Over the past five years, there has been a nearly 1,500% increase in the number of marketing and sales technology solutions on the market. For small businesses in particular, it can be nearly impossible to navigate that landscape to find the right tools for growth. How do they know the company they’re signing with is trustworthy? Are those precious marketing dollars going to go to waste?

HubSpot is excited to announce today the continued growth of its app ecosystem and an ongoing investment in its platform with the launch of a redesigned integrations directory. The company doubled the number of certified apps available through the Connect Partner program in 2017 and as a result, saw total integration installs grow by 142%.

At HubSpot, we always strive to listen to and act quickly on feedback from our customers. One of the most common pieces of feedback we heard from the startup community last year was that the eligibility criteria to qualify for HubSpot for Startups’ Seed program were too restrictive, with a ceiling of $1 million in total funding and $1 million in total revenue. And research from the PWC/CB Insights MoneyTree Q3 2017 report backs this -- the average seed round increased from $1 million in Q1 2016 to $1.6 - $2 million in 2017, as VC firms moved towards making fewer, larger investments.

If you started this new year with resolutions, you’re not alone. We entered 2018 at HubSpot with big aspirations and goals focused on one core value of ours: growth. The inbound movement isn’t slowing down and we’re on a mission to help customers, partners, employees and businesses globally grow...better.

HubSpot announced today that its collection of HubSpot Connect integrations is now available to all current and future users of its free Marketing products.

We’re excited to announce today that HubSpot has been named a Top 20 CRM software in the Most Popular, Most User-Friendly, and Most Affordable categories by Capterra, a free online service that helps organizations find the right software for their business. Of the more than 500 CRM products listed on the site, HubSpot was one of just three solutions to be named to all three Top 20 categories.

Today, HubSpot was voted one of the Best Places to Work in 2018, a Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award, in the Large Companies category. The award recognizes the best workplaces and company cultures based on employee reviews and feedback via Glassdoor. HubSpot is honored to be named the #7 best workplace on the list of 100 employers we admire including Facebook, Google, and Netflix. At the time of the announcement, HubSpot has 547 employee reviews, and an overall rating of 4.7/5.

Today, HubSpot Co-Founder and CEO Brian Halligan was announced the #2 Best CEO of 2017, in the Large Companies category, by Comparably, a culture, compensation, and career review website. The listing is based on employee reviews and feedback on Comparably, and Halligan received a 94 out of 100 rating. We’re honored to see HubSpot in such great company, alongside organizations we admire including Netflix, Facebook, Google, and more. This is an exciting milestone for both Halligan and for HubSpot employees globally who make our culture a great place to work every day!

Learning how to create effective content is the first step toward growing your brand’s awareness and building trust and credibility with your audience. This foundational knowledge is taught in HubSpot Academy’s free Content Marketing Certification course, which over 15,000 people have earned since its launch in November 2016. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to developing a successful content process.

We're excited to announce today that HubSpot CRM has been identified as the highest-rated free CRM software by G2 Crowd, based on its high levels of customer satisfaction and likeliness to recommend ratings from real G2 Crowd users.