HubSpot Ticketing System: What's Free and What Needs the Help Desk

HubSpot's ticketing system is the tickets object in the HubSpot CRM, and the free tools include basic ticketing, a shared inbox and live chat at no cost. The help desk workspace, help desk SLAs, the knowledge base and the support portal are paid features that need Service Hub Professional or Enterprise, and skill-based routing needs Enterprise.

Checked against the HubSpot Knowledge Base, HubSpot's Service Hub pricing page and HubSpot's Product and Services Catalog on October 20, 2026.

On the free tools you can run a working ticket process, but from the CRM tickets view and the conversations inbox, not the help desk workspace.

What the HubSpot ticketing system is

A ticket is a CRM record that tracks one customer issue from the moment it arrives until it is resolved. Each ticket sits in a pipeline and moves through statuses (HubSpot's name for ticket pipeline stages). Every account starts with a default Support Pipeline with four statuses: New, Waiting on contact, Waiting on us and Closed.

Because tickets live in the same CRM as your contacts, companies and deals, reps see the customer's history on every ticket. HubSpot's ticketing page describes the product as part of Service Hub and says "306,000+ customers in over 135 countries grow their businesses with HubSpot" (checked October 20, 2026).

There are two places to work tickets:

• CRM > Tickets, the tickets index and board view, available on all plans.
• Service > Help Desk, a dedicated workspace for support teams, available with Service Hub Professional and Enterprise.

Free vs Starter vs Professional vs Enterprise

This table lists the ticketing features most teams ask about and the lowest tier HubSpot's knowledge base gives for each.

HubSpot's own summary on its ticketing page says Starter "introduces time-saving automations and simple metrics," Professional "adds advanced reporting, knowledge base features, and customer portal access," and Enterprise adds customer success tools, custom objects and advanced permissions.

Seats matter as much as tiers. HubSpot's help desk article says an assigned Service Seat is required for advanced help desk features such as custom views, SLAs and reply recommendations, and the knowledge base article says an assigned Service Hub seat is required to create and edit articles.

What HubSpot Service Hub costs

These are the prices HubSpot published on October 20, 2026, in US dollars. Check the pricing page before you buy, because prices change with billing term, region and promotions.

Paid plans also include HubSpot Credits each month: 500 with Starter, 3,000 with Professional and 5,000 with Enterprise. HubSpot sells extra credits at $0.010 each, and unused credits do not roll over.

How to run tickets on the free tools

If you are on the free tools, this is a working setup that stays inside what the free plan includes.

1. Edit the default Support Pipeline. Click the settings icon, then in the left sidebar under Data Management click Objects. Select Tickets from the object dropdown and open the Pipelines tab. You cannot add a second pipeline on the free tools, but you can add, rename or remove statuses in the default one. You need Edit property settings permissions.
2. Set up your inbox. Click the settings icon, then go to Inbox & Help Desk > Inboxes. Edit the default inbox and connect a team email address, a chat channel, a form or Facebook Messenger. Free accounts get one inbox, because creating multiple inboxes needs Professional or Enterprise.
3. Add live chat to your website through a chat channel, so chat conversations arrive in the same inbox.
4. Create tickets. HubSpot's knowledge base says you can manually create tickets from the tickets index page, a contact record or the conversations inbox. Go to CRM > Tickets to see them as a list or switch to board view to see them by status.
5. Assign an owner and a priority on each ticket so nothing sits unclaimed.

One limit to know: HubSpot's inbox article says accounts created after April 1, 2024 cannot create tickets from channels connected to the inbox, and it points those accounts to help desk instead. If your account is newer than that, plan on creating tickets by hand from the tickets index or a contact record until you move to Professional.

How to set up the help desk workspace (Professional and Enterprise)

The help desk workspace is where Service Hub Professional and Enterprise teams manage tickets from every connected channel in one place. By default, it creates a ticket automatically for every message that comes in through a connected channel.

1. Click More, then go to Service > Help Desk. If More does not appear, go to Service > Help Desk directly.
2. Click Set up help desk and answer the prompts about your support team, channels, existing tools and default layout. HubSpot creates test connections for the channels you pick, and no messages are sent to customers.
3. Click Create your help desk. The workspace opens with sample tickets.
4. Connect live channels: click the settings icon, go to Inbox & Help Desk > Help Desk, and in the Ticket sources and routing section select Channels. Click Connect a channel, then Connect a new channel.

Help desk supports team email, chat, Facebook Messenger, forms, WhatsApp, calling and custom channels. WhatsApp, calling and custom channels need a Professional or Enterprise account, and HubSpot notes that help desk is not yet available in the HubSpot mobile app.

Users need Service or Sales Access permissions to view, edit and respond to tickets in help desk.

Ticket pipelines and how many you can have

Custom pipeline limits are shared across all objects in your account (deals, tickets, leads and others) and do not count each object's default pipeline. A ticket pipeline you add uses the same allowance as a deal pipeline.

