HubSpot workflows are sets of steps HubSpot runs on its own when a record meets a trigger you choose. The full workflows tool comes with Professional plans. Starter and Free get a cut-down version tied to forms. Whatever plan you're on, write the process down before you build it.
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What is a HubSpot workflow?
A workflow is a rule that says "when this happens, do these things". HubSpot watches for the trigger and then works through the steps in order, with no one pressing a button.
Picture a Monday morning. A customer filled in your website form at 9pm on Sunday. Nobody saw it. By the time someone calls back, the customer has booked another business.
With a workflow, the form fill is the trigger. HubSpot creates a call task for the owner of that contact, with a due date, so it can't slip. On Marketing Hub Professional, the same workflow can send the customer a short thank-you email. On other plans, the form's own follow-up email does that job.
Every workflow has three parts.
- Trigger. The event that starts it. A form fill, a deal moving stage, or a date.
- Actions. The steps HubSpot takes. Send an email, create a task, update a field, notify someone.
- Exit. When the record leaves. The steps run out, or a rule pulls it out early, such as "deal is won".
HubSpot calls the trigger an "enrolment trigger". A record that meets it is "enrolled", and one that leaves early is "unenrolled".
- Triggernew enquiry form
- Actionscreate task for owner, alert the owner
- Exittask done or deal created
What to do: before anything else, pick one job your team forgets to do. That is your first workflow.
Which HubSpot plan do you need for workflows?
You need a Professional plan for the full workflows tool. HubSpot's help centre lists Marketing, Sales, Service, Data, Smart CRM and Revenue Hub Professional or Enterprise. Free and Starter get a cut-down version tied to forms.
Say you're on Marketing Hub Starter and go looking for the workflows screen. All you find are simple workflows inside your forms, because the full tool sits on Professional.
Here's what each level gets, from HubSpot's AUD pricing pages.
| Plan | What you get for workflows | Price (AUD, before GST) |
|---|---|---|
| Free | One follow-up email per form | A$0 |
| Starter (any hub) | One simple workflow per form, up to 3 actions. Up to 10 actions on Marketing Hub Starter. Sales Hub Starter adds up to 50 workflows with restricted triggers and actions | From A$11 a seat a month on HubSpot's current offer for new customers, A$31 usual |
| Sales Hub or Service Hub Professional | Full workflows tool, up to 300 workflows | A$140 a seat a month on annual billing, A$155 monthly, plus A$2,160 onboarding |
| Marketing Hub Professional | Full workflows tool, up to 300 workflows | From A$1,241 a month on annual billing with 3 Core Seats, plus A$4,320 onboarding |
| Enterprise | Up to 1,000 workflows, plus workflow health alerts | Sales Hub or Service Hub A$240 a seat a month plus A$5,040 onboarding |
A seat is a paid login for one person. An onboarding fee is HubSpot's one-time setup charge on Professional and Enterprise. A Core Seat is a login for someone who edits records but does not hold a Sales or Service seat.
Simple form workflows don't count toward the 300 limit. Nor does pipeline automation, which is a small set of actions you set on a deal stage.
For the full price picture, read what HubSpot costs in Australia.
What to do: check your plan under Account and billing in HubSpot. If you're on Starter, list the workflows you want first. Then decide if they justify a Professional seat.
What can HubSpot workflows automate?
Workflows can automate most of the admin around a customer record. That covers contacts, deals, tickets and alerts to your own team.
Think of a 20-person trade business on a busy week. A lead waits two days for a call, and a won job reaches the crew late. Workflows plug those gaps by doing the admin the moment it's due.
Contacts. Set the owner when a form comes in. Send a welcome email if you have Marketing Hub Professional. Update the lifecycle stage, which is the field that says if someone is a lead, an opportunity or a customer.
Deals. A deal is a job you're trying to win, tracked through stages in a pipeline. Create a follow-up task when a deal hits "quote sent". Copy the job address onto the deal. Alert the owner when a deal hasn't moved for two weeks.
Tickets. A ticket is a customer issue your team needs to sort out. Route new tickets to the right person. On Service Hub Professional, email the customer when the ticket closes.
Internal alerts. Send an email or in-app notice to a person or team. Use it for big deals, after-hours enquiries or a job that's about to start.
