# HubSpot Content Hub to Ghost migration > How to migrate from HubSpot Content Hub to Ghost, 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: Ghost - **Type:** headless - **Official site:** https://ghost.org - **Pricing:** https://ghost.org/pricing - **Last reviewed:** 2026-08-05 ## Key advantages Ghost is genuinely great if all you want is a fast, clean, no-nonsense blogging machine. It keeps things beautifully simple: a slick Markdown editor, zero clutter, and performance scores so good they’ll make WordPress users cry into their PHP logs. If your plan is "just publish content," Ghost actually gets out of your way and lets you do that. The built-in memberships and payments system is also a win. You can slap a paywall on your content, charge people to read your mediocre hot takes, and do it all without duct-taping together 12 plugins. For solo creators, small publications, and anyone who wants a simple writing-first experience, Ghost delivers exactly what it promises and nothing you didn’t ask for. ### Lightweight JSON API Ghost’s API is fast, predictable, and doesn’t make you fight a schema just to fetch a title. It’s perfect for JAMStack setups where you want speed without ceremony. Pull content, ship pages, move on with your life. ### Intuitive Markdown editor If you enjoy writing without 19 toolbars screaming at you, Ghost’s Markdown editor is bliss. Clean, distraction-free, and actually enjoyable to use. ### Built-in membership system Memberships, paywalls, and subscriptions come built in, no plugin Frankenstein required. Hook up Stripe and you’re basically running your own mini-Substack in minutes. ### SEO-friendly defaults Ghost ships with fast performance, clean URLs, structured data, and proper metadata, without needing an SEO plugin the size of a small country. Most sites hit solid scores straight out of the box. ### Native subscription support You don’t need 3 SaaS tools duct-taped together to run a newsletter. Ghost handles email delivery, subscriber lists, and automated posts natively. ### Easy theme customization Themes are simple to tweak thanks to Ghost’s handlebars-based templates. If you know basic HTML/CSS, you can make it look exactly how you want without fighting a visual builder from 2011. ## 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. ## 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. ### 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 can break themes and integrations, and someone technical needs to handle those. Ghost 6, for example, raised the minimum Node.js to v22 and removed API behaviour like ?limit=all that older themes and custom integrations relied on. 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.