HubSpot CMS For Free: What it can and cannot do

HubSpot’s CMS has been out since early 2020, but it may have flown under your radar with everything else happening in the world recently. 

That’s okay! We’re here to catch you up on what this fantastic tool can do, how it compares to other CMS platforms and what’s possible with the free version. That’s right, as always, HubSpot lets you truly try before you buy. 

What is the HubSpot CMS Hub? 

The CMS Hub by HubSpot is a content management system. You’re probably familiar with other CMS tools like WordPress, SquareSpace, Wix, Webflow, Joomla and Drupal. Many of the world’s websites are built on these platforms.

HubSpot’s CMS was created to empower you with an intuitive website builder platform that offers everything you need to create a website by yourself without any technical knowledge. 

For advanced customisation, you may consider getting support from a developer, but, for the most part, you can use the themes and drag-and-drop page editor to bring your vision to life.

Explore the BEE.HubSpot Theme

What’s special about HubSpot’s CMS?

If you’re already using HubSpot’s Marketing, Sales or Customer Service Hubs, you’ll love how easily the CMS Hub integrates with these tools, helping to strengthen and support your efforts.

Many of the popular website builder platforms are open source, and while this may seem like an advantage, it can be a huge security concern. WordPress, for example, accounts for 90% of hacked accounts.

At its heart, the CMS Hub was designed to make website management easy, secure, fast and scalable, backed by HubSpot’s commitment to continuous development and unparalleled support.

What do you get in the FREE HubSpot CMS Hub?

If you want to create a great looking website that is not only secure and efficient, but also designed to perform through integration with the rest of HubSpot's free CRM suite, then we have news for you. As of 15 June 2022, the CMS Hub is also available in the free version.

From the kickoff, you’ll have access to excellent tools that cover your core concerns:

In essence, what you get with the HubSpot free CMS Hub is the ideal package when embarking on your digital marketing journey. If you’re just starting out and you want to know how HubSpot can power your sales and marketing efforts before committing to paid plans, this is the way to go.

With the free suite of tools, you can:

• Build and manage your website.
• Attract and convert leads.
• Engage leads in email conversations, through social media, and chatbots.
• Power conversions with forms.
• Analyse performance through data.

What are the limitations of HubSpot’s free CMS tool?

By now, you may be thinking, “This sounds a little too good to be true.” Nope. The features and benefits we’ve listed above are 100% free. Of course, there are some things that you won’t be able to do with the free CMS, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a platform that offers more at this level.

Here’s what you can’t do with the free HubSpot CMS:

• • Remove HubSpot’s branding –– Your blogs, web and landing pages will have HubSpot branding. 
  
  
  • Publish more than 25 website pages –– If you’re a small business, you’re unlikely to need more than this, but worth bearing in mind. 
  
  
  • Set up a custom domain for emails –– While the free CMS allows for a custom domain, a custom email sending domain is not available. 
  
  
  • Set up more than one blog – You may only have one blog with a maximum of 100 blog posts, but that’s plenty if you’re just starting out. 
  
  
  • Use live chat or email support – You can still get your questions answered through the HubSpot Community, KB docs or Academy, but you won’t have direct access to HubSpot’s team. 
  
  
  • Use HubSpot URL redirects – HubSpot’s super useful redirects tool isn’t available with the free version. 

These are some of the main limitations that are likely to affect your decision as to whether you should go free or explore the paid options. 

You may have picked up that the features and tools that are available with the free HubSpot CMS are mostly suitable for someone who’s building a website from scratch and is at the start of their digital marketing journey, so you’re unlikely to need migration (which isn’t possible on the free version), and you won’t be able to make certain modifications to pages – the design is set. With this in mind, if you’re not a newbie in this realm and you’d just likely to get on with maximising your HubSpot experience, then it’s best you consider the paid plans. 

Which paid HubSpot CMS plan is right for your business?

As with the rest of the HubSpot suite, you can select a plan that fits your company’s requirements and goals. If you’re a small business and you’d like to get rid of the HubSpot branding and enjoy live support, then the very reasonably priced Starter plan is for you.

For a higher level of personalisation that will support a more expansive content strategy, you should go for the professional HubSpot CMS plan. Here, you can test your concepts, compile custom reports and dashboards to share with stakeholders, and utilise more dynamic features.

For organisations with large teams that need to create powerful digital experiences, add root domains and report on multi-domain traffic, you’re probably best off with an Enterprise level plan.

There’s a lot to consider when investing in a CMS because your website is your brand’s storefront, and you don’t want to make costly mistakes. 

If you’re looking to take advantage of everything HubSpot has to offer, we’d love to give you some guidance and support on the features and pricing models that will provide the most value to you. 

As a HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner, we are well-positioned to provide assistance with onboarding, implementation, migration, redesign and website UX. Get in touch with our team to discuss your HubSpot CMS website project today.