Key Takeaways
The free plan no longer caps out at 50 workflows. The full portal maps for free.
Workflows using HubSpot's data agent or agent hub actions are flagged directly on the Howly canvas, with a dedicated icon.
The audit report moved, expanded, and now links directly into HubSpot so you can fix an issue the moment you find it.
Search, filters, and a Recent Changes panel make it faster to find one workflow inside a portal with hundreds of them.
HubSpot featured Howly in a co-authored blog post on the workflows every startup should build first.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpHNAkktRUo
What Shipped This Month
A portal with 1,200 workflows does not get easier to audit because you have more screen real estate. It gets easier because the tool showing you those workflows gets sharper: fewer clicks to find a problem, fewer manual steps to document it, and a clearer view of what HubSpot's own AI is doing inside your automation.
July's release moves on all three fronts. Here is what changed.
Unlimited Workflows on the Free Plan
The free version of Howly used to stop mapping a portal at 50 workflows. That ceiling is gone. Free accounts now map the entire portal, regardless of size.
For an agency evaluating Howly on a client portal, or a RevOps team testing it before committing to a paid seat, this removes the biggest limitation of the free tier: not being able to see the whole picture. A portal with 400 workflows now maps in full, on the free plan, before anyone enters a credit card.
HubSpot Data Agent and Agent Hub Actions, Now Visible on the Canvas
HubSpot's data agent and agent hub actions can now research, extract, and generate data automatically inside a workflow, without a human reviewing the source or the output. That is useful. It is also invisible from a standard HubSpot workflow view, which is a problem for anyone auditing a portal they did not build.
Howly now surfaces a dedicated icon on any workflow step that uses a data agent or agent hub action. The icon appears directly on the canvas, so a reviewer scanning 80 workflows can immediately see which ones involve AI-generated or AI-extracted data, without opening each one individually in HubSpot.
Once flagged, a workflow can be annotated directly in Howly. A note like "this workflow uses data agent, review for the client" can be tagged with a risk level (low, medium, high) and will surface on hover every time the workflow is viewed afterward. That annotation now lives inside the audit report too, under a documentation and SOP section that tracks how many workflows have been reviewed and flagged.
As more of HubSpot's workflow logic gets built or modified by AI rather than by a human, knowing where that logic lives becomes part of a standard audit, not an edge case.
A Rebuilt Audit Report
The audit report moved. It now lives under the notes section in the left-hand sidebar, accessed with a single "download audit report" button, rather than sitting under the workflow health check. The report itself was rebuilt around one goal: getting from a flagged issue to a fixed one without leaving the document.
What the report includes now:
Brand customization. Cover gradient, brand colors, company name, and logo, all set once under account settings and applied automatically to every report generated afterward. Built for agencies presenting the report as their own deliverable.
An executive summary. Total workflow count, active versus inactive split, and a critical issues count, stated in plain numbers rather than buried in a workflow list.
Key issues requiring attention, broken out by type: circular dependencies, broken enrollments into inactive workflows, standalone workflows with no upstream or downstream connections, duplicate actions, and stale workflows. Each issue links directly into the relevant workflow in HubSpot, so reviewing the report and fixing the workflow is one click, not a separate search.
Workflow analysis, breaking down workflow counts by object (contacts, companies, deals, tickets, and any custom objects) and surfacing the most complex workflows by number of actions, since those carry the highest change risk.
AI insights, generated by the AI Workflow Analysis (run from the Health Checker), covering gaps, issues, opportunities, and recommendations across the portal.
A workflow connections map, showing the most connected workflows in the portal. This is a version of the Howly canvas built specifically to hand upward: a stakeholder does not need to understand the map to see that a cluster of tangled connections needs attention.
A workflow inventory, filtered by last-updated date and active/inactive status.
A properties section, showing the most-used properties across the portal by trigger and action count. Paired with the Impact Analyzer, this is where you check whether a new workflow's enrollment property already triggers something else, before you find out the hard way that two nurtures are firing on the same contact at once.
