Case Study
View Case StudyTray.ai
Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform
From Ghost to HubSpot CMS
We are the Ghost to HubSpot CMS migration experts
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Challenges with Ghost
Key pain points
Ghost is great until you need it to do anything more than “post blog, send newsletter, and beg readers for $5/month.” The moment you step outside that happy path, the whole thing starts feeling painfully bare-bones. There’s no real visual builder, no serious content modeling, and the plugin ecosystem is basically “good luck, build it yourself.”
Hosted plans get expensive fast once memberships grow, and self-hosting turns into a weekend-killing DevOps hobby nobody asked for. If you need anything beyond a clean blog with a paywall, Ghost will politely tap out and tell you to write less ambitious content.
Blogging-centric feature set
Ghost is brilliant for blogs… and very “meh” for anything else. If you need complex content models, workflows, or enterprise-level flexibility, you’ll hit a wall quickly.
Sparse plugin marketplace
There’s no real ecosystem to lean on. Anything outside the basics usually means rolling up your sleeves and writing code yourself.
No visual page builder
If you were hoping to drag, drop, and magically design pages, Ghost politely says “no.” Everything beyond basic layouts needs theme edits.
Custom coding required
Even simple enhancements often require Handlebars or API work. Non-technical teams will run out of road fast.
Limited content modeling
You get posts and pages, that’s pretty much the deal. Anything beyond that is a workaround, not a first-class feature.
Lacks multi-site support
Running multiple sites under one instance isn’t Ghost’s thing. If you’re scaling across regions or brands, you’ll feel boxed in.
Benefits of HubSpot CMS
Key advantages
HubSpot whole ecosystem is designed so business users can update pages, run campaigns, and push content without ever Slacking a developer at 9 p.m.
It’s genuinely simple to implement, the drag-and-drop editor behaves, and the CRM integration does all the heavy lifting, from personalization to lead capture to automated follow-ups. You barely need a dev unless you’re trying to make something unusually fancy, because HubSpot’s whole pitch is: “Let marketing ship it themselves.”
But if you do want to build something more complex or need help figuring out where HubSpot fits into your stack, reach out. We can help you avoid unnecessary and very expensive upgrades, weird theme restrictions, and the classic “why is this locked behind Enterprise?” surprise.
Intuitive drag-and-drop interface
Non-technical teams can update pages, layouts, and content without ever pinging a developer. The editor is straightforward, visual, and fast, making day-to-day site changes painless.
Deep CRM integration
Forms, leads, emails, CTAs, and all of it connect back to HubSpot’s CRM automatically. This gives teams real personalisation power and a unified view of how users move from visitor to lead to customer.
Built-in SEO tools and analytics
HubSpot flags issues, suggests improvements, and provides performance insights without extra tools. It’s practical for teams who want clear SEO direction baked directly into the CMS.
Secure cloud hosting with SSL/CDN
Hosting, security patches, SSL, and updates are all handled by HubSpot. Sites stay fast and secure without anyone babysitting servers or worrying about downtime.
Lead tracking and management
Every form submission, chat, and CTA is automatically tracked. Marketing and sales teams get full visibility into user behaviour without setting up a separate tracking stack.
Live WYSIWYG previews
Changes can be reviewed in real time before publishing, which reduces mistakes and makes approvals easier. What you see in the editor actually matches what goes live
Common questions
Ghost to HubSpot CMS migration FAQs
Answers to the most common questions about Ghost to HubSpot CMS migration
How much does Ghost CMS really cost beyond the "free" open source version?
Ghost is free to self-host, but "free" is misleading. You'll need a VPS ($5-$20/month minimum), someone to handle server maintenance, security updates, SSL certificates, and backups. That's either your time or a developer's hourly rate. Realistically, self-hosted Ghost costs $50-$200/month in labour and infrastructure for a small team. Ghost's managed hosting (Ghost Pro) starts at $9/month for the Starter plan (500 members), jumps to $25/month for Creator (1,000 members), and scales to $199/month for the Business tier. Once your membership list grows past a few thousand, costs climb fast. We've seen publishers hit $300+/month on Ghost Pro before questioning whether the platform still made sense for them.
