Who should build a HubSpot CMS website for a startup?

A HubSpot theme does much of the work a builder would otherwise do. HubSpot's themes article describes a theme as a set of templates, modules, global content and style settings. Every account has at least one default theme, and more are available in the Template Marketplace. You pick a template and arrange its modules in the drag-and-drop editor.

Suppose a 12-person startup has one marketer and needs a blog and seven pages: a homepage, three product pages, pricing, about and contact. The positioning is still changing after every few sales calls. A themed site built in-house suits that company, because the marketer can rewrite a page the same afternoon the message changes.

The in-house route depends on that marketer. They have to be comfortable choosing templates and configuring the theme as well as writing, and the work competes with everything else on their list. When the site needs custom functionality the available modules can't supply, someone has to build it. We explain how themes, modules and editions fit together in what HubSpot CMS is and how Content Hub works.

A freelancer fits best when the job is clearly defined. Suppose the same startup, six months later, wants a pricing calculator on its pricing page and a header the theme doesn't offer. The pages exist and the message has settled, so the gap is two pieces of code. A HubSpot developer can build those as custom modules, and the marketer keeps editing pages in the same editor afterward.

Write the scope down before you ask for a quote, and put in it who supplies the design and who writes the copy. Ask for a fixed quote against that scope, and ask to see a module the developer built that a client's marketer now uses without help. One person also means one calendar, so agree on who fixes a broken module if the developer is unavailable.

An agency fits when the open questions are bigger than code. Suppose that startup later raises a round, changes its positioning and outgrows its first site. Now somebody has to decide what the pages say, design them, build the theme and move the old content. Those jobs depend on each other, and an agency's value is that one team coordinates them.

Lean Labs publishes a scope for that kind of project. Its article on the three stages of growth-driven design describes a launchpad site covering the three to eight pages closest to the buyer's decision, with the remaining pages built afterward. It prices the launchpad, strategy and build together, at $30,000 to $70,000 or more over 9 to 13 weeks. The design step is a four-week Design Blueprint at $6,000 to $12,000. Ask whether the blueprint fee is counted inside the build range.

If your message is the main thing to fix and the site can launch with a handful of pages, that is the kind of project the article describes. The same article advises talking with customers, sales reps and support staff during the strategy stage. Whoever runs that research will need your help reaching those people. We describe the format in what a launchpad website is and the startup case in what growth-driven design means for startups.

Some projects are wider than a website. SmartBug Media describes marketing, sales, revenue operations and web services. Its web work includes moving content to HubSpot, WordPress or Shopify, along with design and development, integrations and maintenance. A startup that is moving its CRM and connecting other systems in the same project has a reason to talk to a firm that offers that range. Ask it for a price and a timeline for your scope. With either firm, the published description shows what it offers, so ask to see a comparable project it has delivered. We set three firms side by side in SmartBug, New Breed, or Lean Labs for a HubSpot website.

An agency can also keep working after launch. Lean Labs' article on HubSpot agency partners for startups describes help with pages, campaign assets, reporting and automation. Whether a startup needs that depends on whether it has people to do those jobs.

HubSpot ranks its partner agencies in tiers, and it's tempting to read a high tier as a mark of quality. HubSpot's explanation of partner tiers says a tier combines points for the HubSpot subscriptions a partner sources, assists and manages with other requirements and training. Higher tiers also have customer retention requirements. So a tier describes the size and health of a partner's HubSpot business. It doesn't grade the websites that partner designs.

A finished site tells you more. Ask any builder for a HubSpot site that has been live long enough for the client to have changed it, and ask that client who edits it today. If the client's own marketer adds pages and changes copy without calling the builder, the builder handed over a site its client can run. That matters to a startup because the message will keep changing, and you'll want to change the pages yourselves.

The HubSpot subscription and the build are two purchases. The subscription pays for the hosting and the software. The builder's fee pays for the design and build of your own site. Ask each builder whether the quote includes any software, and budget for the subscription yourself if it doesn't. We list the subscription prices in how much HubSpot costs.

Settle the page list with a prospective builder before choosing the route, so you can judge the hire against the work it actually needs to cover.