Deciding on the right CMS for your business in 2024? This article is for you, if you have any questions please contact Mike Eastwood, HubSpot Geek and the founder of Webalite and Portal-iQ.
Key Takeaways
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HubSpot CMS Hub is an integrated system that caters to businesses of all sizes, offering scalability, ease of use, and combines marketing, sales, and service tools with premium hosting for a complete customer platform.
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A user-friendly system with a theme library, drag-and-drop editor, and customer support. It's easy to learn and still allows developers to leverage extend and integrate other systems for more complex sites.
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Out of the box you get several other advantages like AI-powered content assistance, premium hosting and built-in security.
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The choice between HubSpot and alternatives ultimately depends on one’s specific needs, budget, and technical expertise.
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Builtwith estimates 145,370 websites use the HubSpot CMS as of 10 February 2024.
What is HubSpot CMS Hub?
HubSpot CMS Hub is HubSpot's Content Management System (CMS) which is fully integrated into HubSpot's Customer Platform including Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Service Hub, Ops Hub and Commerce Hub which are all connected to the HubSpot CRM platform. Available in tiers from Free, Starter, Pro and Enterprise.
“Nobody really wants a website. What you really want is more traffic, more leads and more of the right type of customer.”
– Mike Eastwood,Founder and CEO of Webalite
Introduction to HubSpot's CMS
HubSpot's proprietary Content Management System that’s fully integrated with their "Customer Platform", making it a powerful marketing tool. It’s marketed towards businesses of all sizes, particularly small to medium businesses, due to its scalability and ease of use. You get the power of a robust CMS with the convenience of a fully integrated customer platform.
CMS Hub is unique because its tightly integrated with the HubSpot's marketing, sales, service and operational tools. It’s designed to help businesses build, manage, and optimize websites with advanced customization options and includes premium cloud hosting for digital assets.
The CMS is optimized for marketers, developers, and – more importantly – your website visitors, offering a comprehensive suite of tools designed to cater to the needs of each group. For marketers, it provides an intuitive user interface, marketing automation, and deep analytics to track and enhance performance. Developers will appreciate the flexibility of the platform, with options for full customization, access to APIs, and a developer sandbox for testing. Website visitors benefit from the seamless and personalized experiences enabled by the system’s smart content capabilities and optimized performance.
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Creating or migrating your website
Setting up a new CMS can be a daunting task, especially if you’re not a geek (like me, yes I actually enjoying building websites). But the process is made easier with a range of CMS tools, including:
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A theme library
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Drag-and-drop editor
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Premium cloud hosting
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Website analytics
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SEO recommendations (Pro & Enterprise)
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Mobile previews
You can build your website using one of the default themes, free and paid themes from the marketplace, or by developing a custom theme.
What is a HubSpot Theme?
A theme is a collection of templates, modules and styles that allow you to easily change the look and feel of your website. You can install themes from HubSpot's Marketplace.
HubSpot customers can also work with a certified HubSpot Agency – like Webalite – to design and develop themes, build a site, or migrate your website from a different CMS. While the setup process is flexible, it’s important to remember that with flexibility often comes complexity, which is why we recommend working with an expert.
It’s also possible to configure access rules within CMS Hub to ensure users have appropriate levels of access to website content and data. Businesses with multiple website contributors or publishing processes will find this feature particularly beneficial.
But what happens if you get stuck? HubSpot has you covered with:
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Amazing customer support (for CMS Pro or Enterprise)
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A global network of certified HubSpot Partners that can help you with HubSpot Training, CRM Migrations, Custom Themes and Custom Integrations.
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A comprehensive knowledge base for users during the CMS setup process
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HubSpot Academy with training to help marketers, content creators, and developers to get the most out of any CMS, especially HubSpot's, to create compelling and engaging experiences
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A supportive HubSpot Community stands ready to offer assistance if needed.
Overall Design and Usability
Design and usability are critical when choosing a CMS. How your website looks and functions can make or break your audience’s experience. And, your website must be fast. There's a variety of themes available from the HubSpot Marketplace with engaging designs and industry-specific functionalities, or you can design, build or commission a theme for your website.
But it’s not all about the looks.
With a WYSIWYG editor and modules for reusable components, users with little to no coding experience can easily create and maintain visually appealing websites using CMS Hub. However, despite the ease provided by the drag-and-drop website builder, it can get in the way – all software should come with a "Stop helping me!" button, unfortunately HubSpot does not.
Content Creation Capabilities
When it comes to content creation there's a full range of templates, including:
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Website pages: designed for presenting information optimized for search engines
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Landing pages: tailored for specific marketing offers or campaigns
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Blogs: for publishing regular articles and updates
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Membership pages: for password protected content
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System Pages: to display any errors
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Emails: for creating and sending email campaigns
These templates provide flexibility for all your content creation needs across the entire site.