Does Ghost need a developer to maintain it?
If you're self-hosting, yes. Ghost runs on Node.js and requires regular updates, database maintenance (MySQL), and server monitoring. Major version upgrades (Ghost 4 to 5, for example) can break themes and integrations, and someone technical needs to handle those. On Ghost Pro, maintenance is handled for you, but customisation still requires a developer. Custom themes use Handlebars templating, and anything beyond basic styling means editing theme files and redeploying. If your team is purely non-technical and you want to go beyond Ghost's default themes, you'll need developer support on an ongoing basis.
When should you migrate away from Ghost?
Ghost hits its ceiling when you need more than blog posts and newsletters. If you're trying to build landing pages, manage structured content across multiple page types, run an ecommerce store, or handle multi-language content, Ghost wasn't designed for any of that. We've migrated publishers off Ghost when they outgrew the "blog plus newsletter" model and needed a real content platform. The migration itself is painless. Ghost's JSON API makes content extraction simple, and posts map cleanly to markdown. The typical timeline is 4-6 weeks to move content into a headless CMS and rebuild the frontend.
Can Ghost handle a site with more than just a blog?
Barely. Ghost gives you two content types, posts and pages, and that's it. There's no custom content modelling, no relational fields, no structured data beyond tags and authors. You can hack together something with custom routes and internal tags, but it's brittle and hard to maintain. If you need case studies, service pages, team directories, or any structured content beyond articles, you're fighting the platform. Ghost is excellent at what it does. It just doesn't do very much. For sites that need a blog alongside other content types, a headless CMS gives you the flexibility Ghost intentionally leaves out.
How much does HubSpot CMS actually cost?
HubSpot CMS starts at $25/month for the Starter tier, but that's a teaser price. Most teams end up on Professional ($400/month) or Enterprise ($1,200/month) once they need features like custom reporting, smart content, or additional contact tiers. The real cost shock comes from the CRM side. HubSpot bundles CMS with its marketing hub, and adding seats or automation workflows pushes the bill up fast. We've seen mid-sized companies paying $30,000-$60,000 per year once everything is bundled. That's a lot of money for a platform that still makes you write HubL templates.
Can you move a HubSpot site to a headless CMS setup?
Yes, and we've done it multiple times. The migration typically takes 6-10 weeks depending on how many pages, forms, and CRM integrations are involved. The trickiest parts are replicating HubSpot's form-to-CRM pipeline (which most teams replace with a dedicated form handler plus CRM API integration) and extracting blog content from HubSpot's proprietary format. Design preservation is straightforward if you're rebuilding in a modern framework. We usually rebuild the frontend in Next.js with a headless CMS for content, which gives you better performance and full design control without HubL's limitations.
Will I lose my HubSpot CRM data if I migrate the CMS?
No. HubSpot's CRM is a separate product from the CMS, and you can keep using it even if you move your website elsewhere. We typically set up the new site to push form submissions directly into HubSpot CRM via their API, so your sales team's workflows stay intact. The only thing you lose is HubSpot's native smart content features (content that changes based on CRM data), but those can be rebuilt with a personalisation layer or server-side logic. Most teams find the trade-off worthwhile because the CMS limitations were holding them back more than smart content was helping.
What are the main reasons companies leave HubSpot CMS?
The top three reasons we hear from clients are design limitations, HubL frustration, and pricing escalation. HubSpot's theme system restricts what you can build visually, and the moment you need something custom, you're writing HubL, a templating language that only works inside HubSpot. Developers hate it because it's a dead-end skill. Then there's cost. Teams start on a reasonable plan, add features over 18 months, and suddenly they're paying enterprise prices for what is still a fairly rigid website builder. Moving to a headless CMS removes all three problems at once.
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