When I started out as a freelance writer, I didn’t have a professional background in content marketing. I not only needed to learn everything I could about my new industry, but also had to show potential clients that I was worth investing in. And after creeping on a few freelancer subreddits, I learned HubSpot certifications were exactly what I needed.
But the courses you can take from HubSpot Academy go well beyond my niche—in fact, they run the gamut from marketing to sales and even web development. For this article, I asked nine industry leaders to share their top picks for the most useful HubSpot certifications, to give you a little help deciding which course to start with.
Table of contents:
What are HubSpot certifications?
HubSpot certifications are free, industry-recognized courses from HubSpot Academy that give you skills in a variety of business areas. These courses are broken down into bite-sized lessons in a mix of video and text, and most of them can be completed in a few hours.
Many small business owners and professionals take these courses to gain new skills. And because you can put a completion badge on your resume and LinkedIn profile, HubSpot courses are also a great way to demonstrate your expertise to potential (and current) employers.
The best HubSpot certifications
The experts I consulted for this article work in a range of industries, from digital marketing to home services—and each one suggests a course they found the most useful for their work. Keep reading for a complete list, or choose an option below to jump straight to the one that interests you most.
1. HubSpot Inbound Marketing certification course
HubSpot helped popularize inbound marketing, so its Inbound Marketing certification is a great place to learn the fundamentals. As a freelance content writer, I’ve seen firsthand how understanding the buyer’s journey helps create content that attracts the right audience and guides them toward a purchase. The course covers exactly that, along with strategies for engaging prospects and building lasting customer relationships.
Uku Sööt, Partner at DiSCprofiles.eu, recommends the certification to professionals who offer consulting and other specialized services. He explains that selling consulting services comes with a unique challenge: prospective clients can’t evaluate what they’re buying before committing to it.
“Consulting services are challenging to purchase because a prospective client cannot assess services before buying,” Uku explains. That’s why helping potential clients understand their problems and available solutions is such an important part of the sales process.
For Uku, one of the most valuable takeaways was learning how to organize information around the buyer’s journey. In HR and change consulting, for example, that means addressing why employees might resist workplace changes before introducing consulting services or solutions.
He also applies the approach when speaking with prospects, using their stage in the buying journey to guide the questions he asks and the information he shares. For prospects who sense something isn’t working but can’t quite identify the problem, providing relevant information early can help them understand their challenges and recognize when they need professional support.
Who should take this course: Marketing professionals, freelancers, consultants, and small business owners who want to attract qualified leads, educate potential customers, and build stronger relationships throughout the buyer’s journey.
2. HubSpot Content Marketing certification course
HubSpot’s Content Marketing certification covers how to develop a content strategy, choose topics, create useful content, and distribute it to the right audience.
As a freelance content writer, I’ve found that choosing topics based on keyword volume alone doesn’t tell you whether those topics address the questions potential customers actually have. You also need to understand their challenges and what information would help them make a decision.
James Allsopp, CEO of iNet Ventures, recommends the certification for its focus on developing content around audience needs rather than simply publishing for the sake of it.
“The Content Marketing Certification course helped me understand more about how content marketing can be done based on the issues and questions that the target audience may have,” James explains.
He highlights three lessons from the course: developing a content strategy, selecting appropriate topics, and creating useful content.
For example, a company could identify a recurring customer question and develop a guide that walks readers through the problem and its possible solutions. Rather than starting with what the company wants to promote, the content starts with what the customer needs to understand.
Who should take this course: Content marketers, freelance writers, marketing managers, and business owners who want to develop an audience-focused content strategy and create content that addresses customer questions.
3. HubSpot AEO Fundamentals certification course
Getting your content to rank on Google is one thing. Getting your brand mentioned in an AI-generated answer is another. As more people use tools like ChatGPT to research products and services, marketers need to think beyond traditional search engine optimization (SEO).
