# HubSpot Content Hub to Strapi migration > How to migrate from HubSpot Content Hub to Strapi, 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: Strapi - **Type:** headless - **Official site:** https://strapi.io - **Pricing:** https://strapi.io/pricing - **Last reviewed:** 2026-07-28 ## Key advantages If you’re the kind of team that likes to get your hands dirty with real code instead of fighting a bloated enterprise UI, Strapi will feel like home. It’s open-source, customisable, and developer-centric. You get full access to the codebase, no licensing paywalls, and the freedom to shape your CMS exactly the way you want it. It is flexible. You can use React, Vue, Angular, mobile apps, and smart displays to push content. And despite being dev-leaning, it still gives you GUI-based drag-and-drop schema generation, which means you can spin up content models fast without digging into JSON files every five minutes. ### Node.js driven architecture Built on Node.js, Strapi plugs straight into the modern JavaScript ecosystem. If your team already lives in JS-land, Strapi fits right in. ### Easy frontend framework integration Pick your poison React, Vue, or Angular. Strapi plays nicely with all of them, making it easy to ship content. ### Highly modular approach Every part of Strapi is built like Lego. Add what you need, remove what you don’t, and customise endlessly. It’s great if you love building your CMS exactly your way instead of wrestling with rigid templates. ### RESTful API flexibility Out of the box, Strapi generates clean REST APIs that are easy to consume, easy to extend, and easy to customise. Ideal for multi-channel content delivery without rewriting half your backend. ### Supports GraphQL APIs With its GraphQL plugin, you get structured queries, reduced over-fetching, and a nicer developer experience with zero hacking required. ### Flexible content management Strapi lets you model content however you want, from simple pages to complex, relational structures. Combined with a drag-and-drop schema builder, it gives teams full control without feeling boxed in. ## Key pain points Strapi has a fan club because it’s self-hosted, which sounds great until you realise that means you are now responsible for every update, every backup, every scaling issue, and every "why is the server down again?" moment. Wouldn’t it be easier to use a cloud infrastructure that just… scales, instead of babysitting infra at midnight? And having to maintain a Node.js environment for your content editors is completely unnecessary pain, in our opinion. It also isn’t exactly friendly for non-technical teams. If you don’t have solid developer talent, the learning curve hits hard, and even simple customisations can turn into "let’s build this from scratch" moments. Plugins help, but not always, and you’ll quickly run into gaps that require custom development. Add the lack of traditional CMS features out of the box, and setup time (and costs) spiral fast. If you're set on Strapi, fine! Just let us look at it first so we can tell you whether it's actually doable or whether you're about to become a full-time system admin by accident. ### Steep learning curve Strapi looks simple at first, then politely reminds you it’s a developer-first tool. Non-technical teams usually hit a wall long before they hit publish. ### Node.js knowledge required If your team, especially your content team, doesn’t speak Node.js, prepare for a few "so… what does this error mean?" moments. Strapi assumes you’re comfortable under the hood. ### Limited traditional CMS features Things that come out-of-the-box in classic CMSs often need custom setup here. If you’re expecting plug-and-play page building, Strapi is not for you. ### Custom development needs If you need anything slightly beyond the basics, it quickly drifts into "can we ask a developer to build this?" territory. Great for flexibility, not so great for speed. ### Plugin limitations The plugin ecosystem is growing, but not everything works flawlessly, and some gaps still require hand-rolled solutions, which means more dev time than you planned. ### Cost-efficiency concerns Sure, Strapi is free… until you factor in hosting, DevOps, scaling, and ongoing maintenance. "Open-source" doesn’t always mean "cheap." ## 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. ### What is Strapi used for? Strapi is an open-source headless CMS built on Node.js. Teams use it to manage content and serve it to websites, mobile apps, and other frontends through REST or GraphQL APIs. It's popular with JavaScript developers who want full control over their CMS without paying SaaS fees. Common use cases include marketing sites, blogs, e-commerce product catalogues, and multi-channel content delivery. It works well when you have dedicated developers on the team. Without them, it gets painful quickly. ### How much does Strapi cost? Strapi's Community Edition is free and self-hosted. That sounds great until you factor in hosting ($20-100+/month depending on traffic), database costs, backups, and the developer time to maintain it all. Strapi Cloud now has a free Developer plan for prototyping, then Essential at $18/month per project ($15 on yearly billing), Pro at $90/month, and Scale at $450/month, each with higher entry, seat, and API limits. Enterprise Edition is custom pricing and adds SSO, audit logs, and review workflows. The hidden cost is always developer time. We've seen "free" Strapi setups cost $500-1,000/month in maintenance hours alone.