Hey folks,
I’m considering moving our company website fully to Hubspot’s CMS in the hopes that the marketing studio and breeze AI would work a lot better.
What’s your experience here?
Hello @MelAttt,
Welcome to the Community!
I have some resources for you that I think could be a great starting place!
- Should we migrate our website to Hubspot
- Website Migration Overview
- Understand HubSpot’s website migration process
Additionally, I’d like to tag in some of our Top Contributors to see if they have any tips and tricks on this!
Hey @CarolinaDeMares, @Anton, @EugeneAtKiwi -- Do you have any suggestions for @MelAttt on this?
Thanks in advance!
Best,
Sam, Community Manager
Thanks Sam. Looking forward to hearing from @CarolinaDeMares, @Anton, @EugeneAtKiwi .
Hey @MelAttt,
moving the website to HubSpot is a great thing as there are a ton of benefits. Before you start, there are a few things to keep in mind/plan ahead.
As with almost every other CMS, your Content Hub experience will come from the chosen theme.
There are basically 3 different types of themes:
- HubSpot default themes
- Marketplace themes
- Custom themes
HubSpot themes are good if you want to have a quick start without diving deep into customization.
Marketplace themes often come with much more functionalities and features - I recommend to look for a paid theme which will cover around 80% of features you’re looking for.
Custom themes are THE best solution if you’re looking for very specific styles and features - as a theme developer I can say, that there are almost no limits.
If you should decide to go with a HubSpot or Marketplace theme, do yourself a favor and create a child-theme before building the whole website. It’s super easy and will allow you to modify/expand the theme on code-level. Even if it shouldn’t be a thing for getting started, but moving the pages at a later point to a child-theme might end in a lot of stress which can be avoided right away 
As for modifications/custom development - there are two major approaches:
CMS React / React themes and HubL themes.
As of today, all Marketplace themes are HubL themes.
Custom themes can be created in HubL or React.
The Elevate theme (one of the current if not the HubSpot default theme) is written in React and if you’re looking for code-level customization it requires a whole different approach as it’s not editable in the Design-Manager and you will need a React developer, who will need to go through the local dev environment setup set to change the code. This is the single most important reason why I don’t recommend to start with Elevate theme.
Besides the theme topic there are a few other topics you should think about.
Topics like
- Content structure
- Translations - with Content Hub Starter you get up to 3 languages, with Professional and Enterprise basically unlimited (technically around 40-50 languages).
- File hosting - HubSpot has a “unlimited” file system, but for your own peace - don’t spam it
Content structure:
there are many ways to set up and manage content and content pieces. HubSpot was build around a different approach than many other CMS - build a template and re-use it for the same topics. This means, if your company offers products, the last thing you’d like to do is create every product detail page from scratch. If you get Starter, build a template or so-called saved sections and re-use them for the same page-types. With Professional or Enterprise, you can use either HubDB or the blog functionality. if you get an Enterprise seat (regardless which one), you can create so-called custom objects. These can be used for CRM based content pages as well. Pretty neat feature, but it will require a developer for the initial setup.
Besides all this, the biggest benefits of running your website on HubSpot you will have the ability to create personalized content, set up A/B tests and other cool features.
Personalized content is a great thing. Imagine following use case:
You got a landing page for an event/a download… but you want to target different personas. In other CMS you’d need to create a landing page for each persona, and most likely a bunch of seperate buttons to the individual page(s). In HubSpot, you can use many different types - for instance the CRM lists - to change the content dynamically.
Let’s say you want to use a different tonality (created with breeze or manually) in your texts, depending on the visitors position - put all your CRM contacts into a dynamic lists with filters, select the lists and change the content accordingly - once somebody who’s part of list A will visit this page, this person will see the content you’ve set up for list A. If somebody who’s in list B visits the page, this person will see the content you’ve set up for list B. No extra pages, no redirects - everything on one page. Very amazing feature.
Hope this helps
best,
Anton
Hey @MelAttt - have done a few of these migrations myself now for clients, so am speaking from experience!
HubSpot CMS is genuinely great if your team needs to move fast without relying on a developer for every change. But having Marketing Hub and Breeze with that is where it starts to pay off. Attribution gets cleaner, workflows get simpler, and you stop duct-taping tools together.
Hey!
Before anything, I have to say that I love HubSpot; I love HubSpot’s CRM. However, I have to be honest: HubSpot’s CMS is bad compared with the competition. Only if you have no choice and don’t know what else to do. I understand that you are using HubSpot CMS, but you can build it on WordPress or Webflow; nowadays, the best solution is Lovable. I am moving my website from HubSpot CMS to Lovable. Seriously, I love HubSpot, but HubSpot is a CRM. Period. They cannot compete with a solution like Lovable, where you can build whatever you want without limitations, subscriptions and partners you need to pay. You can synchronise all HubSpot solutions into any other website, and it will work perfectly fine.
I hope you find this answer useful.
Cheers,