To add a ticket pipeline on a paid plan, go to the settings icon, then Data Management > Objects, select Tickets and open the Pipelines tab. Cloning a pipeline and restricting a pipeline by team need Professional or Enterprise.

Automate ticket statuses (Starter and above)

Ticket pipeline stage automation is available with Service Hub Starter, Professional and Enterprise. Go to CRM > Tickets, open a saved view in board view, hover over a status and click the Automate dropdown. You can:

• Create and assign a task when a ticket enters the status.
• Send internal email notification to users who have notifications turned on.
• Edit record to update a property on the ticket or an associated record.

Super Admin or Workflow edit permissions are required.

Routing and skill-based routing

In help desk, you can group users into teams and route tickets to them manually or automatically. Skill-based routing goes a step further and needs Service Hub Enterprise.

To set it up, click the settings icon, go to Inbox & Help Desk > Help Desk, and in the Ticket sources and routing section click Skill-based routing. Open the Skills tab to create skills such as languages or product specializations. Each connected channel gets one ruleset, and rules run in priority order. If a rule matches but no user has the right skills, the ticket stays unassigned, so build a fallback rule.

Requirements to note: users must have a Service Seat to be assigned skills, you need Super Admin permissions, and a channel must be connected to help desk.

SLAs in help desk

HubSpot's ticketing page tells teams they can "maintain SLAs," but help desk SLA goals need Service Hub Professional or Enterprise and apply to help desk tickets only.

1. Click the settings icon, go to Inbox & Help Desk > Help Desk, and in the Help desk automation section click SLAs.
2. Choose Apply to all tickets, or apply goals by ticket property.
3. Set goals for Time to first reply, Time to next reply and Time to close, and choose when a ticket shows as Due soon.
4. Optionally limit SLAs to specific hours and a time zone.

Setting SLA goals based on a combination of ticket properties needs Service Hub Enterprise. Super Admin permissions are required. Accounts created after April 1, 2024 cannot set SLAs in the conversations inbox, so SLAs on newer accounts are a help desk feature.

Knowledge base and the support portal

Both are Service Hub Professional and Enterprise features.

• Knowledge base: Click More, then go to Service > Knowledge Base. Professional accounts can create one knowledge base with up to 2,000 articles. Enterprise accounts can create up to 100 knowledge bases with up to 10,000 total articles.
• Support portal: A login-protected space where customers view and manage their own support tickets. Go to Service > Customer Portal to set it up. It replaces the legacy customer portal, and customers usually reach it from your knowledge base. It shows tickets only, not conversations that are not linked to a ticket.

AI in HubSpot ticketing: the customer agent and reply recommendations

• Customer agent. HubSpot's customer agent answers customer questions using your existing content and hands off to your team when needed. It is available with Professional or Enterprise editions of Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, Data Hub, Content Hub, Smart CRM and Revenue Hub, and it needs HubSpot Credits to deploy to channels. Set it up under Service > Customer Agent. HubSpot's catalog lists 50 credits to resolve one text-based conversation, and the setup article says credits are consumed only when the agent delivers a resolution. First-time setup offers 14 days of free access.
• Reply recommendations. In help desk, the customer agent drafts suggested replies in the ticket thread from the content you have synced. Reps can edit, use or dismiss them. This needs Service Hub Professional or Enterprise, an assigned Service Seat, a customer agent set up, and Generative AI and Customer Conversation Data turned on in your AI settings. HubSpot moved reply recommendation settings into customer agent settings in 2026.
• Breeze Assistant. HubSpot's in-app AI assistant is called Breeze Assistant. The SLA article, for example, offers a Manage SLAs prompt that opens Breeze Assistant for recommendations.

Conversations inbox vs help desk

A worked example (hypothetical)

Imagine a five-person support team at a software company that started on the free tools.

1. On the free tools, it renames the default Support Pipeline statuses to fit its process, connects its support email and website chat to the default inbox, and creates tickets by hand from CRM > Tickets.
2. As volume grows, it moves to Service Hub Starter to add a second pipeline for onboarding requests and a status automation that creates a task when a ticket moves to Waiting on us.
3. When it needs automatic ticket creation, response time goals and a self-service library, it moves to Professional, runs Set up help desk, sets SLA goals for time to first reply and time to close, and publishes its top 20 answers in the knowledge base.
4. Only if it later supports several languages and needs tickets sent to reps by language does Enterprise and skill-based routing come into play.

Which plan fits your team

• Free tools: you want a shared inbox, live chat and a single ticket pipeline, and you can create tickets by hand.
• Starter: you need more than one pipeline or simple status automations.
• Professional: you want the help desk workspace, automatic ticket creation, SLAs, a knowledge base, a support portal or the customer agent.
• Enterprise: you need skill-based routing, SLAs based on combinations of ticket properties, or more than one knowledge base.

Getting help with your HubSpot service setup

INSIDEA is an Elite HubSpot Partner and the growth operating system for modern businesses. If you are deciding between the free tools and Service Hub, or setting up help desk, SLAs and routing, our HubSpot team can help you plan it.