How Do You Move a Site From HubSpot CMS to Webflow?

How Do You Move a Site From HubSpot CMS to Webflow?

Export the content HubSpot lets you export, rebuild the templates rather than porting them, import the content through Webflow's CMS, and decide separately whether forms and tracking stay in HubSpot. The content move is the easy half. Deciding what stays behind is the part that takes the meetings.

We get this request in a recognisable shape. Marketing likes HubSpot's CRM and hates building pages in it. Design wants control. Somebody proposes moving the website and keeping everything else.

That is usually the right instinct, and it is entirely doable. Here is the order we work in and the traps that catch teams doing it for the first time.

What Can You Actually Get Out of HubSpot?

More than people expect, and it is worth checking before you plan anything. HubSpot's own documentation on exporting web content says you can export website pages, blog posts and templates as HTML on all products and plans, and export blog post data as CSV, XLS or XLSX, also on all plans.

Two details shape your project plan. Knowledge base articles need a Service Hub Professional or Enterprise subscription to export, and unsummarised page traffic data needs Marketing Hub or Content Hub Professional or Enterprise. If you have a knowledge base on a lower tier, find out now rather than in week six.

You also need the right permissions. HubSpot requires Super Admin or Publish permission for the HTML export, and Super Admin or Export permission for unsummarised traffic data. In the exported files, template files sit in a Styles folder.

One line in their documentation is worth reading twice: you cannot merge all data between HubSpot accounts. Exports have to be reimported or recreated. Plan for recreation rather than for a clean handover.

What Does Not Come Out, and What Do You Do About It?

The behaviour, not the content. Smart content rules, personalisation tokens, workflow-driven page variants and anything that depended on a contact's CRM record will not survive an HTML export, because there is no HTML representation of a rule.

Make a list of every place the site does something different depending on who is looking, and decide per item whether it moves, changes, or goes away. In our experience about half of it turns out to be unused, a quarter can be rebuilt more simply, and the rest is a genuine decision.

The other thing that does not come out cleanly is the design. HubSpot's templates carry HubL and module structure that has no Webflow equivalent. Trying to port them is slower than rebuilding, and you inherit years of compromises. Treat this as a rebuild with a content migration attached.

How Should You Model the Content Before You Import?

Model first, import second, and never let the export file dictate your structure. A blog export gives you a flat table. Your Webflow CMS wants collections, reference fields and a sensible relationship between posts, authors and categories.

Start from the reader's view. What are the genuinely distinct content types, what fields does each need, and which of those fields are actually used on more than a handful of items? Fields that exist because someone once needed them are the main source of CMS bloat.

Get the references right before the first import. Authors and categories should be their own collections with reference fields pointing at them, not repeated text on every post. Retrofitting that after a thousand items are in is genuinely painful. We covered the thinking in modelling content so it still works in three years.

What Is the Fastest Way to Get Content Into Webflow?

CSV import for a straightforward one-off, the Data API when the volume or the shape demands it. CSV is fine for a few hundred posts with simple fields, and the work is in cleaning the file rather than in the import itself.

For anything larger or messier, script it. Webflow's Data API has a bulk create endpoint for collection items which can create up to 100 items in a request, requires name and slug in the field data for each item, and needs the CMS write scope on your token. If you are working across locales you can pass locale identifiers in the same call.

Two practical notes from doing this. Respect the rate limiting headers Webflow returns rather than hammering and handling the 429 afterwards, because a half-finished import is worse than a slow one. And run the whole thing against a duplicate of the site first, so the first real run is the second run.

What Happens to Forms, Lists and Workflows?

They can stay exactly where they are, and for most teams they should. HubSpot documents embedding its forms on external, non-HubSpot-hosted sites, either by pasting the form embed code into an existing page or by linking to a standalone form page.

The condition attached matters. HubSpot's documentation is explicit that the tracking code must be installed on the external page for form analytics to work, and that without the tracking code on a page it cannot track traffic, page views, visitor activity or site events from it. If you host whole domains or subdomains externally, those domains have to be added in your HubSpot settings.

There is a second route documented too. The non-HubSpot forms tool collects submissions from forms you did not build in HubSpot, again requiring the tracking code on the page. That is the option if you want Webflow's native forms and HubSpot's records.

Choose deliberately rather than by default. Embedded HubSpot forms keep your workflows untouched and cost you some styling control. Native Webflow forms give you the design you want and put an integration between the submit button and the CRM.

How Do You Protect Search Traffic Through the Switch?

Map every URL before launch and redirect permanently. Google's documentation on site moves recommends server-side permanent redirects, naming HTTP 301 and 308, and says to keep them for as long as possible, generally at least one year.

Two HubSpot-specific traps here. Blog URL structures often carry a prefix or a topic path that you will be tempted to tidy up during the rebuild, and tidying URLs turns a hosting move into a full URL migration. If you can keep the paths identical, do. Every change is a redirect you have to get right.

The second is that HubSpot-hosted subdomains, the classic case being a blog on a subdomain, sometimes get consolidated into the main domain during a move. That is a domain change in Google's terms and needs the Change of Address tool, which Google documents as being for moving from one domain or subdomain to another. Submit the new sitemap once redirects are live.

Expect the reprocessing to take time rather than to flip. Google says medium-sized sites can take a few weeks or more before new URLs start showing instead of old ones. Our Webflow-specific notes on the mechanics are in handling 301 redirects in Webflow.

What Order Should the Work Happen In?

Audit, model, build, import, redirect, launch, verify. In that order, with no overlapping of the first two.

The audit is a full URL inventory with traffic and conversions attached, taken before anything changes, because it is also your redirect map and your baseline. Modelling comes next and produces the collection structure. Only then does design work start, because the templates you build depend on the fields you decided on.

Import into a staging site, check a sample by hand rather than by row count, then set up redirects and launch. Verify after launch by crawling your own old URL list and confirming each one lands where the map said it should.

How Long Does This Take?

For a typical B2B marketing site with a blog and a few hundred CMS items, this is a normal project rather than a heroic one. Our usual build window of four to eight weeks applies, with the content migration running alongside the build rather than after it.

What stretches it is almost never the technology. It is unresolved decisions about what stays in HubSpot, a knowledge base nobody realised needed a subscription upgrade to export, or a URL structure debate that reopens in week five. Force those decisions early and the rest is mechanical.

Is This Always the Right Move?

No. If your marketing team is happy building pages in HubSpot and your site rarely changes shape, moving it buys you very little. The case for Webflow is strongest when design control, build speed and the ability to ship new page types without a developer actually matter to how the team works.

It is also worth being clear that this is not a cost-cutting exercise. You are usually keeping HubSpot for the CRM, so you are adding a hosting cost, not removing one. What you get back is control and speed, which is a good trade for some teams and a bad one for others. We set out the straight comparison in Webflow or HubSpot Content Hub.

If you are weighing this up and want a realistic scope before you commit, we are happy to walk through what your particular site would involve. Find us at phoenix.studio.