Case Study
View Case StudyTray.ai
Migrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform

From HubSpot CMS to Drupal
Key pain points
HubSpot CMS 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
HubSpot CMS can run landing pages and lead funnels, but full-scale eCommerce? Not its game and definitely not its strength.
Key advantages
We'll give credit where it's due: Drupal is a serious CMS for serious projects. If you're building a government portal, a university website, or a massive multilingual platform that needs to serve content in 24 languages, Drupal is genuinely hard to beat. Its content modeling is incredibly deep, its permissions system is enterprise-grade, and its multilingual capabilities are arguably the best in the open-source CMS world. The European Commission runs on it for a reason.
Where Drupal really shines is in complex, structured content architectures. You can model relationships between content types, build granular taxonomies, and set up editorial workflows that would make other CMS platforms weep. If your content team has 50 editors across multiple departments with different access levels, Drupal handles that without breaking a sweat. It's also one of the few traditional CMS platforms that has genuinely embraced decoupled architecture, so you can use it as a headless backend with a modern frontend framework if you want.
The community is smaller than WordPress but significantly more technical. Drupal developers tend to be proper engineers, and the ecosystem reflects that. Module quality is generally higher, security patches are taken seriously, and the project has strong governance. If you're in an enterprise or government context where compliance, accessibility, and security auditing matter, Drupal is a well-trodden path.
That said, we'd only recommend Drupal for projects that genuinely need its power. If you're building a marketing site or a blog, you're using a sledgehammer to hang a picture frame. Talk to us first, and we'll figure out if Drupal is actually the right fit or if you've been sold on it by someone who bills by the hour.

Exceptional content modeling
Drupal's entity and field system lets you build deeply structured, relational content architectures that most CMS platforms can only dream of. Complex taxonomies, references, and custom types are all first-class citizens.

Best-in-class multilingual support
With over 90 languages available out of the box and proper translation workflows baked in, Drupal is the gold standard for multilingual sites. No plugins, no hacks, just native support that actually works.

Granular permissions and workflows
The access control system is absurdly detailed. You can lock down roles, content types, fields, and editorial workflows with a precision that enterprise clients genuinely need and other platforms struggle to match.

Viable headless architecture
Drupal's JSON:API and GraphQL modules make it a legitimate headless CMS option, letting you pair a robust content backend with a modern frontend framework like Next.js or Nuxt.

Strong security track record
The Drupal security team is proactive and well-organized. Security advisories are clear, patches are timely, and the community takes vulnerabilities seriously, which matters a lot in government and enterprise contexts.

Open source with no vendor lock-in
You own your data, your code, and your hosting. There's no monthly SaaS bill that scales with your content volume, and you can move between hosting providers without rewriting anything.
Book a meeting with us to discuss how we can help or fill out a form to get in touch
Join the growing list of successful migrations
Case Study
View Case StudyMigrating hundreds of thousands of pages, re-platforming and extending for the leading composable AI integration platform

Case Study
View Case StudyFrom Sanity overages to instantaneous publishing, we brought Mario Testino into the fast lane, and did it in style.

Case Study
View Case StudyHelping the UAE's most prolific Pay in 4 merchants scale their design system and composable infrastructure.

Case Study
View Case StudyHow we helped the fastest growing online cycling community, push the editorial velocity to new heights.
