How much does a HubSpot CMS website really cost? (2026 pricing breakdown)

A HubSpot CMS website usually looks more expensive up front because the platform bundles costs that are often hidden elsewhere. Think security, hosting, updates, and some operational tools, too. But the right question shouldn’t be what’s the cheapest, but what’s your total cost of ownership over three years.

Quick note: HubSpot CMS Hub is now packaged as Content Hub. When people say HubSpot CMS today, they usually mean Content Hub.

Top-level cost bands (not promises)

• Platform (Content Hub subscription): from $/month up to $1,500/month depending on tier and seats

• Website build (design and development): this can typically be in the thousands, depending on the scope and complexity of your website and the platform you use

• Ongoing maintenance: HubSpot often reduces cost and risk here compared to other platforms, where you need to purchase separate plug-ins in what becomes an ‘assemble it yourself’ stack

Best fit for HubSpot CMS

• Teams that want speed, governance, and fewer dependencies
• Teams already using (or plan to use) HubSpot CRM, Marketing, and Sales Hub, and want one connected system

Not the best fit for HubSpot CMS

• Very small brochure-like sites with minimal change
• Organisations optimising purely for the lowest upfront cost
• Teams that won’t use HubSpot beyond the website and don’t prioritise the operational value

HubSpot CMS can look more expensive up front because it’s a platform where costs are shown line by line. There’s nothing hidden. Everything is transparent. With alternatives like WordPress, many costs are distributed across hosting, security, plugins, maintenance, emergency fixes, and specialist developer time. So you don’t always see the total until year two or three.

The key reframing here is that while some platforms like WordPress feel cheaper to buy, HubSpot CMS feels cheaper to own. That doesn’t mean HubSpot is always cheaper, though. It simply means comparisons only make sense when you compare total cost of ownership, not just the subscription price.

What makes up the cost of a HubSpot CMS website?

When you’re considering investing in HubSpot’s Content Hub for your website, think of it in three layers.

1. Platform costs

HubSpot positions Content Hub as:

• Available as free CMS tools, and
• Paid tiers: Starter, Professional, and Enterprise
• Pricing can also be per seat at Starter and has base pricing for Professional/Enterprise, with packaging that varies by tier

When you’re involved in HubSpot website costs, this is what you need to watch out for:

• Tiers (Starter vs Pro vs Enterprise — what’s going to benefit you the most?)
• User and seat needs, especially if you’ll have multiple teams involved
• Governance needs, such as approvals, permissions, and multi-site complexity
• Whether you’re bundling multiple HubSpot Hubs on the same platform. This is often where the operational value shows up

2. Build costs

This is where tens of thousands in design and development costs can become real. But the build cost isn’t driven by a comparison between HubSpot and platforms like WordPress, but more by what you’re actually building.

• Information architecture and page inventory
• Design system depth, from a few page templates to a full-blown component library
• How much, how messy, and how time-sensitive is the content migration?
• Integrations, such as CRM objects, product catalogues, events, gated content, portals, and more
• Multi-language and multi-region delivery
• Analytics, cookies, and compliance tracking and consent
• Governance, such as roles, approvals, and brand controls

Believe it or not, most teams don’t actually overpay for HubSpot. The underscope governance and component quality, and then pay for it later when they experience friction.

3. Ongoing ownership

These are the hidden line items. Ongoing costs are where your finance and RevOps team will focus most, as they affect:

• Predictability
• Risk exposure
• Internal capacity
• Speed to go-live

The costs teams usually underestimate

Internal time spent waiting on developers

When marketing teams can’t safely update pages on time, they queue endless tickets. This creates:

• Slower launches
• More content switching
• Higher cost of delay

This is where HubSpot CMS/Content Hub shines. You get a drag-and-drop editor experience that completely flips the dependency model. You can create and update pages without developers stepping in, test and iterate faster, and reduce the number of small changes that consume developer time.

This is a key operational cost level and shouldn’t be treated as a nice-to-have.

Maintenance overhead and emergency work

On platforms like WordPress, some of the hidden costs you typically pay for in some form include:

• Core updates
• Plugin updates
• Backups
• Uptime monitoring
• Performance tuning
• Security patching
• Incident response

Even if those costs fall to IT or are part of a retainer, they’re still costs you end up paying that you didn’t initially budget for.

Security ownership

With open source CMS setups, security responsibility, and therefore the costs, often sit with you.

• Patching cadence
• Plugin vulnerability
• Hosting configuration
• CDN decisions
• Incident response planning

While it’s fine to accept higher software costs if they reduce risk exposure, the downside is that the trade-off is rarely clearly explained.

Martech friction

Another area where costs are underestimated outside HubSpot is the fragmented tech stack. These create friction costs through:

• Integrations that break
• Duplicated data
• Inconsistent tracking
• Manual handoffs between tools

Even if each tool seems cheap, the overall operating model becomes expensive.

