On HubSpot's seats-and-credits pricing, email sends, workflow actions and AI agents all draw on one monthly pool of HubSpot Credits. HubSpot's help article says that if you have only your included credits, every feature that uses credits pauses when they run out, until the next reset date. If nothing else uses them, a Professional portal's included credits cover about 666 marketing emails a month.
What happens instead depends on what you've bought and on one limit in Account & Billing. Four decisions cover it:
HubSpot Credits pay for activity. On the flexible seats-and-credits model, the credit users are: email sent through HubSpot, every workflow action except branches, delays and go-to actions, AI agents, WhatsApp template messages, calling minutes above the included capacity, intent, each use of a Data Studio dataset in a workflow, segment, CRM sync or export, accepted quotes, AEO answers, and conversational context and custom events above their included capacity.
Email matters most because of volume: one campaign can be thousands of sends. Each send uses 15 credits for the first 10,000 sends in a month, then 5, 2 and 0.5 credits at higher volumes. HubSpot's help article names marketing, transactional and automated email, automated meeting reminders and survey emails. Only one-to-one email from a connected or hosted inbox is excluded.
The included allowance is 5,000 credits a month on Starter, 10,000 on Professional and 15,000 on Enterprise. Divided by 15, that's about 333, 666 and 1,000 emails a month. Emails sent by a workflow cost more, because HubSpot charges once for the send and once for the workflow action, so a Professional portal's allowance covers about 555 of them.
Keep the 666 in mind, and the conditions behind it: an eligible Professional account on the seats-and-credits model, all included credits still available, emails sent on their own at the first-band rate, and nothing else using credits. On those assumptions, a portal that sends more than 666 emails and has bought nothing extra reaches the default pause partway through the month. Any other credit use brings the pause sooner.
That depends on whether you've bought anything beyond the included credits. HubSpot's help article for the new model describes two states.
Included credits only. "By default, if you only have included credits ... any features that use HubSpot Credits will pause when all included credits run out." They start again on the next reset date, or when you buy more credits. In this state HubSpot's article describes a pause, not an overage charge.
Extra credits bought. Once you've bought a HubSpot Credits capacity pack, usage beyond your monthly total is invoiced in arrears at the pay-as-you-go rate, €0.01 a credit. The next month, the limit returns to its previous level and doesn't increase on its own.
The pricing supplement lists pay-as-you-go among the ways to add credits; the help article adds the operational prerequisite, a purchased credits capacity pack. If your portal has included credits only, check the HubSpot Credits tab in Account & Billing before you count on overage.
The smallest pack is €10 for 1,000 credits a month, and it's a commitment. It raises your limit "for the remainder of your commitment term", and cancelling or downgrading it only takes effect at the start of your next term.
A pause suits some portals: if you send a monthly newsletter and run a few workflows, a hard ceiling keeps spend predictable. If onboarding emails, meeting reminders or lead routing run through HubSpot, weigh what a mid-month pause would interrupt against the cost of extra credits.
Set it from your busiest month. Buying credits also creates a ceiling you may not have planned for.
After you buy a capacity pack, HubSpot automatically sets an account-level spend limit 50% above your total monthly credits. That is the first-purchase default; an account that already has a custom limit, or buys again later, follows separate rules, so your current setting may differ. HubSpot's example is an Enterprise account with 15,000 included credits that buys 151,000 more: 166,000 a month, with a default limit of 249,000. When usage reaches the limit, credit features pause until the reset date. You can change the limit at any time on the HubSpot Credits tab.
Apply HubSpot's first-purchase rule to a Professional portal that buys one €10 pack: its total is 11,000 credits and its default limit is 16,500. With nothing else using credits and emails sent on their own at 15 credits, that's about 1,100 emails before credit features pause again. That's more than the 666 it had without the pack, but well short of a 2,000-email month. Check the number your own billing page shows after any purchase.
Two more rules matter when you set the ceiling:
Run predictable volume on packs and leave the shared credits for work you can't predict. The arithmetic for a Professional portal sending 2,000 emails a month shows why (emails sent on their own, nothing else using credits, no feature cap on email).