HubSpot’s AEO Fundamentals certification introduces answer engine optimization (AEO) and explains how to make your content more useful to readers, search engines, and AI-powered answer engines. The course is platform-agnostic, so you can apply what you learn regardless of whether you use HubSpot, Semrush, Ahrefs, or other marketing tools. It covers concepts like answer-first formatting, E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness), and answering the questions your audience is searching for.
Juan Felipe Luna, General Director at Contra Studio, a digital agency specializing in design, technology, digital marketing, and eCommerce, recommends the certification to digital marketing and SEO professionals responsible for their company’s website.
For Contra Studio, completing the certification has been followed by measurable improvements in AI visibility: “Since we earned the certification, we’ve improved our brand’s visibility in AI from 0% to 7.69% today. We’ve also generated more than 10 leads in the last two months who found us thanks to mentions of our studio in ChatGPT.”
Who should take this course: Digital marketers, SEO professionals, content strategists, agency owners, and business owners who want to understand AEO fundamentals and apply them across different marketing platforms.
4. Implementing AEO With HubSpot certification
Once you understand the fundamentals of AEO, the next challenge is figuring out what to track and which changes are worth making. HubSpot’s Implementing AEO With HubSpot course takes a more hands-on approach, walking you through how to monitor your brand’s AI visibility, identify relevant prompts, and analyze mentions using HubSpot’s tools.
The course takes around three hours, although Michael Smith, Founder of Buyergain LLC, recommends setting aside another hour or two to complete the accompanying worksheets.
“Implementing AEO With HubSpot is different in that the videos and worksheets show you how to use HubSpot to do AEO,” Michael explains. The lessons include instruction from Aja Frost, who helped develop HubSpot’s AEO Grader and its AI visibility strategy, and Beeri Amiel, co-founder of xFunnel, an AI visibility platform that HubSpot acquired.
Michael highlights the course’s prompt research exercises as one of its most useful components. They help marketers move beyond tracking generic mentions of their products and services to identifying the questions prospective customers actually ask before making a purchase.
He recommends evaluating prompts against three criteria:
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Would a real buyer search for this?
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Does the question come up before a buying decision?
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Are brands already appearing in answers to that question?
“The section on prompts is really helpful and what I see most people get wrong,” Michael says.
He applied this buyer-focused approach while working with a hair salon. Rather than concentrating only on pages describing the salon’s services, he focused on queries such as “best hair salon for extensions in [city]” and “best stylist for curly hair in [city].” Michael reports that the salon achieved first-page visibility in traditional search and appeared for these buyer-focused queries in AI-powered search.
The course also walks you through setting up a monitoring dashboard, selecting prompts, and interpreting brand mentions alongside competitor visibility. Michael notes that HubSpot offers a 28-day trial of its standalone tool, which gives users an opportunity to explore its reporting features. But he cautions that a month isn’t necessarily enough time to evaluate whether your optimization efforts are improving AI visibility over the long term. You’ll need continued monitoring through HubSpot or another platform to measure progress.
Who should take this course: HubSpot users, SEO professionals, content marketers, and agency teams who want practical experience monitoring AI visibility, researching buyer-focused prompts, and evaluating their brand’s presence in AI-generated answers.
5. HubSpot Email Marketing certification course
HubSpot’s Email Marketing certification covers how to build an email marketing strategy, segment contacts, personalize campaigns, and measure their performance. The segmentation lessons are worth paying attention to, especially if your email campaigns currently go to one large subscriber list.
James Allsopp says one of his biggest takeaways was learning how to tailor campaigns to different audience segments. “One of the most important things that I learned from the HubSpot Email Marketing Certification is how to make email marketing campaigns personalized and tailored according to different segments of audiences,” he explains. He recommends segmenting contacts based on their interests and using those interests to determine which content and follow-up emails they receive.
For example, someone who downloads a guide about a particular business challenge could receive additional resources addressing the same problem, followed by a relevant offer. Someone interested in a different topic would receive a different sequence.
