FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Free HubSpot tools for data quality, workflow audits, and clean UTM links — plus the ops questions that come up around them. No Operations Hub required.
What are these tools?
They're free tools that solve specific HubSpot and marketing operations problems — auditing contact data quality, finding workflow conflicts, and building clean UTM links. Each one was built by Chelsie Hodgkiss, an operations leader, to solve a problem she ran into herself, then shared publicly because the problem is universal.
Is there a free alternative to HubSpot Operations Hub for data quality?
Yes. The HubSpot Health Check audits your contact database for free across nine data-quality checks, with no Operations Hub Professional subscription required. HubSpot's native Data Quality Command Center is gated behind Operations Hub Professional, which starts at $720/month. This tool covers the most common issues — missing fields, duplicates, unset lifecycle stages, stale contacts — at no cost.
How do I find duplicate contacts in HubSpot without paying for a tool?
Run the free HubSpot Health Check, which flags duplicate email addresses in your contact database and gives you a downloadable list. Most dedicated dedupe tools start around $49–149/month. The Health Check identifies the duplicates for free so you can decide how to resolve them.
How do I clean up a messy HubSpot contact database?
Start by finding exactly what's broken before you touch anything. The free HubSpot Health Check surfaces the most common contact-data problems — duplicates, missing names and emails, unset lifecycle stages and lead sources, stale records, and inconsistent phone formatting — and gives you a downloadable CSV of every affected record. The "data janitor" work is mostly endless because it's invisible; seeing it in one place is what makes it manageable.
How do I find rogue or unused workflows in HubSpot?
Use the free HubSpot Workflow Conflict Checker, which scans your active workflows and flags ones that are likely abandoned — last edited over a year ago, no recent enrollments, buried deep in your workflow list, or created by someone no longer in your portal. It also detects conflicts, where two or more workflows could fire emails at the same contact at once. HubSpot shows your workflows as a list but gives no native view of which ones overlap or which ones everyone forgot about.
Why is one contact getting emails from multiple workflows at once?
This happens when multiple active workflows share the same enrollment trigger — the same form submission, lifecycle stage change, or list membership — so one action enrolls a contact in several email sequences simultaneously. The HubSpot Workflow Conflict Checker finds these overlaps before your contacts do, which is usually how you find out otherwise.
Why does Salesforce keep overwriting my HubSpot data?
That's the native HubSpot–Salesforce connector defaulting to Salesforce as the source of truth, which it does even in cases where marketing data in HubSpot should take priority. The connector has limited field-level conflict control, so a sync can quietly overwrite a HubSpot property with the Salesforce value. There's no simple "prefer HubSpot" toggle; managing it means configuring field mappings carefully and knowing which system owns which field. It's a structural quirk of the connector, not something you did wrong.
Which small ops tasks are actually worth automating?
The ones you repeat constantly but never feel urgent enough to fix. A two-hour painful task gets automated immediately, but a ten-minute task survives for years because it's easy enough to tolerate and annoying enough to repeat — and ten minutes a week is roughly seventeen hours a year. The recurring formatting, list cleanup, and pre-send checks are exactly the kind of small, repeatable work these tools were built to take off your plate.
Why do my marketing leads sit untouched in the CRM?
Usually because there's no enforced routing or follow-up SLA, so leads pile up in a queue while marketing assumes the funnel is healthy and sales assumes the leads are weak. It's one of the most common ops standoffs, and it's a process and definition problem more than a tooling one — a shared definition of a qualified lead and an enforced handoff matter more than any single feature. Clean data underneath it helps, which is part of what the Health Check surfaces.
Is it safe to use my HubSpot API key with these tools?
Yes. Your API key is used once per request to pull your data and is never stored, logged, or saved. The tools only need read access, so they can look at your data but cannot change, delete, or move anything. You also control exactly what the key can see by scoping the private app to the minimum permissions listed on each tool's page.
Do these tools store my data?
No. The analysis runs in your browser, and your contact and workflow data is never stored or logged on any server. When you close the tab, it's gone. There's no account, no database of your records, and nothing retained after your session ends.
What permissions do the tools need?
Read-only permissions only. The HubSpot Health Check needs read access to contacts only (the company information comes back as a contact property, so no separate companies scope is required). The Workflow Conflict Checker needs read access to automation and portal users. Each tool's page lists the exact minimum scopes to grant when you create your HubSpot private app. None of the tools request write access.
Are these official HubSpot tools?
No. These are independent tools built by Chelsie Hodgkiss. They use the HubSpot API but are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by HubSpot, Inc. HubSpot is a registered trademark of HubSpot, Inc.
Do these work on the free HubSpot tier?
Most do. The HubSpot Health Check, Workflow Conflict Checker, and UTM Builder work on any HubSpot tier that supports private apps, including free and Starter. The exception is the campaign-level Email QC tool, which needs Marketing Hub Enterprise because HubSpot restricts that API scope to Enterprise portals or those with the transactional email add-on.
How much do these tools cost?
The diagnostic tools are free to use with no login. If you want to own the code, deploy your own version, or have a tool customized for your team's setup, those are available as one-time paid packages on the Services page. There are no subscriptions and nothing is hosted on your behalf.
Can you build a custom version for my team?
Yes. Custom builds are available as a one-time package — the tool configured for your naming conventions, your HubSpot setup, and deployed for your team, with the option to include a walkthrough. Details and pricing are on the Services page.
Do I need to know how to code to use these?
No. The free tools run entirely in your browser or through a simple API key paste — no technical skill required. The paid code packages do require deploying to a host like Railway, which is straightforward but assumes basic comfort with GitHub; if that's not you, the Code + Consulting package includes setup help.
What is a UTM builder and why do I need one?
A UTM builder creates consistent campaign tracking links so your marketing reporting stays clean. The free UTM Builder enforces lowercase, strips trailing spaces, adds missing protocols, and standardizes formatting automatically — preventing the inconsistencies like "Facebook" versus "facebook" that quietly break attribution reporting when multiple people build links by hand.
Looking for the tools themselves? See the Tools page, or the Services page for paid code packages and custom builds.