Hubspot CMS Issues

[PatOfCle]

Okay so I am considering moving to Hubspot CMS Hub for all things website. Hubspot has been making a big push lately for their Content Hub (aka CMS Hub), compared to a year or two ago.

It's exciting; there is a lot of potential for SMBs with a website that is closely integrated with their CRM and Marketing efforts. It seems that they're committed to making this a long-term success... 

HOWEVER, one look at the Hubspot CMS Hub pricing page and you see some glaring issues. Issues that I think are deterring many others, besides myself, from starting up on Hubspot CMS. 

1) The Starter plan allows for just 30 website pages. I mean c'mon. Hubspot really wants to compete in the Web / Content Hosting market while cutting small businesses off at 30 pages? That's a money-grab if I've ever seen one. This should be at at least 1k pages for a starter plan.  Something important worth noting: businesses considering Hubspot CMS are not doing so for basic web page hosting. They're doing it for the other features integrating with CRM / Marketing efforts that Hubspot can offer.  Trying to force company upgrades because of a page limit is absurd. The vast majority web/content hosting platforms don't have page limits. If you want businesses jumping from $23/mo to 20x more at $450/mo, it better not be for the number of website pages. 

2) Pricing. The Content Hub Professional plan has the majority of features businesses need. However, I have a hard time understanding why Hubspot is starting this at $450 per month, though. Maybe has something to do with the 3-seat minimum?  Those reading this post know, however, that the vast majority of businesses using Hubspot for Content/CMS below the enterprise level will have 1 (maybe 2) users managing their website / content. And let's be clear--- the majority of these features are not going to be used by these businesses on Hubspot. Is A/B testing or "Post Narration" really helping businesses sell more? Starting Pro pricing at $450 is just excessive, and I'm not seeing the justification. Would be much more reasonable to start at $200 for 1 or 2 seats and go up from there by usage. 

3) Miscellaneous:

- Poor Developer experience / flexibility. Hubspot doubling down on this HubL static SSR language is pretty goofy to me. Talk about over-engineering. Why not make the Hubspot developer experience more compatiable with widely used stacks that developers already know Simple add-ons like React embed / pages are very limited. Hubspot has literally one guy who maintains their React repository. 

- Why are "Case Studies" limited to the Professional/Enterprise level? Not a huge deal, but this is a very simple feature that should be accessible across the board. 

Long-term, I think Content Hub will be a solid CMS platform. Hubspot has a strong track record (at least compared to *other* CRMs) of listening to its customers. Besides the page limits and pricing, I think most other shortcomings are not a huge deal. If we're looking at the alternatives (proven and established CMS incumbents--- Webflow, Wordpress, Squarespace) for SMBs, I think most will go that way until Hubspot addresses the issues above. 

If you're a Hubspot employee and could pass this along to a PM that'd be great. 

[DaveParry]

Hi @PatOfCle - I can't disagree with much of that, although I would say in our experience the number of pages that companies feel they need is way over the top. If you actually look at the traffic a site gets after around a year then 80% of the pages are never viewed.

On pricing, whilst I agree that the Content Hub on its own seems excessive - as does Ops Pro which we love but can't understand its high price - we usually sell it as part of the Customer Platform bundle. Much better value then. We, and a number of our clients have gone down this route and love it.

[PatOfCle]

Hi Dave,

Good point, I'm sure that a primary few pages get the overwhelming majority of the traffic. 

High page count benefits are particularly important for location-based SEO and discovery; you live in/near a large urban metro, you usually want to have a page for each major suburb. This matters for many small businesses, especially B2C businesses --- think about your local restaurants, contractors, veternarian, etc.  But what baffles me about this is that Hubspot absolutely knows this. Hubspot began with its claim to fame being small businesses, to whom local discovery via web search is an important factor. Gatekeeping what should be a basic feature under more advanced plans makes zero sense; you have to assume they want to force you to upgrade. I guarantee you the marginal server cost for Hubspot to increase this limit 10x is virtually non-existent. 

Regarding the Customer Platform bundle, that looks like it is only for Starter level plans. Unless I'm missing something. Is there a Customer Platform for Professional levels? I'd be curious about that for combined Content/Sales/Marketing Hubs. 

@BérangèreL thank you for sharing internally - much appreciated!

One other point on the page limit... 😅

We're seeing in real time how search is changing (getting better, really) --- as AI-based discovery grows (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity).  Like Google Search, these companies are crawling full websites, and we're now seeing these be used for local discovery.  Having a large number of pages is also crucial for casting a wide net on these platforms, which don't have much else beyond web-pages to pull their data on small businesses from. 

[BérangèreL]

Hi @PatOfCle,

Thank you for reaching out to the Community and thanks for your valuable feedback, this means a lot to us!

I appreciate you taking the time to explain in details your thoughts and I have shared it internally to bring more visibility to it!

And please @PatOfCle, let me know if there is anything else I can help with. I'll be delighted to do so!

Have a great day!

Best,
Bérangère