James also emphasizes the connection between the Email Marketing and Content Marketing certifications: “In my opinion, the main point of these two courses is that email marketing should go hand in hand with content marketing. Content helps to attract and educate clients while email marketing helps to build and develop relations and get the decision taken.”
Who should take this course: Email marketers, marketing generalists, small business owners, and anyone responsible for segmenting audiences, personalizing campaigns, and nurturing leads through email.
6. HubSpot Revenue Operations certification
Revenue operations (RevOps) involves getting your sales, marketing, and customer service teams working toward the same goals. HubSpot’s Revenue Operations certification covers how to align teams, establish processes, and use data to improve revenue performance.
One challenge with sales operations is that teams often start using CRM tools before they’ve clearly defined how their sales process should work. Automating follow-ups won’t accomplish much if nobody agrees on when a lead should be contacted, who owns the next step, or what happens when a prospect goes quiet.
Teajai Kimsey, a Forbes-recognized marketing expert and HubSpot Solutions Partner at BWD, has completed all of HubSpot’s certifications. She considers Revenue Operations one of the most valuable because it teaches the strategy and processes behind using HubSpot successfully.
“A lot of sales success depends on a solid follow-up plan. RevOps helps you learn how to hold teams accountable with SLAs, developing the sales process, and helping train the team on top sales practices,” Teajai explains.
One lesson she applies with every sales team is sales process mapping. Before configuring HubSpot, she works with clients to understand how they currently manage leads, move prospects through the pipeline, and follow up on opportunities. “The sales mapping, defining what the actual sales process is for an organization, is something that is unique to this course and I use it with every sales team,” Teajai says.
Rather than forcing clients into a generic sales workflow, she uses what she learns about their existing process to determine how HubSpot should be set up: “Listening to their current process and then applying that to how HubSpot works is what really sets the foundation for a successful sales team in HubSpot.”
Her approach highlights an important distinction: implementing a CRM and building an effective sales process aren’t necessarily the same thing. Mapping the process first helps teams identify where responsibilities are unclear, establish expectations for follow-ups, and configure HubSpot around how they actually sell.
Who should take this course: Experienced sales professionals, sales managers, RevOps specialists, and HubSpot users who want to improve their sales processes, establish team accountability, and get more value from their CRM.
7. HubSpot Custom Report course
If you’re using HubSpot to manage your marketing or sales activities, the Building Custom Reports in HubSpot course can help you make better sense of your data. The four-lesson course covers creating and managing custom reports, exploring different report types, and using your CRM data to answer specific business questions.
I’ve found that having access to more data doesn’t necessarily mean you’re making better decisions. You need to know which metrics matter, where the numbers are coming from, and whether they’re telling you the full story.
Shaurya Jain, Founder of Honest HVAC Marketing Agency, learned that lesson while setting up HubSpot reporting for contractors. He recommends HubSpot’s reporting training to agency owners and marketing managers who have inherited a CRM full of poorly organized or incorrectly attributed leads.
For one client, Shaurya discovered that nine out of 40 leads were incorrectly attributed to direct traffic or offline sources. The company’s dashboard looked polished, but the owner couldn’t accurately calculate the cost of acquiring a booked job because much of the traffic from Facebook and Google ads wasn’t properly tagged.
Drawing on what he’d learned, Shaurya created custom contact properties for UTM values and used HubSpot’s Tracking URL Builder to improve campaign attribution. After implementing the changes, the number of misattributed leads dropped from nine to just two out of 40.
Better attribution also helped the business make smarter spending decisions. Once the owner could see which channels were generating booked jobs, they eliminated one that was costing $85 per lead without producing a single booking.
“I think that’s the biggest thing the course gave me,” Shaurya says.
His experience is a good reminder that reporting goes beyond building dashboards. When your underlying data is accurate, you can identify what’s working, spot wasted spending, and make decisions based on actual business outcomes.
Who should take this course: HubSpot users, marketing managers, agency owners, and sales professionals who want to build custom reports, improve data accuracy, and make better decisions using their CRM data.
