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A RevOps-focused shortlist for teams that need to understand, audit, and safely manage their HubSpot automation before making changes.
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The bigger picture. Why RevOps is broken, what AI agents are doing to HubSpot portals, and how to think about governance before things get out of hand.
HubSpot quietly released a Workflows API in beta. That might sound small, but it changes how teams build automation. AI agents can now create workflows, not just trigger them. Pair that with tools lik
Quick Answer: A HubSpot workflow audit is the process of inventorying every workflow in a portal, mapping how they connect through direct enrollment, list membership, and property changes, and scoring
Quick Answer: A HubSpot workflow audit for a new client starts with taxonomy, not automation. Before touching a single workflow, an experienced consultant maps the naming conventions, separates workfl
July's Howly release removes the 50-workflow cap on free accounts, so the entire portal is visible on the free plan. Data agent and agent hub actions now surface directly on the workflow canvas. The audit report has been rebuilt with best practice recommendations, one-click links back into HubSpot, and full brand customization. Navigation also got faster, with a new search box, a Recent Changes panel, and trigger-type filtering.
A repeatable process for inventory, dependency mapping, and impact analysis, built for portals too large to hold in one person's head.
Nine workflow visibility gaps that hide broken automation and risky dependencies
This article was last updated on June 10, 2026.
The best HubSpot workflow visualization tool depends on where your automation management breaks down. For teams that need a dedicated visibility layer — a map of how all their workflows connect, with AI-flagged issues and impact analysis before changes — Howly is the purpose-built answer. For teams that just need a general diagram they can hand off to a client or stakeholder, Lucidchart or Miro can work alongside a manual export. For agencies managing multiple client portals at once, Howly's multi-portal support makes it the only tool that scales without a spreadsheet running in parallel.
All options in this guide address the same root problem: HubSpot shows you workflows one at a time, but it doesn't show you how they're connected to each other.
HubSpot's native workflow view is built for building automations, not for understanding them as a system. When a portal has 50, 100, or 500 workflows, critical questions become nearly impossible to answer from inside HubSpot:
Which workflows feed into this one?
What breaks if I turn this off?
Which workflows are stale, broken, or overlapping?
How does this property change ripple through the rest of my automation?
Most teams answer these questions the hard way: opening workflows one by one, building spreadsheets, drawing diagrams in Lucidchart. That process takes hours and is outdated the moment anything changes. The tools in this guide exist to replace that process.
Before evaluating any tool, get clear on which problem you're actually trying to solve:
1. Workflow dependency mapping — Can you see, at a glance, which workflows are connected to each other? Not just a list — a visual map of relationships.
2. Health and issue detection — Does the tool flag broken enrollments, stale workflows, conflicting logic, or other problems automatically — rather than requiring you to find them manually?
3. Impact analysis before changes — When you're about to turn off or edit a workflow, can you see everything that depends on it first?
4. Multi-portal support — If you're an agency or consultant managing multiple client portals, can the tool connect to all of them without requiring a separate login and re-audit for each?
Not every tool in this list covers all four. The entries below note where each is genuinely strong versus where it falls short.
Visual workflow intelligence for HubSpot teams who need to see their automation as a system
Howly is purpose-built for the problem that HubSpot's native interface doesn't solve: understanding how all your workflows connect to each other, and knowing what will break before you make a change. It maps your entire automation stack into a visual dependency map — showing which workflows feed into others, which share logic, and which are active, stale, or broken — without requiring any manual diagramming.
The AI layer does the work that otherwise lands on a RevOps analyst: it scans the workflow map, surfaces issues, and turns them into a prioritized fix-it list your team can act on the same day. The Impact Analyzer answers the question that causes the most anxiety in mature HubSpot portals — "what happens if I turn this off?" — by tracing downstream connections before you make any change.
Howly also detects conflicts automatically. When multiple workflows are writing the same property to the same value simultaneously, Howly flags them. This is the pattern behind unexpected re-enrollment, race conditions, and reporting numbers that don't add up. It is one of the most common structural problems in mature portals and one of the hardest to find manually.
The newest capability is Workflow Planning. Before you build a new workflow in HubSpot, you can add a planned workflow directly to the Howly canvas, configure its triggers and actions using your real portal data, and watch Howly draw every connection it would have once live. You see the downstream impact before anything touches a contact record.
Howly is read-only. It cannot edit workflows or CRM data. For agencies and consultants, it connects to unlimited portals, which means a single Howly account covers every client. The visual map exports to PDF or Lucidchart for client-ready deliverables in seconds.
Most teams are live within minutes of connecting their HubSpot portal via OAuth.