A best practices section, including a suggested folder structure generated from the object types actually present in the portal, plus naming convention examples and a recommended review cadence (quarterly, post-campaign, and on handoff).
A recommendations section combining the AI insights, best practices, and key findings, with space to add your own notes before exporting the report as HTML or PDF.
The result is a report built to be handed to a client or a stakeholder directly, and one that a practitioner can also use as a working document while cleaning up the portal.
Faster Navigation and Search Across Every Workflow
A handful of smaller changes made the app itself faster to work in:
AI Workflow Analysis now sits at the bottom of the Health Checker panel, in one place with the rest of the health scoring.
Planned Workflows moved under "Create New," consolidating workflow drafting into a single entry point.
A search box was added across the top of the app, so a portal with over a thousand workflows can be searched by name directly, instead of scrolling the canvas.
A Recent Changes panel shows every workflow created or modified in the last 30, 60, or 90 days, with a direct link into each one.
Advanced filters now let you filter by trigger type and value, for example every workflow that triggers on lifecycle stage equal to customer, across the entire portal at once.
Better cache handling means the canvas reflects the current state of the portal more reliably, without a manual refresh to see recent changes.
None of these are headline features on their own. Together, they cut the time it takes to find one workflow inside a large, undocumented portal.
Howly Featured on the HubSpot Blog
HubSpot featured Howly this month, co-authoring a piece on the workflows every startup should build first. It is a sign of where this space is heading: as more portals rely on AI-driven actions inside workflows, visibility into what those workflows are doing, and who is accountable for them, is becoming a standard part of running HubSpot at scale, not an afterthought.
Read the full article here: 5 HubSpot Workflows Your Startup Needs (And Why).
If you are auditing a portal for the first time, whether it is your own or a client's, this is a good moment to see Howly on it directly. The free plan now maps the full portal, HubSpot's own AI actions are visible on the canvas, and the audit report is built to go from your desk straight to your client's inbox. A 7-day free trial with no credit card required gets you into a live portal in minutes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Howly's free plan still have a workflow limit? No. As of the July 2026 update, the free plan maps a portal's entire workflow set, regardless of how many workflows it contains. Previously, free accounts capped out at 50 workflows.
How does Howly show HubSpot's data agent and agent hub actions? Any workflow step using a data agent or agent hub action is marked with a dedicated icon directly on the Howly canvas. Clicking into the workflow in HubSpot shows the underlying AI setting, and the workflow can be annotated in Howly with a note and a risk level for later review.
Where is the audit report now, and what changed? The audit report moved from under the workflow health check to the notes section in the left-hand sidebar, accessed with a single download button. It now includes brand customization, an executive summary, categorized key issues with direct links back into HubSpot, a workflow connections map, a suggested folder structure, and a combined recommendations section, exportable as HTML or PDF.
Can I search for a specific workflow in a large portal? Yes. A search box was added across the top of the app in the July update, along with a backspace shortcut that opens an additional search menu. Both let you find a workflow by name directly, without scrolling the canvas.
Is Howly still read-only? Yes. Howly connects to a HubSpot portal through a read-only OAuth connection and cannot create, edit, or delete anything inside HubSpot. All of July's updates, including the data agent flags and the rebuilt audit report, are visibility and reporting features.
Summary
July's Howly update removes the free plan's workflow cap, surfaces HubSpot's data agent and agent hub actions directly on the canvas, and rebuilds the audit report around one-click fixes instead of static findings. Navigation across large portals got faster too, with search, filters, and a Recent Changes panel.
Read more on workflow sprawl and how to spot it before it spreads, or see the full audit report breakdown and the complete Howly walkthrough for a deeper look at the canvas and Impact Analyzer.
Connect a portal to Howly and see the full map, the AI-flagged workflows, and the rebuilt audit report for yourself. The trial runs seven days, with no credit card required.
Howly is a read-only HubSpot workflow mapping and audit tool. It maps workflow connections, flags structural issues, and shows the impact of property changes before you make them. Used by RevOps teams and HubSpot agencies managing complex portals at scale.