Breeze AI actions. Breeze is HubSpot's AI. On Professional and Enterprise, some workflow actions use it. One can write a short summary of a record. Another can fill a field from a written prompt, such as sorting an enquiry by job type. These use HubSpot Credits, a monthly allowance that comes with your plan. Sales Hub Professional includes 3,000 credits at the time of writing. If credits run out, the AI step returns nothing. HubSpot labels these AI actions as beta, which means they're still being tested.
What to do: list the five tasks your office does by hand every day. Each one is a candidate for a workflow.
How do you plan a workflow before you build it?
Write it on one page first. If you can't explain the workflow in plain words on paper, it will misfire in HubSpot.
Say a 12-person Sydney services firm builds a "new lead" workflow straight in the tool. A few weeks later, customers start getting two welcome emails, because another workflow was already sending one. Ten minutes on paper would have caught it.
Here's a six-step plan that works for any workflow.
- 1Write the process on one page.Describe what happens today, in order, in plain words. Include who does each step.
- 2Pick one trigger.One clear event per workflow. “Form submitted on the quote page” beats “any new contact”.
- 3List the properties it needs.A property is a field on a record, like job type or suburb. If the workflow needs one that's empty, fix the form first.
- 4Set the exit rule.Decide when a record should leave. A common one is “deal won” or “customer replied”.
- 5Test it on a test record.Make a fake contact with your own email. Run it through and check each step lands.
- 6Name it and put it in a folder.Use a name that says what it does, like “Sales: new enquiry, task to owner”. File it in a folder for that team.
Write the process on one page first. If it doesn't make sense on paper, it won't in HubSpot.
What to do: take your messiest handover and write it on one page this week. That page becomes the plan you build from.
What are 5 useful workflows for an Australian service business?
These five cover the usual gaps in a small service business. Each shows the trigger, actions, exit and plan.
Picture an electrician in Parramatta with three vans and an office manager. Work slips away when a quote sits unanswered for a week or a weekend enquiry waits until Tuesday. These recipes cover those spots.
| Workflow | Trigger | Actions | Exit | Plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. New enquiry alert and task | Website enquiry form submitted | Set owner, create call task due today, send the owner an alert | Lead status changes to contacted | Professional, or a form's simple workflow on Starter |
| 2. Quote sent, follow-up on day 3 | Deal moves to “Quote sent” | Wait 3 days, create a follow-up call task for the deal owner | Deal moves to won or lost | Professional |
| 3. After-hours enquiry auto reply | Website enquiry form submitted | Send the enquirer an email that gives your office hours and when you'll call back | Email sent | Marketing Hub Professional. On other plans, the form's follow-up email can say when you call back |
| 4. Deal won, handover task for the job | Deal moves to “Closed won” | Create a task for the ops lead with the job address and scope | Steps finish | Professional |
| 5. Stale deal reminder | Deal stage unchanged for 14 days | Alert the owner and create a task to call | Deal stage changes | Professional |
Recipe 1 is the base of a good lead follow-up process. Read why the first reply wins to see why speed matters.
For recipe 3, set your account time zone first. HubSpot says that if your account has no time zone set, workflow timing defaults to Eastern Standard Time in the US. That puts your "business hours" in the middle of the Sydney night. Leave this workflow free to run at any time, or the reply will wait until morning.
Pick the number of days in recipe 5 to suit your sales cycle. Fourteen is a sensible place to start, and you can change it later.
What to do: build recipe 1 first. It fixes the most expensive leak, which is slow follow-up.
What breaks HubSpot workflows?
Most breaks come from three things. A record enrols when you didn't expect it, a record can't enrol again when you need it to, or two workflows fight over the same trigger.
Say a plumbing business turns on a "deal won" workflow with re-enrolment on. The office reopens an old deal to fix a typo and sets it back to won. The crew gets a second handover task for a job finished last month.
- By default, a record only enrols the first time it meets the trigger. Re-enrolment means letting it come back in. Turn it on only when a record should go through the steps again.
- Event triggers, like a form fill, can enrol a record once or every time the event happens. Check which one you picked.
- Two workflows with the same trigger will both run. HubSpot enrols a contact in every workflow it qualifies for, at the same time.
- Lists that change on their own can push records in and out. Read active lists vs static lists in HubSpot before you trigger off a list.
- Delays and timing settings can make a workflow look broken when it's waiting. Read the misunderstood 30-minute cadence before you change anything.
To check a broken workflow, open it and look at the enrolment history for one record. It shows when the record came in and what each step did.
What to do: for each live workflow, write down if re-enrolment is on and why. If nobody knows why, turn it off and test.