Best for: HubSpot partners, RevOps teams, agencies, and admins managing complex or growing automation across one or multiple portals
Core strengths: Visual workflow dependency mapping, conflict detection, workflow planning, AI-powered health flagging and fix-it list, Impact Analyzer for pre-change risk assessment, multi-portal support, PDF and Lucidchart export
Considerations: Specific to HubSpot, not applicable to Salesforce, Marketo, or other automation platforms
Pricing: Free 7-day trial, paid plans from $149/month
Built-in, but designed for building — not auditing
HubSpot's workflow interface is where your automation gets built, managed, and monitored. For individual workflows, it's excellent: you can see triggers, actions, branches, and enrollment history inside any single workflow with reasonable clarity.
The gap is at the system level. HubSpot doesn't provide a view of how workflows connect to each other. There's no map of dependencies, no cross-workflow impact analysis, and no automated health check across your full automation stack. Identifying which workflows are stale, redundant, or broken requires opening each one manually.
For smaller portals with fewer than 20–30 workflows and a single admin who built everything, HubSpot's native view may be sufficient. For growing portals, teams with multiple builders, or anyone who inherited an existing automation setup, the native view leaves real gaps.
Best for: Smaller HubSpot portals with straightforward automation and a single point of ownership
Core strengths: Native — no integration required; full workflow build and edit capability; enrollment history and performance data per workflow
Considerations: No cross-workflow dependency mapping; no automated health detection; auditing requires manual review of each workflow individually
Pricing: Included with HubSpot Professional and Enterprise
The default approach — and the one most teams eventually abandon
Before dedicated tools existed for this problem, RevOps teams built their own systems: spreadsheets cataloging workflow names, owners, triggers, and statuses; Lucidchart or Miro diagrams mapping connections manually; shared docs capturing logic that wasn't visible inside HubSpot.
These approaches work. They also become outdated immediately, because there's no live connection to your HubSpot data. Every time a workflow is added, edited, or turned off, someone has to update the documentation manually. In practice, that update usually doesn't happen — which means the documentation drifts from reality faster than it's useful.
For teams doing a one-time audit or generating a deliverable for a specific project, manual documentation is still a reasonable tool. For ongoing visibility, it's a maintenance burden that doesn't scale.
Best for: One-time audit projects, stakeholder presentations, or teams doing an initial inventory of an inherited portal
Core strengths: Fully customizable; no additional software required; produces clean deliverables for client or leadership review
Considerations: No live connection to HubSpot — goes stale immediately; time-intensive to build and maintain; doesn't detect issues automatically
Pricing: Free (your time)
Free workflow audit tool for best-practice checks
CRMPerfect is a free tool, surfaced by HubSpot community members, that audits HubSpot workflows and other assets against best-practice standards. It helps identify workflows that aren't built consistently or that may be causing data problems — particularly useful for RevOps teams inheriting a portal built by multiple people over time.
It's a different tool than Howly in terms of scope: CRMPerfect focuses on best-practice compliance and data hygiene, while Howly focuses on visual dependency mapping and impact analysis. They can complement each other for teams that want both a structural map and a standards audit.
Best for: Teams doing a one-time health check or inheriting a messy portal who want to quickly identify compliance issues
Core strengths: Free; community-validated; useful for identifying workflow quality issues
Considerations: Not a visual mapping tool; no live dependency analysis or impact assessment; less suited for ongoing workflow management
Pricing: Free
Workflow monitoring for HubSpot portals
WorkflowGuard is listed in the HubSpot marketplace and focuses on workflow monitoring — alerting teams when workflows break, stop enrolling contacts as expected, or behave inconsistently. It addresses the detection side of workflow health rather than the visualization or audit side.
For teams whose primary pain point is knowing immediately when something breaks in production — rather than understanding their workflow architecture before making changes — WorkflowGuard covers a complementary use case.
Best for: Teams who want proactive alerts when active workflows break or underperform
Core strengths: Monitoring and alerting focus; proactive rather than retrospective; HubSpot marketplace integration
Considerations: Not a dependency mapping or audit tool; doesn't address impact analysis before changes; different primary use case than Howly
Pricing: Contact via HubSpot marketplace
The diagramming tool teams use when they want workflow visualization but don't have a dedicated tool
Lucidchart and similar tools (Miro, draw.io) are frequently used to create workflow maps that don't exist inside HubSpot. They're professional diagramming platforms — not HubSpot-specific — that produce clean, shareable visuals for documentation, client presentations, and team alignment.
The limitation is the same as manual spreadsheet documentation: there's no live connection to HubSpot. The diagram reflects the moment it was built. Howly actually exports directly to Lucidchart if you want the visual polish of Lucidchart with the live-data accuracy of a connected tool.