On credits. 2,000 sends at 15 credits is 30,000 credits. With one €10 pack and the spend limit raised, the overage is 19,000 credits, or €190. The month costs €200, and all 10,000 included credits went to email.
On an email sends pack. The 2,000-send pack is €200 a month on Professional and Enterprise. Same money, and the 10,000 included credits are still there for workflows, agents and everything else.
The same logic applies to automation. Once your included credits are going to email, 5,000 workflow actions at 3 credits each cost €150 on pay-as-you-go, the price of the Growth workflow actions pack, which covers 500,000 actions. Above that volume, the pack is cheaper. Our seats-and-credits pricing guide lists every pack, and the HubSpot pricing calculator prices them against your own volumes.
On hub-based subscriptions, email isn't paid in credits. HubSpot's catalog says there are no separate email sending fees: the send limit is 5, 10 or 20 times your contact tier a month on Starter, Professional and Enterprise. Credits on hub plans pay for AI agents, AI actions in workflows, intent and Data Studio, and the included amounts are smaller: 500, 3,000 and 5,000 a month (5,000 and 10,000 at Professional and Enterprise with Data Hub or Customer Platform).
So running out pauses your agents rather than your newsletter. What's different is the third answer: the account can upgrade itself for the rest of your contract.
As on the new model, overage needs a prior purchase: "To use overages, you must first buy additional HubSpot Credits." After that, going over your limit triggers one of two behaviours:
HubSpot's help article sets the default by purchase date: credits bought before 16 September 2026 default to auto-upgrade, and credits bought on or after that date default to pay-as-you-go. The catalog describes both as choices you configure. Only a Super Admin or Billing Admin can turn on overages. If your portal bought credits before mid-September, check which behaviour it's on before an agent has a busy month.
These follow from HubSpot's own rules. HubSpot doesn't describe how a paused send or action shows up, beyond banners and notification emails to admins.
Automated email, meeting reminders and survey emails all use credits on the new model. With included credits only, they pause with everything else when the pool runs out. HubSpot doesn't say what happens to sends that were already scheduled, so don't plan on them going out late.
"Sending an email via a workflow action results in two separate credit charges." A nurture of five emails to 1,000 contacts costs 90,000 credits, not 75,000. Forecast workflow email at 18 credits a send in the first band.
Capping the prospecting agent at 20,000 credits stops the agent there. It doesn't set 20,000 credits aside for the agent, and it sets nothing aside for email. When several features share one account limit, whichever runs first in the month uses the credits.
HubSpot sends the 75%, 85% and 90% alerts to Billing contacts and Super Admins. Check whether either is the person running the campaign that would stop. If not, add the campaign owner as a billing contact, or agree who forwards the alert.
The fastest way out of a pause is to buy credits. On both models, a capacity pack raises your limit for the rest of the commitment term and can only be cancelled for the next one. Buying three packs on the 25th to finish a launch is a decision about every remaining month of your contract.
Credits are shared across teams, so the settings need one owner and a few named stakeholders.
| Team | What they spend credits on | What they own |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing | Email sends, workflow email, AEO | The monthly send forecast and the email pack size |
| RevOps or the HubSpot admin | Workflow actions, Data Studio, intent | The account spend limit and feature-level limits |
| Sales | Prospecting agent, accepted quotes | A feature limit for agents, agreed with RevOps |
| Customer success and support | Customer agent, conversational context | A feature limit for the customer agent |
| Finance or the Billing Admin | Nothing directly | Pack commitments and the overage invoice |
Whoever can buy a pack or raise the spend limit should be in the room when the send forecast is set.
Four outcomes for one eligible Professional portal on the new model sending 2,000 emails in a month, at EUR list price. Assumptions: all included credits available at the start of the month, emails sent on their own at the first-band rate, nothing else using credits, no email feature cap, and HubSpot's first-purchase default limit.
| Setup | What happens | Extra cost for the month |
|---|---|---|
| Included credits only | Email pauses at about 666 sends | €0, and about 1,334 emails don't go out |
| One €10 credits pack, first-purchase default limit | Email pauses at about 1,100 sends | €10 plus about €55 overage |
| One €10 credits pack, limit raised | All 2,000 send | €200 |
| 2,000 email sends pack | All 2,000 send, included credits untouched | €200 |
At larger scale the same rules apply. A 10-person Professional team sending 20,000 emails a month uses 200,000 credits on email alone (10,000 sends at 15 credits and 10,000 at 5). With one €10 credits pack, nothing else using credits and a spend limit of at least 200,000, the email bill is €10 plus €1,890 overage: €1,900 on top of €1,000 for seats.
