Most people still get confused between a HubSpot Theme and a Template. Since HubSpot's inception till 2019-2020, HubSpot templates were available in the HubSpot marketplace for the users to download. You could download landing page templates, all types of webpage templates, and email templates, and so on. Each template was coded differently because they were available separately. And that was the downside of it as well. Each page has different settings; however, all of them were editable through the easy drag and drop option.

HubSpot theme changed the game by grouping a set of webpage templates, landing page templates, custom modules under one theme. Now, these templates are available in a package called themes. Themes are well-coded and organized for the users. Users can manage all the sections of the website through one theme.

Muhammad Aamir Aslam's take on HubSpot Theme and HubSpot Template Difference

A theme is a set of drag-and-drop enabled templates, custom modules, and global content that marketers can use to create and manage all parts of a website's content and layout without a developer.

Templates are the old way of building HubSpot sites. While Templates are technically editable by non-developers, many content creators find website Templates to be hard to work with because they don't fully leverage the capabilities of HubSpot's new drag-and-drop website builder.

What are The Benefits of Using HubSpot Themes?

From Muhammad Amir Aslam's pen, the benefit of building a HubSpot website is using a HubSpot theme.

  • It's easy to create global content with HubSpot theme because it remains the same throughout the website. For example, the headers, footers are the global content types.
  • HubSpot themes have many elements that are reusable. This cuts down on the need to build new components and saves time and money for the client or the website owner.
  • As HubSpot themes have reusable elements and contain global content, it is easy for marketers to manage the website brandings (font, colors, sizes, etc...) in one place without any code changes.
  • You can customize the pages by using the custom modules in HubSpot Themes.
  • You can copy a HubSpot Theme from one account to another.

When are HubSpot Themes Not Useful?

When marketers want to run a campaign and design a landing page, HubSpot themes won't be useful. Landing pages don't have a global content header and footer, so no use of any of the global content there. Landing pages don't follow the design pattern of the website pages. You can use custom modules of themes in the landing pages, but there are not many elements on the landing page.

When you want to build a single-page website, HubSpot theme won't be useful there. HubSpot theme will have a design for the home page, service pages, product page, team page, contact page, about page, among others. All of these are not needed in a single-page website. It is better to design a template for one page.

What should marketers do when they are faced with a choice between building a HubSpot Theme or a HubSpot Template?

There's no one right answer for all. Marketers should pick the option that is easy for them and their team to execute and also the one that meets their requirements within the budget. For example, modules within the HubSpot templates are easy to find because they live in a separate "Theme modules" section above the others. This makes it easy for website editors to quickly find the modules they need when building pages using Themes.

On the other hand, with templates, custom modules get mixed in with all of the other site modules, making it difficult for content creators to find the right modules to add to their pages.

If you want different single-page websites for different locations, templates are a much more viable option than the theme. The extra pages in a HubSpot theme are not much of use there.

The majority of the marketers go for a HubSpot Theme because they run a multi-page website. The HubSpot developers working on the website achieve things quickly and easily. The decision in line for them to make is how to choose the right HubSpot website theme. 

I got you covered there as well. Click on the link below to see how to pick a HubSpot website theme.

Choosing the Right HubSpot Website Theme