# HubSpot Content Hub to Directus migration > How to migrate from HubSpot Content Hub to Directus, with a side-by-side comparison and FAQs. --- ## Source: HubSpot Content Hub - **Type:** headless - **Official site:** https://www.hubspot.com/products/content - **Pricing:** https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/content - **Last reviewed:** 2026-07-28 ## Key advantages HubSpot Content Hub (formerly CMS Hub) 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. The Content Hub rebrand bolted Breeze AI onto all of it: Content Remix repurposes one piece of content into emails, social posts, and landing pages, and there’s built-in podcast and video hosting now too. 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. ### AI content tools with Content Remix Breeze AI is baked into the editor. Content Remix repurposes existing pages and posts into new formats, and the AI writer handles first drafts. Useful for small teams that publish across several channels. ### 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 ## Key pain points HubSpot Content Hub has its perks, but you practically need a Mr. Moneybags subscription to keep the lights on. Pricing shoots up the moment you add seats, automations, or anything remotely "enterprise," and you can only hope the pricing team doesn’t wake up one day and charge the equivalent of a beach-facing villa. It’s also not winning any awards for flexibility. Deep customization is limited, the theme system is rigid, and you’re stuck learning HubL, a proprietary template language that no one dreams about using. The plugin ecosystem is tiny compared to WordPress, so advanced requirements usually mean custom builds, workarounds, or giving up. And yes, parts of the system can feel slow and clunky when you least expect it. If you’re okay with the trade-offs, great. If not, you know where to find us. ### Expensive pricing structure HubSpot gets pricey really fast with every new seat, feature, or automation. It ends up feeling like a fresh subscription to financial pain. ### Limited customization flexibility The theme system is rigid, and anything beyond surface-level edits usually needs a developer. "Drag-and-drop" has limits… and you’ll hit them quickly. ### Smaller theme and plugin ecosystem Compared to WordPress or open-source giants, HubSpot’s marketplace feels tiny with fewer prebuilt solutions and more custom work. ### Proprietary HubL language Say hello to HubL, HubSpot’s own templating language. It works… but only in HubSpot. Enjoy the vendor lock-in. ### Platform lock-in Once you're in, getting out feels like moving out of a house with 14 years of hoarded junk. Migration isn’t fun. ### E-commerce limitations Content Hub can run landing pages and lead funnels, but full-scale eCommerce? Not its game and definitely not its strength. ## Target: Directus - **Type:** headless - **Official site:** https://directus.io - **Pricing:** https://directus.io/pricing - **Last reviewed:** 2026-07-28 ## Key advantages Directus instantly wins points with us because, well… it has a rabbit for a logo. But beyond that, it's genuinely a solid database-first CMS. If you like the idea of a CMS that sits directly on top of your SQL database without any abstractions, Directus feels incredibly natural. You can self-host it, tweak it endlessly, and treat your schema exactly the way you want. Editors get a no-code admin UI that feels polished, developers get REST and GraphQL out of the box, and teams get workflows, versioning, automations, and proper permission controls. It's flexible, fast, and a great fit if your content is really just structured data waiting for a smarter interface. If your project revolves around relational data and you want total control from database to API, Directus is one of the cleanest ways to build it. ### Intuitive non-technical interface Editors get a clean, no-code admin panel that feels more like a productivity tool than a CMS. Non-technical teams can handle content updates without pinging developers every five minutes. ### Database-agnostic SQL integration Directus plugs straight into your SQL database and turns it into an API instantly. If your data lives in Postgres, MySQL, MariaDB, or SQLite, it just works. ### Field-level permission controls You can lock down every field, table, and action with granular role-based permissions. Perfect for teams that care about security and don't want interns accidentally deleting production data. ### Built-in REST/GraphQL support Your entire database is instantly exposed as both REST and GraphQL endpoints. Just plug into your frontend and start shipping. ### Extensive UI customization Directus lets you tweak the interface, add custom views, tailor layouts, and build the exact editing experience your team needs. It feels like a CMS you can actually shape instead of fight. ### Real-time collaborative editing Multiple contributors can work in the Studio at the same time without stepping on each other's toes. Collaborative editing shipped in February 2026, so drafts stay clean and the whole workflow feels built for modern teams, not 2010 intranets. ### AI Assistant with image and PDF support The built-in AI Assistant can process images and PDFs as well as text, and it works across OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google Gemini. It's a genuinely useful addition rather than a feature-list checkbox. ## Key pain points Directus looks fantastic in demos, but things get rocky once you actually try to use it at scale. The Team cloud plan is $499/month (or $599 billed monthly) and caps you at 10 SSO seats, 50 collections, and 20 flows. Grow past those limits and you're straight into custom Enterprise territory. The v12 move to the Monospace Sustainable Core License (MSCL) has also rattled the community; smaller orgs get a free Innovation Grant, but larger teams are navigating a licensing landscape that changed significantly from what they signed up for. On the dev side, updates can introduce breaking changes, the documentation doesn't always keep pace, and the extension ecosystem is pretty thin. Localization is technically supported but fiddly and easy to misconfigure, and large datasets make the UI noticeably sluggish. And if you want anything deeply custom, you're suddenly living in Vue.js land, which is not where most teams want to spend their weekends. ### Breaking update changes Directus explicitly does not follow semver: any release may include breaking changes. The v10 to v11 upgrade hit schema changes and dropped fields, and the v11 UI scale change (px to rem) broke extensions hardcoding pixel values. Plan your upgrade windows carefully. ### Limited extension ecosystem The plugin ecosystem is still pretty bare. Anything even mildly niche ends up becoming a "let's just custom build it" moment, which defeats the purpose of picking a CMS with extensions. The marketplace launched in beta in early 2024 and is still maturing. ### Complex localization setup Yes, it supports multilingual content, but setting it up feels like assembling IKEA furniture blindfolded. It works, but expect extra config, extra steps, and extra patience. ### Version history still tier-gated Global draft versions now ship automatically with every versioned item (no manual setup required as of March 2026), which is a genuine improvement. Full version history, rollbacks, and controlled releases are still locked behind higher-tier plans, though, so if predictable publishing workflows are a must, check your tier carefully before committing. ### Vue.js knowledge requirement Custom interfaces and deeper tweaks need Vue.js, so if your team only speaks React, prepare for a small identity crisis (or a hiring plan). ### Large dataset performance issues Heavy tables and deeply relational data can slow down queries and the UI: community reports show 25K-row datasets where raw SQL runs in milliseconds but the Directus API takes 20+ seconds, largely due to internal query overhead and no auto-indexes on foreign keys. ## Frequently asked questions ### How much does HubSpot Content Hub actually cost? HubSpot Content Hub (formerly CMS Hub) starts at $20/month per seat on the Starter tier, but that's a teaser price. Most teams end up on Professional ($450/month, which includes 3 core seats) or Enterprise ($1,500/month, 5 core seats) once they need features like custom reporting, smart content, or content approval workflows. Extra seats run $45-$75/month each, and the AI features draw from a monthly credit allowance. The real cost shock comes from the CRM side. HubSpot bundles Content Hub with its marketing tools, 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 Content Hub, 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 Content Hub? 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. The 2024 rebrand from CMS Hub to Content Hub added AI tools like Content Remix, but the theme system and HubL underneath are unchanged. 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.