier or Make shines: it gives you control, logic, and cross-platform choreography. Just know that flexibility comes with fragility — more points of failure, and someone must own the 'babysitting' or governance.

Bottom line: Use native for speed and stability, middleware for customisation and logic.
If you're doing serious volume or critical ops, eventually you're talking APIs and custom
builds anyway.

Any advice for someone feeling overwhelmed by all the integration possibilities in HubSpot?

Yes, don't try to boil the ocean.

Start with your why — what business problem are you actually trying to solve? Are you losing leads between marketing and sales? Is your reporting full of holes? Are support tickets getting stuck in limbo? 

Once you've got that, map the one or two workflows that must work seamlessly across tools, and tackle those first.

Integration isn’t about syncing everything — it’s about syncing the right things, in the right way, for the right reasons.  Start small, focus on the most critical use cases, perfect that bit of integration, then move on to the next challenge.  And don’t be afraid to test things small-scale before going all in. You don’t need a master plan — you need momentum.

What’s one “hidden gem” integration you think more people should know
about?

I am not sure if this is still a hidden gem, but there is a native integration of Google meets with Hubspot which is awesome. Among other things, it automatically records, transcribes and analyses meetings and places them in HubSpot next to the associated records. A close second is the Microsoft team’s integration which has a similar use case.

How do you keep your integrations running smoothly over time? Any tips on monitoring or maintenance?

Integrations need governance.

  • Have a source of truth. Every field in HubSpot that syncs to another system should have a declared “owner.” That way, when things break (and they will), you know where to start.
  • Make sure you have a documented brief or use case of why this integration was built in the first place and what are the key elements that are holding it together this is important to have on file so that if you have any team changes the knowledge about the integration doesn’t leave with the person leaving your team.
  • Audit regularly. Monthly or quarterly checks on data syncs, API errors, and key workflows can prevent big problems.
  • Alerting is better than hoping. Middleware like Make and Zapier have built-in error notifications. Use them. Custom integrations? Set up logging and Slack alerts.
  • Document your logic. No one wants to reverse-engineer a seven-step Zap
    when it starts acting weird. Comment your flows, version your scripts, and make sure someone else knows how it works.
  • And for the love of clean data: never sync two dirty systems together without a cleanup plan. That’s just scaling your chaos.

What's one piece of advice you'd give readers when integrating with HubSpot?

Integrate for outcomes, not for fun.

Just because you can sync two systems doesn’t mean you should. Start with the user experience — sales rep, marketer, support agent, whoever. Will this integration actually save time, increase visibility, or improve decisions?

Also: test everything in a sandbox or staging portal if you can. Live syncing to production without testing is how bad dashboards are born and marketing teams cry.

“Integrate for outcomes, not for fun. Just because you can sync two systems doesn’t mean you should.”
Achan - Ask Agony - Transparent (1080 x 1080)
Achan Bedi

Chief Growth Officer

Need to explore integrations with HubSpot?

If you’re feeling overwhelmed or just want someone to help you optimise your HubSpot setup, reach out to our team. At Concentrate, we specialise in helping businesses set up and get the most of their HubSpot platform, and in this case, get HubSpot integrated to the tools that matter most to their business.

That’s it for this month’s Ask Achan. I’ll catch you next time. If you’ve got a question for the next edition, fill the form below. I’d love to help.

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