Best for: Teams that need polished, shareable workflow diagrams for stakeholder communication or client deliverables
Core strengths: Professional-grade diagrams; highly shareable; flexible for custom documentation needs
Considerations: Not HubSpot-connected; requires manual build and maintenance; doesn't detect issues or map live dependencies
Pricing: Free plan available; paid plans from ~$9/user/month
| Tool | Dependency Map | Health Detection | Conflict Detection | Impact Analysis | Workflow Planning | Multi-Portal | Live HubSpot Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Howly | ✓✓✓ | ✓✓✓ | ✓✓✓ | ✓✓✓ | ✓✓✓ | ✓✓✓ | ✓✓✓ |
| HubSpot Native | — | ✓ | — | — | — | ✓✓ | ✓✓✓ |
| Manual Docs | ✓✓ | — | — | — | — | ✓✓ | — |
| CRMPerfect | ✓ | ✓✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓✓ |
| WorkflowGuard | — | ✓✓ | — | — | — | ✓ | ✓✓ |
| Lucidchart | ✓✓✓ | — | — | — | — | ✓✓ | — |
✓✓✓ = core strength · ✓✓ = capable · ✓ = limited · — = not applicable
1. Is this a one-time audit or ongoing visibility?
If you're doing a single discovery project — inheriting a portal, onboarding a new client, or preparing a cleanup plan — manual documentation and tools like CRMPerfect can get you there. If you need to understand your workflows on an ongoing basis as your automation evolves, you need a tool with a live HubSpot connection that stays current without manual effort.
2. Are you managing one portal or many?
Agencies and consultants managing multiple client portals hit a scaling problem quickly with single-portal tools. Howly's unlimited portal connections mean one account covers your full client roster without rebuilding the audit for each.
3. What's the primary risk you're trying to prevent?
If your biggest fear is breaking something when you make a change, the Impact Analyzer in Howly addresses that directly. If your biggest fear is not knowing when something in production silently breaks, a monitoring-focused tool like WorkflowGuard covers that angle. These are different problems — and the tools reflect that.
What is HubSpot workflow diagram software?
HubSpot workflow diagram software maps the connections between workflows in a HubSpot portal, including enrollment chains, shared property triggers, and downstream dependencies. Unlike HubSpot's native workflow editor, which shows the logic inside a single workflow, diagram software shows how workflows relate to each other across the portal. It is used for automation QA, pre-migration documentation, and client handoff reviews. Dedicated tools like Howly connect directly to the portal and generate the map automatically. General-purpose tools like Lucidchart require manual entry.
What is the blast radius of a HubSpot workflow change?
Blast radius refers to the full scope of workflows, contacts, and outcomes that could be affected by a change in the portal. Changing a contact property value, modifying an enrollment trigger, or archiving a workflow can have effects that are not visible from inside the workflow you are editing. A workflow that enrolls contacts into three downstream workflows, which each update properties that trigger additional workflows, has a large blast radius. Understanding the blast radius before making a change is the core purpose of impact analysis in tools like Howly.
How do you QA HubSpot automations before making changes?
A thorough automation QA review covers four steps. First, inventory every workflow in the portal including active, inactive, and paused, and note the last modified date, owner, and trigger type for each. Second, map the enrollment chains to understand which workflows hand contacts to each other. Third, identify which workflows share trigger properties so you know what adjacent workflows a property change might activate. Fourth, check for conflicts and orphaned workflows that are active but have no connections. Doing this manually takes days in a complex portal. Howly automates steps two through four and surfaces the results in seconds.
What does HubSpot workflow visualization mean?
HubSpot workflow visualization means creating a visual map of how your HubSpot workflows connect to each other — which workflows trigger others, share list logic, or modify the same properties. HubSpot's native interface shows workflows individually. Visualization tools like Howly show them as a connected system.
Why doesn't HubSpot show workflow dependencies natively?
HubSpot's workflow interface is built for creating and managing individual automations, not for auditing an entire automation system. As portals grow, this gap becomes significant. Third-party tools like Howly fill it by pulling workflow metadata via API and mapping the connections HubSpot doesn't surface.
Is it safe to connect a third-party app to my HubSpot portal?
It depends on the tool's access model. Howly uses OAuth 2.0 with read-only access — it can't edit, write, or change anything in your portal, and you can revoke access at any time from HubSpot's Connected Apps settings. Always check a tool's access model before connecting it to a client or production portal.
How long does a HubSpot workflow audit take with a dedicated tool vs. manually?
Manually auditing a portal with 100+ workflows can take days of analyst time — opening each workflow, documenting logic, building a dependency map by hand. With Howly, the dependency map loads automatically when you connect your portal. Most teams can complete a full audit review in the same session rather than across multiple work days.
Who should own HubSpot workflow audits?
Typically RevOps, a HubSpot admin, or a HubSpot partner agency handling portal management. In agencies, workflow audits are often part of onboarding a new client portal — which is why Howly's multi-portal support matters for that use case specifically.
The gap Howly fills is real and specific: HubSpot is excellent at building automation, but it doesn't help you understand the automation you've already built — or safely change it. For small portals with a single admin and simple logic, the native view is usually enough. For everyone else, the question isn't whether you need a visibility layer, but how much time you're willing to spend recreating that visibility manually every time something changes.
The comparison above is a starting point. The fastest way to know whether a tool fits is to connect it to a portal and see the map — most teams find the dependency view useful within the first five minutes.
This article is written by the team at Howly. We have a natural bias toward our own tool — and we've tried to be clear about where others are the better fit.
