Why HubSpot and Webflow work best together, not against each other
If you’re already familiar with the marketing capabilities of Hubspot, perhaps you are comparing HubSpot's website builder with Webflow?
The honest answer: it's not really a choice between the two. They're not competing for the same job.
Businesses we work with have discovered something: trying to use HubSpot's website builder to solve your design and performance needs is like trying to use a CRM to solve your website problems. Each platform was built to solve a different problem.
Comparing Hubspot with Webflow
HubSpot is a customer relationship management platform (CRM). It manages leads, tracks sales, automates marketing workflows, and maintains customer data. And it’s brilliant at it. The website builder is a simply feature of that system.
Webflow is a sophisticated website builder and content management system (CMS). It excels at design, user experience, and performance. It doesn't manage your CRM or marketing automation. It seamlessly integrates with all your critical business systems.
Why the platform matters
Platform choice affects everything about your digital presence:
- Quality and flexibility of your website design
- Speed and performance of your site
- Depth of CRM and marketing automation capabilities
- Cost of building and maintaining both systems
- Your team's ability to work efficiently across tools
How trying to do both in HubSpot creates friction
Design limitations become immediately obvious
HubSpot's website builder uses a theme-based approach with drag-and-drop modules. You select a theme, then build pages by arranging content blocks within that theme's structure. This works fine for standard marketing pages. But if you need pixel-perfect design, custom animations, or interactions that reflect your brand uniquely, you quickly hit the ceiling.
Want a completely custom layout? You'll need to code it in HubL, HubSpot's templating language. This requires niche HubSpot developers and there's a small pool of them. Development takes significantly longer on HubSpot than on modern website builders, which translates directly to higher costs.
Performance overhead slows your site
HubSpot sites load additional marketing scripts and analytics by default. These serve important purposes for tracking and personalization, but they add performance overhead. The drag-and-drop builder also generates bloated code. Combined, this means HubSpot websites typically load slower than optimised alternatives.
For ambitious businesses, slower website performance directly impacts conversion rates and search rankings. You're managing a CRM brilliantly, but your website is working against you.
Content management becomes scattered
HubSpot's CMS focuses on ease of use for marketers. But if you need to manage dynamic content beyond basic blog posts, you're navigating obscure menu systems and custom tools that feel bolted on rather than core to the platform.
Your marketing team learns one system for managing customer relationships and another system for managing website content. It's functional, but it's not seamless.
Scaling custom functionality costs money and time
As your business grows and you need more sophisticated website features (advanced Ecommerce, custom integrations, or complex data flows), HubSpot's limitations become expensive. Custom development requires subscriptions to higher-tier plans and still requires working within HubSpot's constraints.
You're paying for CRM capabilities you may not need at the website level, and paying extra for website capabilities that feel like workarounds.
How specialisation changes the game
HubSpot is genuinely excellent at what it was built for: managing customer relationships, automating marketing workflows, tracking sales data, and providing insights into customer behaviour, in fact we use it ourselves. Its CRM is powerful precisely because it's focused entirely on solving that problem.
Here's what organisations find when they stop trying to force HubSpot to be both systems:
Websites becomes genuinely competitive
Webflow's design freedom means websites reflect specific brands, not a template library. Custom interactions, animations, and layouts become possible without workarounds, no more compromises.
CRMs work at their best
Using HubSpot as a dedicated CRM system—rather than trying to jury-rig website functionality into it—means using a world-class system for what it does best. Sales and marketing teams get the deep CRM functionality they need without the website-builder friction.
Integration becomes straightforward
Websites capture leads through Webflow forms. Those leads sync automatically to HubSpot CRM through simple integrations. Marketing automation, email campaigns, and sales workflows all happen in HubSpot. Website performance, design, and user experience all happen in Webflow.
Each system does what it's built for. The integration between them is seamless, clean and efficient.
Teams move faster
Design teams aren't constrained by CRM logic. Marketing teams aren't limited by website builder capabilities. Developers aren't fighting platform restrictions. Everyone has the right tool for their job.
What this approach actually delivers
Using Webflow and HubSpot together typically results in three consistent outcomes:
- Increased design quality and performance
Websites finally look and perform the way you intended. Page load times improve. Conversion rates improve. The design quality matches the quality of your business. Customers immediately notice.