- Website Pages
- Pages are available in all tiers – free, starter, pro and enterprise. Pages are ideal for static content that doesn't change often. Your pages typically include the homepage, about us, contact, your products and services, privacy and terms and conditions.
- Landing Pages
- Landing Pages are available in Marketing Hub (free, starter, pro and enterprise) and are specifically designed for offers and campaigns. Typically a Landing Page has no menus, nor distracting features, so that the visitor is "funneled" down a particular path. Some Landing Pages may include menus e.g. a Thank You Page. Landing Pages are excluded from the sitemap and are only ever indexed by search engines if the page is discoverable by following links.
- Blog Posts and Blog Listings
- HubSpot blogs offer two different views: one for the blog listing page and another for the individual blog post page. Each view has its own unique layout and design. Blog Posts also have other standard blog post features like Authors, Topics, Tags and Dates. Typically blog posts are more current than website pages, which have a longer lifespan.
- Membership Site
- There’s even a membership site available in Service Hub Pro or Enterprise, as well as the CMS Hub Pro or Enterprise. The Membership Site can be used to deliver secure information to customers after they enter a login and password, a handy feature for businesses offering exclusive content or services, as well as managing external visitors access.
- System Pages
- The system pages can be customized to show any error messages e.g. "404 - page not found" in branded templates.
- Email Templates
- While emails templates aren't specifically part of the CMS Hub you can create custom emails with the same look and feel of website and landing pages. The email templates use the same drag-and-drop editor for content layout.
The team at HubSpot have given considerable thought to the diverse content needs of businesses.
Developer-Friendly Features
While it's designed to be user-friendly for marketers and content creators, it also offers a suite of developer-friendly features.
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HubDB (HubSpot's Database) allows developers to create tables for structured content management that seamlessly integrates into CMS pages with HubL markup tags.
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Dynamic pages in CMS Hub (Pro or Enterprise) can be configured to display dynamic content from structured data sources like HubDB, providing real-time updates and individual detail pages from each database row.
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CMS Developer Sandbox (Pro or Enterprise) that allows developers to test all CMS features for website development, ensuring that they can build and test sites before going live.
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Serverless Functions, (Enterprise Only) enabling developers to write server-side code that interacts with HubSpot services and external APIs, to access the HubSpot CRM, expanding the site’s functionality.
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Design Tools give developers an editor and file system specifically designed for managing essential website asset creation elements such as templates, themes, modules, JavaScript, and CSS files
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Automatic optimization minifies JavaScript and CSS for web performance by removing redundant data from code files.
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Content Delivery Network (CDN) ensures that your website's content is delivered quickly and reliably to users around the world. The CDN minimizes the distance between visitors and your website's server, using a global network of servers to improve site speed and performance.
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Built-in security features like SSL, DDoS protection, and a web application firewall, adding an extra layer of protection against potential cyber threats.
Real-Life Performance
Customer feedback in 2023 indicates high satisfaction with HubSpot CMS Hub’s usability and customer relationship management (CRM). In the category of "Best Web Content Management Software" the feedback indicates that the CMS delivers on its promises, offering businesses an efficient, user-friendly platform.
G2 Grid® for Web Content Management shows HubSpot and WordPress ahead on Customer Satisfaction and Market Presence.
Comparing CMS Hub with WordPress
But first, here's a list of the common competitors and why we won't touch them:
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Squarespace – ok for online brochures, but it lacks any professional tools. Squarespace can embed the HubSpot Tracking code to make it more useful. -
Wix – an amateur tool that's only good for hobby websites. Wix is the only CMS that HubSpot Tracking Code doesn't work consistently. -
Webflow – a glorified prototyping tool that is not suitable for anything other than brochure websites. The HubSpot Tracking Code can be embedded in Webflow. -
Umbraco – a dinosaur that's hard to use, inflexible and expensive. Umbraco can be integrated with HubSpot Tracking Code. -
Drupal – open source dinosaurs that are free and expensive because you need a team of developers to maintain and run it. You can integrate the HubSpot Tracking Code but your developers will want to code their own CRM. -
Joomla – open source dinosaurs that are free and expensive because you need a team of developers to maintain and run it. You can integrate the HubSpot Tracking Code but your developers will want to code their own CRM. -
Any system your designer, or developer is pushing that they say is better than everything else for reasons they fail to communicate. Buzzwords are common and so are fads – unless your designer or developer can show you case studies and market validation then beware.
So, now I've offended most of the designers or developers reading this here's an article that compares WordPress to HubSpot including details of why we changed from WordPress to HubSpot.
A short summary of WordPress CMS vs. HubSpot CMS Hub