HubSpot CMS vs WordPress: An ongoing costs comparison

The choice typically comes down to a HubSpot CMS website or a WordPress website. Taking a long-term view of your HubSpot website can often show moderate to huge savings compared to a WordPress alternative.

The table below outlines five key ways HubSpot CMS/Content Hub helps you save money over the typical three-year lifespan of your website. That’s because you aren’t paying for security costs, there’s reduced need for added development, you don’t need to pay for plugin subscriptions, you get free hosting, and there are no maintenance requirements.

Based on the costs of both HubSpot CMS/Content Hub and WordPress, you can save up to £15,000 annually, or even £47,700 from a three-year savings perspective.

Remember, these are typical cost ranges you’re likely to see in the market. Not promises and not universal. These can vary depending on your needs. Plus, these costs often sit in different budgets, from IT and marketing to external agencies, which is why the total cost often gets underestimated.

Also, volatility matters. Websites on platforms like WordPress have costs that are usually fine, until they aren’t when you consider urgent fixes, incident response, rushed rebuilds, and so on.

With a website on HubSpot CMS/Content Hub, you often avoid or reduce spending on:

• Separate hosting contracts
• Multiple security plugins
• CMS upgrade projects every time the ecosystem shifts
• Emergency maintenance work caused by plugin conflicts or outdated components

While this doesn’t always mean it’s £0 forever, it does make the cost model more predictable and less fragmented.

When HubSpot isn’t the right choice for your website

When choosing a website CMS, you should be able to say no with confidence. While HubSpot CMS/Content Hub is a strong option if you value speed, governance, and operational clarity, it’s not the right choice for you if:

You’re building a very small brochure website

If your website rarely changes, it won’t influence your pipeline, and you have no plans to scale digital activity, then paying for a more capable CMS like HubSpot Content Hub may not be the best use of your budget, as you won’t leverage HubSpot’s operational advantages.

You won’t use HubSpot beyond your website

If you won’t use, or aren’t planning to use, HubSpot’s CRM platform, marketing automation, or reporting in any meaningful way to get the full connected system value, then you’ll end up paying for a complete system that you won’t leverage.

Your only focus is on the lowest upfront cost

If the primary KPI is to build the cheapest website possible, HubSpot may feel misaligned and will lose on paper, even if it wins on ownership cost and risk reduction over three years.

How to think about CMS cost properly

A practical way to evaluate your CMS investment is to separate the software cost from the ownership cost.

Cost over three years. Not month one

A CMS decision should go beyond the first year because most organisations live with the operating model for multiple years. Think of it like this:

• Year 1: Platform, build, migration, and initial enablement
• Years 2-3: Platform, iteration, governance, and ongoing growth work

Cost of delay

Speed has a price. If a new product or service page takes three weeks instead of three days, that delay has a cost:

• Lost pipeline capture
• Missed campaign windows
• Slower experimentation
• Higher internal coordination load

Cost of ownership vs cost of software

Software is just one line item. Ownership also includes:

• People time
• Governance
• Risk exposure
• Technical debt
• Vendor management overhead

When you finally consider all of the above, this is where many ‘cheap’ websites suddenly become expensive. While WordPress often looks cheaper at the start, HubSpot often looks cheaper, or at least more predictable, over time.

If you’re debating between HubSpot CMS/Content Hub and another CMS, don’t judge it by cost alone. Judge it by what it costs you to run a reliable, secure, and high-performing website for the next three years.

Also, think about aspects like developer dependency, maintenance overhead, and the cost of delay when your team can’t move quickly. Once you view the decision through that lens, the upfront cost becomes a clear tradeoff between fragmented costs and predictable ownership.

Frequently asked HubSpot CMS/Content Hub questions

Why is HubSpot CMS more expensive upfront?

HubSpot pricing is visible as a platform subscription. WordPress costs are usually split across ongoing developer support, maintenance, hosting, and plugins.

What’s included in HubSpot CMS pricing?

HubSpot offers free CMS tools and paid tiers (Starter, Professional, and Enterprise) through its Content Hub.

What costs do teams underestimate most?

In our experience, it’s due to waiting on developers, maintenance overhead, security ownership, and the internal costs of operating a fragmented tech stack.

When should I not choose HubSpot CMS?

If you need a tiny website with minimal changes, you’re optimising just for the cheapest option, or you won’t use HubSpot beyond the website, then HubSpot Content Hub isn’t for you.

Is HubSpot CMS cheaper than WordPress?

Sometimes, but only when you compare the total cost of ownership of HubSpot’s Content Hub over 2-3 years, including maintenance, security, ongoing development, and internal time.