Old way: hub pricing. You bought hubs, tiers and a contact tier. Marketing email ran inside a send limit of 5, 10 or 20 times your contact tier, with no separate sending fee. Credits paid for AI agents and AI actions, so running out paused the AI, not the email.
New way: seats and credits. You buy seats and a monthly credit pool, and email and nearly every workflow action draw on it. What happens when the pool runs out depends on what you bought and where the limit sits: a pause, or overage up to a limit. Because that is set in advance, it's worth checking before each heavy month rather than at renewal.
We run a read-only credit audit as part of a portal review. We read the credits page, list everything that uses credits and size your busiest month. It ends in written recommendations: the account limit, feature limits and pack mix we'd suggest, who should own the limit, who should get the alert, and what happens on the day the pool runs out. Changing the settings is a separate step, agreed with you and done only if you ask for it.
IV-Lead does not resell or invoice HubSpot software licences. HubSpot contracts with and invoices the customer directly.
On HubSpot's new pricing, what happens when credits run out is settled before the month starts, by what you've bought and where the limit sits. With included credits only, email and automation pause by default. With a pack, they bill until the account limit, which HubSpot sets for you on first purchase unless you change it. On hub-based plans, overage can upgrade you for the rest of the contract. Count your busiest month, decide which of those you want, and set the limits before the month that needs them.
On HubSpot's seats-and-credits pricing, if you have only your included credits, HubSpot's help article says every feature that uses credits pauses by default until the next monthly reset or until you buy more. That includes email sends and workflow actions. If you've bought a credits capacity pack, usage beyond your total is billed as overage at €0.01 a credit, up to an account spend limit.
On the new seats-and-credits pricing, yes. Every email sent through HubSpot uses credits: 15 per send for the first 10,000 in a month, then 5, 2 and 0.5. HubSpot lists marketing, transactional and automated email, automated meeting reminders and survey emails. One-to-one email from a connected or hosted inbox is excluded. On hub-based plans, email has a send limit tied to your contact tier instead.
About 333 a month on Starter (5,000 credits), 666 on Professional (10,000) and 1,000 on Enterprise (15,000), at 15 credits a send, with all included credits available and nothing else using them. Emails sent by a workflow also carry a workflow-action charge, so a Professional portal's credits cover about 555 of those.
Yes, at €0.01 a credit on the new model, once you've bought extra credits. HubSpot's help article states that prerequisite: with included credits only, credit features pause by default. The smallest capacity pack is €10 for 1,000 credits a month, for the rest of your term. Check your HubSpot Credits tab for your account's current setting.
It's an account-level ceiling HubSpot sets automatically when you first buy extra credits: 50% above your total monthly credits. Existing custom limits and later purchases follow separate rules. At the limit, credit features pause until the reset date. You can change it at any time in Account & Billing, on the HubSpot Credits tab, under Maximum monthly credits.
No. HubSpot describes feature-level limits as spending limits, not allocations. A limit stops one tool from spending past it, but it doesn't keep credits back for that tool or for any other.
On hub-based subscriptions, auto-upgrade adds a capacity pack when you go over your limit and keeps it for the rest of your contract. HubSpot's help article makes it the default for credits bought before 16 September 2026; credits bought on or after that date default to pay-as-you-go, which returns to your original limit each month.
Only for your next term. A capacity pack raises your limit for the remainder of your commitment term, and cancelling or downgrading it takes effect at the start of the next subscription term. On hub-based plans, HubSpot asks you to contact Support before your renewal date.
(read 15 October 2026)
Prices are HubSpot's EUR list prices for the seats-and-credits model, before promotions. HubSpot decides who is eligible for the new model and sets your final price; check the currency and terms on your quote.