As we've said many times, we've been a Diamond HubSpot Partner for years so when it comes to HubSpot we're as invested in the technology as it gets.
We love it, we think it's great, and there's not much out there that competes against it.
Having said that, we do often come up against a statement again, and again which used to be a major roadblock towards getting people bought in.
"You can't do that in HubSpot".
It's a statement that has haunted HubSpot from its early days when even we, as a HubSpot Partner, would openly admit it was more restricted than other open-source alternatives.
But, the HubSpot CMS has been on a rapid development journey over the years.
It's transformed itself from a blogging platform into an all-in-one website system that can rival the biggest open source development platforms like Wordpress. We discuss the comparison between HubSpot CMS and Wordpress more thoroughly in this blog.
Give credit where it's due with this, HubSpot has put some huge resource and focus into changing what the CMS can do and its growing network of partners has been supporting this development over the years.
With the creation of HubSpot's CMS Hub, some of those final "you can't do that in HubSpot" issues have fallen by the wayside, and from a web design standpoint, there's now very little you can't do using HubSpot CMS.
Expanding what you can do with HubSpot CMS
Historically, HubSpot CMS had no database features, meaning workarounds for data heavy website features, like resources sections, had to be found using the blogging platform.
This has been solved with HubDB, a simple database tool that lets you search, filter and display data, but also comes with built-in rich text, image and video features that you wouldn't get with your typical MySQL database or similar.
It makes creating hundreds of dynamically generated pages really easy, reducing the admin on your website team dramatically.
Next, HubSpot CMS's memberships tool finally gives you password protected membership areas on your site - something we and others have been calling for for a while.
By using the existing smart list and smart content functionality, this tool lets you restrict certain pieces of content to certain users. So Sales can only access content relevant to them for instance.
HubSpot CMS has also introduced a native eCommerce integration with Shopify.
This means you can add Shopify's shopping cart functionality to your site in minutes, as well as seeing all the browsing and purchase activity of users right in your CRM against their contact record.
This makes purchase based marketing a breeze. On top of this, the eCommerce Bridge API allows you to connect any eCommerce platform to the CRM with a custom integration.
CMS Hub introduces serverless functions
In my opinion this is the most exciting addition to the features introduced with HubSpot CMS Hub.
This allows us to easily build web applications, in the coding language we want to use, that automatically respond to user inputs, without the pain of managing servers.
For us this is hugely important because the need to introduce another server to process advanced information always kind of undermined the whole 'you don't need to manage your own server' message that we liked to harp on about.
Serverless functions open up a world of possibilities.
Now we can dynamically render personalised content and access data from third-party APIs.
It truly does take the HubSpot CMS to the next level and if you're thinking about using CMS Hub for your next web project, we'll be more than happy to chew your ear off about it.