8. HubSpot Marketing Hub software certification
HubSpot’s Marketing Hub is marketing automation software that helps you manage contacts, segment audiences, create campaigns, and track their performance. Its Marketing Hub Software certification walks you through the tools you’ll use to put those activities into practice, including contact properties, lists, forms, and automated workflows.
Kodie Critzer, co-founder and CEO of HubSpot partner agency Blue Ridge Consulting Group (BRCG), recommends the certification to anyone who works with HubSpot, from solo marketers to agencies managing client accounts.
“HubSpot is only as powerful as the data you put in it,” Kodie explains. He regularly encounters client portals with duplicate properties, multiple versions of the same forms, and contact lists that teams can’t rely on. His biggest takeaway from the certification? Fix the data before building workflows.
Kodie shared an example of how his team applied that approach for a multi-location health club that sells corporate memberships through local employers. The club wanted employees to receive membership rates specific to their companies, but identifying their employers was a challenge. Many members signed up with personal email addresses, and roughly a quarter didn’t provide an email address at all.
“So we stopped relying on the email domain and built the employer link ourselves,” Kodie explains. His team then added a custom contact property containing a link to each employer’s team flyer, complete with live membership rates and a one-day pass. “Now the right offer follows the contact into any email or workflow, and you can split by employer instead of sending everyone the same thing.”
The setup also replaced a monthly spreadsheet that each location previously relied on to manage corporate membership information.
Chris Kirksey, Founder and CEO of Direction.com, also recommends the certification for marketing managers, agency professionals, and CRM administrators. His team uses HubSpot to manage leads from their first interaction through consultation requests and ongoing client communication.
For Chris, learning how to connect lifecycle stages, forms, CTAs, email campaigns, and reporting helped him better understand how to structure the CRM around the business’s sales process. With those elements in place, his team can identify where leads get stuck and determine which follow-ups might help move them forward.
Who should take this course: Marketing managers, agency professionals, CRM administrators, and business owners who use HubSpot Marketing Hub and want to improve contact management, audience segmentation, marketing automation, and lead nurturing.
9. HubSpot Sales Hub software certification
HubSpot’s Sales Hub Software certification covers how to use HubSpot’s sales tools to manage leads, track deals, automate outreach, and keep your pipeline moving. It’s a good starting point for salespeople who want to spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time talking to potential customers.
Matt Stefan, Founder of HubSpot Gold Partner Hubjoy, recommends the Sales Hub Professional certification, especially for its lessons on sales sequences.
“The Sales Hub Professional certification is where I tell everyone to start. It’s packed with hidden value. Especially the section on sequences,” Matt explains. Sequences let sales teams automate a series of outreach emails and follow-up tasks, so prospects don’t fall through the cracks when reps get busy. Rather than manually remembering when to send the next email or make another call, reps can build a repeatable process for staying in touch.
Matt also highlights dynamic sequences, which help salespeople prioritize manual outreach based on prospect engagement: “Taking that even further—the new dynamic sequences allows you to focus your manual efforts on the most engaged prospects. Which means more time talking to real opportunities while HubSpot does the heavy lifting behind the scenes.”
Automation can handle routine follow-ups, while reps concentrate on prospects who are showing signs of interest, such as engaging with outreach.
Who should take this course: Sales representatives, sales managers, business development professionals, and HubSpot users who want to automate follow-ups, manage their pipeline, and prioritize high-intent prospects.
HubSpot certifications elevate your business skills
You don’t have to shell out major bucks to learn a new business skill or add some sparkle to your resume. With HubSpot’s free courses, you can learn more about your own industry, add a new specialization to your repertoire, and level up in your career.
If you’re looking to upskill in other areas, I recommend learning about automation and AI, two areas that are consistently in demand from employers. No matter your role, automation skills and AI knowledge can help you do your job more effectively.
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This article was originally published in November 2024 by Nicole Replogle. The most recent update was in October 2026.
