HubSpot website builder review (2026): a free website with a CRM built in

Web Building also builds websites for clients. That never changes our picks, their order or what we say about a platform. How we make money

What it is and who it’s for

HubSpot is a CRM first and a website builder second. A CRM (customer relationship management tool) is a shared address book for your leads and customers, with every email, form fill and follow-up in one record.

The website part is called Content Hub. It gives you drag-and-drop website pages, landing pages and a blog, with hosting and an SSL certificate included. Forms on those pages send new leads straight into the CRM, so there is no second tool to connect. HubSpot, Inc. was founded in 2006 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

HubSpot fits best when:

• You want a free CRM and a small website in one login.
• Your site is a brochure site plus a few landing pages, well under 30 pages.
• You expect to grow into HubSpot’s paid marketing and sales tools later.

It is a poor fit if you need a big site on a small budget, an online store, or a design you can run on another host.

Plans and what they really cost

HubSpot’s paid plans are priced per seat. A seat is a paid login for one person on your team. HubSpot says view-only seats are free, and prices are subject to tax.

These are the plans that matter for a small business website, from HubSpot’s CRM pricing page and its Content Hub product page.

Free tools have no time limit and need no credit card. The catch is branding. HubSpot’s logo stays on your website pages, landing pages, blog, live chat, emails and meeting links, and you can’t set your own favicon (the small icon in the browser tab).

Starter Customer Platform removes that branding and adds the Starter edition of every HubSpot hub: marketing, sales, content, service, commerce and data. It does not raise the page cap. You still get 30 website pages and 30 landing pages.

HubSpot also sells Content Hub Starter on its own, listed “from $10/month per seat” (down from $20) as a limited-time new-customer discount. The page doesn’t say whether that is the yearly or monthly rate. The Starter Customer Platform bundle includes Content Hub Starter and is usually the cheaper way in.

Professional is the big jump. Content Hub Professional is listed from $500 a month with 3 seats, and extra seats are $50 a month each, per HubSpot’s product catalog. Enterprise starts at $1,500 a month with 5 seats and $75 per extra seat. HubSpot’s Content Hub page doesn’t show whether those prices are billed yearly or monthly, or whether an onboarding fee applies. For comparison, Marketing Hub Professional carries a $3,000 one-time onboarding fee on HubSpot’s marketing pricing page, so ask before you sign.

AI features run on HubSpot Credits: 500 a month on Starter, 3,000 on Content Hub Professional and 5,000 on Enterprise. Extra credits cost $0.010 each, and unused credits don’t roll over.

A 3-year cost example

HubSpot doesn’t sell domain names or include email hosting, so you add both yourself. Here are three setups for one person with one .com domain and one Google Workspace inbox.

How we got there:

• Starter: 1 seat x $7 x 36 months is $252 if the promo price held for all three years. HubSpot doesn’t publish what you pay after the promo, so the last column uses the regular $20 a seat a month: $20 x 36 = $720. Each extra person adds another $252 to $720 for the seat plus $252 for an inbox.
• Domain: Namecheap lists a .com at $11.28 for the first year (a sale price) and $18.48 a year to renew, so $11.28 + $18.48 + $18.48.
• Email: Google Workspace Business Starter is $7.00 per user a month on an annual plan, or $84 per inbox a year.

Starter mainly buys you no branding, URL redirects and up to 15 pipelines. If the branding doesn’t bother you, the free column is a real option.

Outgrow 30 pages, though, and the math changes. Content Hub Professional at its $500 a month starting price is $18,000 over three years before extra seats, any onboarding fee or tax. That is the point to price a separate website plus a CRM instead.

What you can build

Pages, landing pages and a blog

On the free plan you get up to 30 website pages, 30 landing pages and one blog with up to 100 posts, 20 authors and 50 tags. A landing page is a single page built for one offer or ad campaign, usually with a form. Starter keeps the same page caps but raises the blog to 10,000 posts.

Thirty pages covers a home, about and contact page plus a page per service. It won’t cover a page for every city you serve.

Design and themes

You build on pre-designed themes with a drag-and-drop editor. HubSpot’s marketing page says there are “hundreds of themes,” and its Template Marketplace has free and paid ones.

Developers build themes in HubL, HubSpot’s own template language, plus HTML, CSS and JavaScript, using HubSpot’s design manager or its command-line tool. HubSpot’s pages don’t say which plan includes custom coded templates, so check first if you plan to hire a developer.

Domain, hosting and SSL

Hosting and a free SSL certificate are included on every plan. HubSpot says connecting your own domain is free in Content Hub. The SSL certificate sets itself up after you connect the domain, which takes anywhere from minutes to four hours.

Free and Starter accounts get one brand domain, one custom subdomain and one country-code domain. Enterprise allows ten brand domains. Because HubSpot doesn’t sell domains, you buy yours from a domain registrar and keep it there. That turns out to be a plus when you leave.

