MadKudu alternative: 4 options after the HG Insights acquisition
MadKudu was a serious lead scoring platform, well-built, with smart ML-based fit modeling and a real Salesforce-native experience. If you signed up for it before 2024 you got a quality tool at a reasonable mid-market price.
Two acquisitions later, the platform you signed up for doesn’t exist as a standalone product anymore. MadKudu acquired Breadcrumbs in October 2024. HG Insights acquired MadKudu in August 2025. The product is now part of HG Insights’ Revenue Growth Agentic Ecosystem, an enterprise-tier platform built around TrustRadius buyer intent data, technographic enrichment, and agentic GTM playbooks.
If you’re an SMB or mid-market HubSpot team looking at MadKudu in 2026, you’re looking at an enterprise platform with enterprise pricing. This post covers four alternatives with honest tradeoffs, depending on what you actually need. If you want the scannable version instead, our MadKudu alternatives comparison puts the same options side by side with a feature and pricing table.
Where MadKudu landed (so you can decide if it’s still right for you)
The HG Insights version of MadKudu is a different product than the standalone version was. The strengths now:
- Strong third-party intent data via TrustRadius integration
- Technographic enrichment at scale (HG Insights’ core competency)
- Agentic GTM playbooks for signal-based selling and marketing
- Heavy enterprise integrations (Salesforce, Gong, Marketo, Salesloft, Outreach, Snowflake)
The tradeoffs:
- Enterprise pricing. Vendr’s median MadKudu contract was ~$32K/year pre-acquisition (range roughly $15K to $81K+); post-acquisition, mid-market deployments commonly land in the $40K–$100K/year range once bundled with HG Insights components
- Implementation complexity that requires data team involvement
- Salesforce-first orientation; HubSpot integration is a bridge, not a foundation
- Less attention to SMB/mid-market workflows that don’t justify the platform’s complexity
If your team has the budget, the data team, and the enterprise sales motion, the new platform is genuinely good for what it is. If you don’t, you’re paying for capabilities you can’t use.
Option 1: HubSpot’s modern lead scoring tool
If your reason for using MadKudu was “native HubSpot scoring isn’t enough,” check the new tool. HubSpot retired the legacy HubSpot Score property on August 31, 2025 and replaced it with a multi-property scoring system that supports separate Engagement and Fit scores, decay, and (on Enterprise) a Combined score with an A1–C3 matrix. Our step-by-step HubSpot lead scoring setup guide walks the current workflow and the Pro-tier gotchas.
Where it works:
- Marketing Hub Enterprise teams who can use the Combined score
- Mostly fit + engagement signals, no exotic third-party intent data
- Comfortable building, calibrating, and maintaining rules yourself
Where it falls short:
- Marketing Hub Professional is significantly limited (max 100 points, no AND/OR logic per rule, no count-based engagement signals, no Combined score)
- Decay is per-event-group and stepwise, not per-event with half-life curves
- No built-in conversion lift report; you build it manually in Custom Reports
- Slack alerts can’t render score breakdowns natively without Operations Hub plumbing
The native tool is a real improvement over what HubSpot shipped a year ago. It’s not a complete replacement for what MadKudu gave you on day one, especially on third-party intent data. If you’ve already configured it and the scores aren’t holding up, we cover the structural failure modes in why HubSpot lead scoring stops working.
Option 2: kenbun
This is what we built. The pitch:
kenbun is rules-based scoring on top of HubSpot, with the things HubSpot’s modern tool doesn’t have. Per-event half-life decay (different signal types age at different speeds, smoothly). Calibration tooling that compares your scoring predictions against actual closed-won outcomes. Score breakdowns visible on every lead, with the rules and events behind every number. Slack alerts that ship the score with context, not just a notification ping.
Where it works:
- HubSpot-using B2B SaaS teams who need scoring that works without spending six figures
- SMB and mid-market price points (think four to low five figures, not enterprise contracts)
- Teams who want explainable rule-based scoring rather than a black-box ML model
- Pro Hub customers who hit the limits of HubSpot’s native tool but don’t want to upgrade to Enterprise just for scoring
Where it falls short:
- We don’t sell third-party intent data (TrustRadius, Bombora, technographic enrichment). If your buying motion needed those, you’d layer kenbun on top of an intent data provider rather than replacing them.
- We don’t ship pre-built agentic GTM playbooks. We integrate with Slack, HubSpot, and Claude (via MCP) for agent workflows, but the playbooks are yours to define.
If MadKudu’s third-party data was the value, kenbun won’t replace it. If MadKudu’s scoring engine was the value, kenbun does that more transparently and at a friendlier price point.
Option 3: Build on HubSpot Operations Hub
If you have engineering resources and Operations Hub Pro or Enterprise, you can build a multi-dimensional scoring system using Custom Code workflow actions and the Properties API. Persist per-dimension scores, log rule firings, schedule calibration runs, and feed alerts to Slack via webhooks.
Where it works:
- Teams with engineering bandwidth (not just Marketing Ops)
- Operations Hub Pro/Enterprise customers
- Highly custom scoring requirements that off-the-shelf tools can’t model
Where it falls short:
- Engineering time, both upfront (1–3 weeks) and ongoing as HubSpot evolves
- No turnkey calibration; you build the analytics yourself
- No CSM, support team, or roadmap
This is genuinely viable for some teams. Most teams don’t have the engineering capacity and end up with a half-finished version that quietly degrades.
Option 4: Layer kenbun + a separate intent data provider
If you specifically miss MadKudu’s intent data (TrustRadius now, third-party signals broadly), the practical approach is:
- Use kenbun for the scoring engine, calibration, decay, and Slack alerts
- Layer a dedicated intent data provider underneath: HG Insights for technographic, Bombora or G2 for buyer intent, ZoomInfo or Apollo for firmographic enrichment
Total cost is typically still meaningfully less than an HG Insights / MadKudu enterprise contract, and you get scoring you control and enrichment data that flows into it.
How to choose
Three quick questions:
What’s your contract band? If you were around the ~$32K/year Vendr median for MadKudu, the HG Insights migration will price you up. If you can absorb that, the new platform may still be the right tool. If not, kenbun, native HubSpot, or build-it-yourself.
What did MadKudu actually give you that you’d miss? If the answer is “explainable scoring with calibration and good Slack alerts,” kenbun ships those. If the answer is “a giant pile of third-party intent data,” kenbun alone won’t replace that; you’d layer in a separate provider.
What’s your HubSpot tier? Pro Hub customers are most squeezed by the native HubSpot tool’s limits. Enterprise customers have more options natively but still hit decay and conversion-lift gaps.
The short version
If you were on MadKudu for the scoring, kenbun is the natural HubSpot-native landing spot at a friendlier price point. If you were on MadKudu for the intent data, the HG Insights platform may still be your fit, or you can layer a separate intent provider with kenbun on top.
Connect kenbun to your HubSpot. It takes minutes; you’ll see your real leads scored across four separate dimensions with the rules and events visible on every lead, the same day.