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The Build-Off, UNBOUND 2026
One winning pitch gets $15,000 worth of HubSpot CMS work built free in Q4. Everyone who qualifies gets a free Build Plan within 48 hours, including architecture, timeline, risks, and a CFO-ready summary. Only twenty Plans. First come, first served.
Five minutes to enter. Entries close Friday 18 September, 12:00 noon ET, or when the twenty Plans are gone.
The project
The customer portal your agency declined. The LMS nobody would put a date on. The migration carrying six years of organic traffic, where the honest answer to “will the numbers hold?” was a shrug.
So it sits on the roadmap. And every quarter it gets heavier. The licence you are paying for is doing a third of what it could, your CFO has started asking why, and the last agency left you worse off than before you started, so nobody is rushing to hand over the next hard thing.
Meanwhile every HubSpot agency you talk to looks identical, sounds identical, promises identical things, and prices in hours you cannot check. You are not short of options. You are short of a way to tell them apart before it costs you another year, and another weekly status call where you brace before you ask how it is going.
At UNBOUND, the hardest of these in the room gets itself built. Free.
What you get
Senior strategic work worth over USD 1,000, free, because the pitch earned it. No price inside; nobody talks money before Friday, and after the winner is announced you get your build priced once, from this Plan, with a Build-Off discount attached. Until then it is simply yours: read it with your developer, forward it to your CFO, take it to another agency if you like. It survives all three.
Can this be built as pitched, and if not, exactly what changes. The straight answer three agencies would not put in writing.
How the pieces fit on your HubSpot, drawn to be argued with. Arguing on paper is free; arguing in a sprint costs a month.
Line-itemed, dated, honest, including the parts agencies habitually under-scope and bill you for later.
The traffic question. The integration that has never spoken to anything. The content debt nobody owns. Named before they can surprise you, because a risk with a name has a plan.
The business case in plain language on a single page you can forward without editing. Walk into the Q4 budget meeting holding it.
The promise
The people who read your pitch are the senior architects who would build it, working overnight from Bengaluru. No account manager summarises you, no sales team translates you. When the Plan says something can be done, the person who wrote it is the person who would do it.
Between your pitch and Friday: no sequence, no calls, no number waved at you while you decide. Then money comes up once, in the open: after the winner is announced, every entrant gets their build priced from their own Plan, with a Build-Off discount and five days on the clock. One offer. After that, we leave you alone.
Cost of doing nothing
Another quarter on the roadmap
The project stays unbuilt, the licence stays half-used, and the next agency conversation starts from zero, with you doing the qualifying. Again.
Friday afternoon instead
The architecture on paper. The risks named before they can surprise you. A timeline someone was willing to write down and be held to. And when the licence question comes, you slide one page across the table and watch the meeting change.
How it works
Press the button, give us five minutes of honest detail. Half-defined is fine; naming the unknowns is half the value.
A senior architect reads it and you get a straight yes or no, with reasons.
Scoped overnight by the people who would build it. A working plan, not a sales estimate.
In early or not in. If the twenty Plans go before Friday, the door shuts early.
Every entry against the same bar: hardest problem, clearest thinking, most to gain from being built properly. One of them is about to cost us $15,000, on purpose.
The winning pitch gets the build, free, delivered in Q4. That evening, every entrant gets their build priced from their own Plan, Build-Off discount attached.
In public, gate by gate, so you can watch whether we are what this page says we are.
The scoring desk works overnight from Bengaluru. It is why 48 hours actually means 48 hours.
Selected work
You have probably never heard of us. Good. We spent eleven years building instead of advertising, and the work argues better than we do.
The work is at hermitcrabs.io/case-studies. Every logo is real and checkable.
The offer, itemised
Why would anyone give away a $15,000 build? Honestly: because we would rather earn the hard projects than the easy ones, and one US build documented in public is worth more to us than a year of advertising. You get the build or the Plan; we get to show our work. That is the whole trade, and now you know it.
The winning pitch, judged Friday 12:00 to 16:00 and announced at 17:00, gets the build itself free, worth $15,000, delivered in Q4 and documented in public.
Win or not, every qualified pitch holds the full Build Plan within 48 hours of pitching. Free, no price inside it, yours to use with us or with anyone.
Nobody who enters gets silence. Not one for the comp? You hear why, and what we would do instead.
Optional: fifteen minutes with Reddy at UNBOUND, by appointment, chosen when you enter.