Store

The website builder has no built-in online store. Starter bundles commerce tools for payments and quotes, but we couldn’t confirm a product storefront. If selling products is the main job, use a store platform.

SEO

The free plan gives basic SEO tips. URL redirects (301 permanent and 302 temporary, with bulk import by CSV) need Content Hub Starter or higher. Redirects send visitors and search engines from an old address to a new one, so the free plan is weak if you are moving an existing site.

AI features

• Breeze Assistant is included free. HubSpot says it can research companies, prep calls and summarize records.
• AI Website Generator builds pages from prompts about your business. Paid users can run it multiple times for multiple pages, and HubSpot offers a 14-day free trial of Content Hub paid features.
• AI blog writer and AI content writer are listed among the free tools.
• AI translation and content remix (beta) come with Content Hub Professional and Enterprise.

The CRM side

This is where HubSpot is strongest. A few terms first:

• Contact: one person’s record, with their emails, form fills and notes.
• Deal: one possible sale you are tracking, such as a quote you sent.
• Pipeline: the stages a deal moves through, like “new lead,” “quote sent” and “won.”
• Automation (workflow): a rule that does a task for you, such as emailing a new lead or assigning them to a salesperson.

Free tools cover up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts, with contact management, deal pipelines, forms, email marketing and live chat. HubSpot doesn’t publish the number of free pipelines or the free email send limit on the pages we checked.

Starter adds up to 15 pipelines, up to 50 workflows and 10 automated email actions, 500 calling minutes and one HubSpot phone number. Monthly email sends can reach 5 times your marketing contact tier. Marketing contacts are the people you send marketing email to, and HubSpot bills them by tier. Fuller automation starts at Professional.

Paid accounts can hold up to 15 million contact records. HubSpot says it connects to more than 1,000 apps through its App Marketplace.

What happens when you leave

HubSpot scores 7/10 on our exit score, which rates how much of a site you can take with you. The skill needed to leave is medium.

Your website

HubSpot’s help article on exporting web content says you can export HTML files of pages, blog posts and templates and use them to import content to another platform. Blog post data also exports as CSV or Excel files. The download link arrives by email.

The article doesn’t cover media files, HubDB tables (HubSpot’s built-in data tables) or blog comments, and it doesn’t say whether images come with the HTML. Plan to download your images separately. The design itself won’t run anywhere else, because HubL themes are built for HubSpot’s CMS.

Your CRM data

This part is good. Contacts, companies, deals, tickets, custom objects and more export to CSV or Excel on every plan, with an option to include all properties and associations (the links between records, like which contact belongs to which deal), per HubSpot’s export guide. You can run up to 300 exports in a rolling 24 hours, download links expire after 30 days, and your user needs Export permission.

Your domain and redirects

There is nothing to transfer, since the domain never left your registrar. You just point it at the new host. HubSpot’s redirects only work on domains connected to HubSpot, so set up your 301 redirects on the new platform. Our guide to leaving your website builder walks through it.

For context, 7/10 is better than Wix (3/10) and Squarespace (5/10), but below self-hosted WordPress (10/10).

Gotchas

• 30-page cap on Free and Starter. The cap rises to 10,000 only at Professional, from $500 a month (Starter pricing comparison table; Content Hub product page).
• The Starter price is a promo. $7 and $10 per seat are limited-time new-customer prices; the regular price is $20 per seat a month (HubSpot Starter page).
• Onboarding fees on bigger plans. Marketing Hub Professional charges $3,000 one time and Enterprise $7,000 (HubSpot marketing pricing page).
• No redirects on the free plan. They need Content Hub Starter or higher and only work on domains hosted in HubSpot (redirect help article).
• Branding stays on free. HubSpot’s logo shows on site pages, landing pages, blog, chat and emails (Starter pricing page).
• Free is 2 users and 1,000 contacts. A third person means paying (HubSpot free CRM page).

Who should pick it, who should not

Pick HubSpot if

• You want a free CRM with a simple website and landing pages attached.
• You already use HubSpot’s CRM and want forms, site and contacts in one login.
• Your site will stay under 30 pages.
• You care most about keeping your customer data portable. It exports cleanly.

Skip it if

• You need more than 30 pages on a free or Starter budget.
• Your team is bigger than 2 people and you want to stay free.
• You want a theme you can move to another host, or an online store.

Alternatives worth a look

• HubSpot vs Zoho: Zoho Sites starts at $1 a month billed yearly, and Zoho CRM is free for up to 3 users.
• GoHighLevel vs HubSpot: websites, funnels and a CRM in one, built mainly for agencies. It scores 3/10 for leaving.
• WordPress plus a separate CRM: more upkeep, no page cap, and a 10/10 exit score. We build on WordPress every week.
• Wix: every site gets a built-in contact list, and Wix also offers Kanban-style pipelines, with plans from $17 a month billed yearly.
• Website builders with a CRM: all 10 options compared, with 3-year costs.