Carrie Gallagher | HubSpot Consultant & Solutions Partner – Blog Articles

Carrie Gallagher is an independent HubSpot consultant and Solutions Partner providing strategic and hands-on HubSpot consulting for marketing and sales teams. Her work spans CRM architecture, automation, reporting, sales processes, integrations, onboarding, and long-term HubSpot optimization.

September 27, 2026 By Carrie Gallagher

HubSpot Consultant vs. Agency for SMB Teams

If you need help implementing HubSpot, cleaning up an existing portal, or getting more from the platform, one of the first decisions you’ll face is whether to hire an independent HubSpot consultant or a HubSpot agency.

Both can provide valuable HubSpot consulting services. But they tend to work very differently.

An agency may give you access to a larger team with specialists across multiple disciplines. An independent consultant gives you direct access to the person doing the work, often with a more flexible scope and fewer layers between your problem and the person solving it.

I’ve worked independently as a HubSpot Solutions Partner for more than a decade, and I’ve also worked alongside internal teams, agencies, developers, and other consultants. There’s no universally right answer.

The better question is: What kind of HubSpot help does your business actually need?

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September 16, 2026 By Carrie Gallagher

HubSpot’s Biggest AI Announcement at UNBOUND 2026 Isn’t Just About AI. It’s About Context.

HubSpot made some significant AI announcements at UNBOUND 2026, but one message from the opening keynote stood out to me as a HubSpot consultant: AI is only as useful as the information it has about your business.

We hear a lot about AI agents, automation, and new tools that promise to make our work easier. But what happens when those tools don’t understand your products, your customers, your sales process, or even how your team operates?

That’s the problem HubSpot is trying to solve with what it calls Growth Context.

And I think it’s an important development for businesses using HubSpot.

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September 16, 2026 By Carrie Gallagher

HubSpot’s Self-Updating CRM: What the New Breeze Assistant Means for Sales Teams

One of the most persistent challenges I encounter as a HubSpot consultant is getting accurate, complete information into the CRM.

Salespeople are busy. They have meetings, phone calls, emails, and follow-up tasks competing for their attention.

Updating contact records and deal stages isn’t always their first priority.

The result is familiar: missing notes, outdated deal information, incomplete contact records, and managers who can’t fully trust their pipeline reports.

At UNBOUND 2026, HubSpot introduced its vision for addressing this problem with a self-updating CRM and a rebuilt Breeze Assistant.

The announcement is about more than eliminating manual data entry. It’s about making the CRM a more active part of how sales teams work.

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September 16, 2026 By Carrie Gallagher

HubSpot’s New Marketing Studio Brings AI Search, Campaign Planning, and Execution Together

One of the marketing announcements that caught my attention during HubSpot’s UNBOUND 2026 keynote was the introduction of the new Marketing Studio.

As businesses adjust to changes in search behavior, marketing teams are facing a difficult challenge: figuring out how to maintain visibility, generate demand, and demonstrate results as AI changes the way people discover products and services.

HubSpot’s new Marketing Studio is designed to bring those activities together, from identifying opportunities to planning, creating, launching, and measuring campaigns.

And there’s a particularly interesting connection to AI search visibility.

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September 16, 2026 By Carrie Gallagher

HubSpot Custom Events No Longer Need a CRM Record. Here’s Why That Matters.

How a new HubSpot automation capability can connect external systems, streamline operations, and help teams respond faster.

HubSpot has introduced an update to custom events that opens up new possibilities for businesses using multiple systems to manage their operations.

As of September 15, 2026, custom events can be created without being associated with a CRM record. Previously, every custom event needed to be tied to an object, such as a contact, company, deal, or ticket.

With this update, businesses can use events occurring outside their CRM to trigger automation in HubSpot’s new agentic automation builder, even when those events aren’t associated with a particular customer.

That might sound like a small technical change, but it has some interesting practical applications.

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