It wasn’t until early 2015 that our agency was approached to build a custom site on the HubSpot CMS. I have to admit I was curious, but also a bit pessimistic about it’s capabilities. I’d gone through a quick demo of the product a few years prior and I hadn’t been all that impressed.
This time, when I started doing my research and after trying out the platform, I could tell that they had reevaluated their system and spent some time on the product.
Being a Joomla fan, it was nice to see the module concept applied combined with a drag and drop feature that was living on a Bootstrap grid to build a custom website template.
The subtle details of creating spacing while typing brackets and auto-populating semicolons or removing extra semicolons when typing CSS properties was much appreciated.
Inbound marketing tips and real inbound stories. Delivered biweekly.
Join our community of results driven marketers.
A big plus for content creators, it’s easy to update rich content and add, or rearrange new modules without diving into the code or having to update your custom HubSpot CMS template.
All in all, the HubSpot CMS was pretty slick. To top it off, I was really impressed with the speed and security.
After we had completed our new website project on HubSpot COS, the traditional coder in me wanted to backup files immediately; custom templates, CSS files, images etc. I felt vulnerable that everything was on the “cloud.” I noticed the only way to backup a CSS file and templates was to go through a manual copy and paste process. The system does have an autosave running in the background, but I’ve never been comfortable relying on something like that. I did have a few updates fail and send me back a few steps from one login to the next, and I even had one module disappear on me. But every time I had an issue, the support team was only a phone call away and they helped me out every time.
Of course, the main question a client might have when deciding to use HubSpot is, “What happens to the website once I stop paying for the monthly CMS?” When beginning a web project, they always will want the option to get out without having all their work lost.
Wouldn’t it be awesome?
In a perfect world, HubSpot would have a Complete CMS Backup tab, where the user could request some type of compressed folder of their entire HubSpot website.
Or, they could take it a step further and offer migration tools or even a migration service. They could charge a fee to migrate their HubSpot CMS website onto another platform. Of course, these services would only apply if the HubSpot website is custom built and not a purchased template. Keeping the open ended mindset, in my opinion, makes the product an easier sale, especially since our clients would be paying a monthly usage fee and they’d be paying us to custom build on top of the system.
At the end, if their inbound campaigns are done right, and the ROI is maximized, the conversation of removing the website from the HubSpot CMS, should never exist.
Keep up the great work HubSpot. At Schall, we would recommend your product any day.