- Better CRM functionality
Customer relationship management systems aren't distracted by website features. Hubspot does what HubSpot does best: managing relationships, automating marketing, tracking sales, and providing insights. Teams get the full power of a dedicated CRM platform.
- Simplified operations
Instead of managing website features spread across a CRM platform, you have two systems optimised for their specific jobs. Integration between them is straightforward. Your team's training is simpler. Your operational costs are lower because you're not paying for overlapping capabilities you don't need.
Why this matters for your 2026 planning
Budget planning season is the time to ask whether your systems actually serve your needs or just sort of work in a compromised way.
HubSpot's integrated website builder appeals to businesses wanting everything in one place. That appeal is real. But integration and optimisation aren't the same thing. A system that does everything adequately isn't the same as systems that each excel at their job.
The businesses gaining real competitive advantage aren't the ones trying to make their CRM do website work and their website do CRM work. They're the ones using each system for what it was designed to do, then connecting them efficiently.
If you're already using HubSpot for CRM and marketing automation, migrating your website to Webflow isn't switching platforms. It's completing your stack with the right tool for the job.
Book a discovery call to explore how Webflow and HubSpot work best together for your business.
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FAQs
Yes. We seamlessly connect Webflow to enterprise systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, and custom APIs. More reliable than WordPress plugins, more powerful than Squarespace options, these are enterprise-grade integrations that scale with your business operations and ambitious growth plans.
Squarespace templates limit your growth potential and brand differentiation compared to Webflow. As your requirements become sophisticated, you'll hit walls that Squarespace can't overcome. Webflow grows with your ambitions, providing unlimited design freedom and enterprise capabilities without platform constraints.
WordPress can become a maintenance nightmare with plugin conflicts, security vulnerabilities, and performance issues that cost businesses leads and revenue. Webflow eliminates these problems with professional reliability built in. No plugin conflicts, no security patches, no performance degradation over time.
Squarespace templates limit your growth potential. As your requirements become more sophisticated, you'll hit walls that Squarespace can't overcome. Webflow grows with your ambitions without the constraints.
Absolutely. We specialise in connecting Webflow to enterprise systems including Salesforce, HubSpot, custom APIs, payment processors, and marketing automation tools. Our advanced development capabilities using React and custom code ensure seamless integration with your existing business infrastructure.
WordPress becomes complex and slow over time, creating developer dependencies. Webflow gives you enterprise-level capabilities with reliability and speed. Your marketing team can update content independently while we handle strategic improvements. Plus, as Enterprise Partners, you get advanced features unavailable elsewhere.
Ambitious, privately held B2B and B2C companies that have a clearly defined growth strategy; businesses who need lead generation websites that grow with them. Organsations that value quality, understand websites as business assets, and want independence from developer bottlenecks benefit most from Webflow's capabilities.
Professional CMS, responsive design tools, advanced interactions, form handling, SEO tools, and extensive integration options. As Enterprise Partners, we also access advanced features and priority support.
Significantly faster loading times, better mobile performance, and more reliable uptime compared to WordPress and other traditional CMS platforms. This directly impacts your lead generation effectiveness and search engine rankings.
Yes, that's the point. We train your team thoroughly and provide comprehensive documentation. No gatekeeping: you'll be completely self-sufficient for day-to-day updates whilst having us available for strategic improvements and technical support.
Absolutely. Webflow hosting is world-class, powered by AWS and Fastly with enterprise-grade security, 99.9% uptime, and global CDN that reaches 95% of the world in under 50 milliseconds. This is the same infrastructure trusted by major corporations worldwide. We handle all technical aspects including security monitoring, updates, and performance optimisation so you can focus on business growth.
Yes, but we don't just copy what you have. We rebuild strategically to improve lead generation, site speed, and user experience. Migration planning is typically included in our project scope, ensuring a seamless transition with improved performance.
Advanced features access, direct support from Webflow's technical team, enhanced security, and enterprise-grade hosting. We're one of the select partners in the UK with this status, giving you access to capabilities and support that most agencies simply cannot provide.