When should you use a sequence instead of a workflow?
Use a sequence when a salesperson wants a short run of personal emails and tasks to one person. Use a workflow for anything that runs in the background for the whole business.
A sequence is a set of timed emails and tasks sent from a rep's own inbox. By default, HubSpot pulls the contact out of the sequence when they reply or book a meeting. Sequences need Sales Hub or Service Hub Professional.
What to do: if the email should read like it came from one person, use a sequence. If it's admin, use a workflow.
How do you stop workflows clashing as you add more?
Give every workflow a clear name, a folder and an owner. Then check them all once a quarter.
A business starts with three workflows. Two years later it has forty, built by four people, and nobody knows which still matter. One change to a deal stage then breaks five of them.
Keep these four rules.
- Name. Team, trigger and result in the name. "Service: ticket closed, survey email".
- Folder. One folder per team, so you can see what sales, service and marketing each run.
- Owner. One person who signs off any change. Write their name in the description.
- Quarterly check. Turn off anything with no recent enrolments. Look for two workflows on the same trigger.
When your workflows also pass data to other tools, map that out too. Our page on how your tools connect to HubSpot shows how we wire the rest of the business in.
What to do: open your workflows list today and sort it into folders.
Common questions
How do I set up a workflow in HubSpot?
Go to Automation, then Workflows, and create one from scratch. Choose the record type, set the trigger, add your actions and set your exit rules. Test it on a test record before you turn it on. You need a Professional plan for the full tool.
Which HubSpot plan do I need for workflows?
A Professional plan. Sales Hub or Service Hub Professional is A$140 a seat a month on annual billing, plus A$2,160 onboarding, at the time of writing and before GST. Free and Starter get simple form workflows, and Sales Hub Starter adds up to 50 limited workflows.
What can HubSpot workflows automate?
Tasks, field updates, owner assignment, alerts to your team and ticket routing. Emails to customers need Marketing Hub Professional, or Service Hub Professional for ticket emails. On Professional, some Breeze AI actions can also summarise a record or fill a field from a prompt. Those use HubSpot Credits.
What is a good workflow for lead nurturing?
Start with a new enquiry workflow. It assigns an owner and creates a call task, and the form sends the customer a thank-you email. Then add a quote follow-up task on day 3. Personal follow-up emails from a rep sit better in a sequence.
How many workflows can I have in HubSpot?
Up to 300 on a Professional plan and up to 1,000 on Enterprise, according to HubSpot's help centre. Simple form workflows and pipeline automation don't count toward the limit.
Can Breeze AI build a workflow for me?
Breeze can draft a trigger and actions from a written prompt. You still need to check every step. It can only build what you describe, so plan on paper first.
Why did my workflow enrol a contact twice?
Re-enrolment is probably on, or two workflows share a trigger. Open the record's workflow history to see which. Turn re-enrolment off unless the record should go through the steps again.
Sources
- HubSpot Sales Hub pricing (AUD), hubspot.com/pricing/sales checked 1 November 2026.
- HubSpot Marketing Hub pricing (AUD), hubspot.com/pricing/marketing checked 1 November 2026.
- HubSpot Service Hub pricing (AUD), hubspot.com/pricing/service checked 1 November 2026.
- Create workflows (plan requirements), knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/create-workflows updated 23 October 2026, checked 1 November 2026.
- Workflows FAQ (limits), knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/workflows-faq updated 26 October 2026, checked 1 November 2026.
- Form automations (Free and Starter), knowledge.hubspot.com/forms/form-automations updated 28 September 2026, checked 1 November 2026.
- Enrolment triggers and re-enrolment, knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/set-your-workflow-enrollment-triggers updated 4 September 2026, checked 1 November 2026.
- Workflow settings (time zone, timing, connections), knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/manage-your-workflow-settings updated 28 September 2026, checked 1 November 2026.
- AI in workflows (credits, beta), knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/use-ai-to-manage-data-in-workflows updated 28 September 2026, checked 1 November 2026.
- Workflow actions, knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/choose-your-workflow-actions checked 1 November 2026.
- Breeze and automation, knowledge.hubspot.com/get-started/automate-your-processes updated 3 August 2026, checked 1 November 2026.
- Sequence unenrolment, knowledge.hubspot.com/sequences/unenroll-from-sequence checked 1 November 2026.
- HubSpot Product and Services Catalog (included credits), legal.hubspot.com/hubspot-product-and-services-catalog checked 1 November 2026.