One pitch wins the lot. Every qualified pitch keeps its Plan. This is a real competition, for websites, migrations onto HubSpot CMS, portals, LMS and custom apps. CRM admin, workflow-only work and platform training are good work, but they are not what the Build-Off is for. Your HubSpot needs to be on Pro or Enterprise hubs. Only twenty pitches get Plans, first come first served, and if they fill before Friday, entries close early. Entries close Friday 18 September at 12:00 noon ET.
Twenty plans. One deadline.
Highlights
Client stories
60+ teams worldwide · HubSpot Gold Solutions Partner
“Sometimes you need to start fresh with the right partner to create something incredible.”
Alex MunroeDirector, Information Technology at Taymor Industries
“In sports, everything happens in real time. hermitcrabs makes it so easy to click, update, and go, even after a late-night match.”
Sarah KimDigital Product Manager at Angel City FC
“We went from waiting a week for website changes to making them in minutes. That alone sold the exec team on why we went with hermitcrabs.”
Bryan McCartyHead of Product & Product Marketing at Orum
“We are very pleased with what our website is accomplishing. The traction is giving us a way to conceive upcoming projects, how we will launch those projects.”
David RufnerDirector of Development and Relations at 1517
Questions, answered
$15,000 of HubSpot CMS build, free. The scope comes from the winning pitch's own Build Plan, delivered in Q4, documented in public as it happens. No cash alternative; the prize is the build.
Because we would rather earn the hard projects than the easy ones, and one US build documented in public is worth more to us than a year of advertising. The Build-Off is how a build team you have never heard of proves it in a week, in the open, at our cost.
The scoring architects and nobody else. Your pitch, your uploads and your Plan are not shared, not published, and not used as marketing examples without your written say-so. The only build made public is the winner's, and only with the winner's agreement.
Yes. Senior work worth over USD 1,000, no price inside it, no strings on it. Take it to us, to your own team, or to another agency entirely.
Builds on HubSpot CMS: websites, migrations onto HubSpot, membership and customer portals, LMS and academies, multilingual rebuilds, custom apps. CRM admin, workflow-only work and platform training are not what this competition is for. Your portal needs Pro or Enterprise hubs; on Starter, enter anyway and we will tell you honestly what your options are.
Yes, and say so in the pitch. Naming the unknowns is half the value; the feasibility verdict exists precisely for projects that are not neat yet.
You keep the Plan, free. On Friday evening, after the winner is announced, we send every entrant one thing: their build priced from their own Plan, with a Build-Off discount that runs to the following Wednesday. One offer, declared here so it is not a surprise there. The Plan stays yours either way.
Because every Plan is scoped properly by senior architects, overnight, and twenty is the honest limit of doing that without cutting corners. It is also why they go first come, first served.
No, never have. When we build, it is a fixed price against a published scope with milestone gates, and the final payment only falls due when the launch gates pass. But that conversation belongs after Friday; the Build-Off itself involves no money at all.
The senior architects who would build the project, overnight from Bengaluru. Not a sales team. It is why the walk-through at UNBOUND is worth taking: you are talking to the people who scoped it.
No. The pitch is online, the Plan lands by email wherever you are, and the winner does not need to be in the room. Being there gets you the optional fifteen minutes with Reddy, and the easiest founder-spot in the hall: the bright hermitcrabs shirt. Nothing requires a flight.
Friday 18 September at 12:00 noon ET, or earlier if the twenty Plans fill first. Judging 12:00 to 16:00, winner announced 17:00 the same day.
Entry
Less time than the status call you brace for, and this one ends with a straight answer. Name and email first; the entry brief comes straight back, and your pitch holds its place in the queue from the moment you start. Scored in 24 hours. Plan in 48. Twenty Plans, first come, first served.
Prefer email? Write to unbound@hermitcrabs.io · a person replies, not a sequence
Enter the Build-Off · few fields, that is all
About five minutes end to end
One reply, from the architect who would build it.
Taking you to the next step
Your details are saved. Next: the project itself.
One reply, from the architect who would build it. Nothing else lands in your inbox before Friday.
The Plan has no price in it and no strings. Take it to anyone.
First come, first served. If they fill before Friday, entries close early.
Eleven years, one platform. Pro and Enterprise hubs, CMS, portals, LMS and custom apps.
No money talk before Friday. After the winner is announced: your build priced once, with a Build-Off discount, then we leave you alone.
Templates, modules, code and documentation are yours from day one, whoever maintains it next.
Nobody who enters gets silence. If it is not one for the Build-Off, we say so and tell you what we would do.