Seven language markets off WordPress. Zero downtime.
An autonomous mapping company whose website sat outside its CRM, across seven language markets. Now its marketing team runs all seven.
- Industry
- LiDAR and autonomous mapping
- Platform
- WordPress to HubSpot CMS
- Scope
- 7 language markets, 68 resources
- Project lead
Harry Spicer-Short- Award
- 2026 Impact Awards
01 The briefMove Emesent off WordPress entirely, rebuild every page on HubSpot CMS, and connect the site to the CRM across all seven language markets, without a day of downtime.
A website and a CRM in two different worlds.
Emesent builds autonomous drone platforms and LiDAR mapping for places people cannot safely go. Its website sold into seven language markets from WordPress, while its CRM ran in HubSpot.
The website is a critical part of their lead generation, and it sat on a different platform from the CRM it was meant to feed. Head of Marketing Stuart Hill: There was that disconnect in the two platforms.
Changing it meant an agency. Anytime we needed to do anything other than add some new content … we had to go to them.
The platform itself involved a lot of plugins and a lot of development time, and it wasn't intuitive
, and across seven markets every change cost more and took longer.
Nothing forced the change, because both halves worked. The site published and the CRM held the leads. What was missing was the join between them, and the capability to make it was sitting unused in the HubSpot account Emesent already had. It made no sense to keep the two separate when we rely so much on the integration between the two.
Four things had to be true first
- Publish without an agency. The marketing team ships pages, events and content on its own.
- One form in every language. A lead from Japan and a lead from Germany look the same in the CRM.
- Keep what search has earned. Every page moves, unlisted ones included, with a redirect behind it.
- Cut over without anyone noticing. No downtime, and nothing for the wider business to relearn.
One portal, seven markets.
Five jobs in order. Structure and templates came before translation, and translation before a single page moved, so each layer had clean inputs.
Rebuild the site on HubSpot CMS
Every page, unlisted ones included, rebuilt as a pixel-perfect replica of the original, on drag-and-drop templates the marketing team can publish with.
Turn technical content into data
Product specifications, case studies and the resource library became HubDB modules, structured content that updates without code.
One form, every language
Weglot translates the site across seven language markets on a single form model, so every market submits into the same fields and attribution stays intact.
Connect the site to the CRM
Every web interaction writes back to the HubSpot CRM for sales nurturing, and smart content rules personalise pages for Emesent's different audiences.
Turn on the AI the move made possible
With the site inside HubSpot, Emesent switched on blog post narration, content remix and HubSpot's customer agent, which answers from the whole portal.
Translation came third on purpose. Translating templates that are still changing means translating them twice.
| The job | On WordPress | On HubSpot |
|---|---|---|
| Anything beyond new content | A request to a third-party agency | The marketing team, on its own templates |
| The website and the CRM | Two separate platforms | One portal, every interaction on the contact record |
| Seven language markets | Every change repeated market by market | One form model, translated through Weglot |
| Keeping the platform running | Plugins and development time | HubSpot's hosted CMS |
| AI on the website | Hard to reach | Narration, content remix and a customer agent, live |
Every change in the right hand column happens inside the HubSpot portal Emesent already had, which is why the site could move without the CRM moving with it.
Sequenced so nothing moved twice.
The risk in a seven market migration is doing work in the wrong order. Structure first, translation second, pages third, and the cutover only once user acceptance testing (UAT) had signed each layer off.
Discovery and scoping, With Emesent's team
Sessions with the people who run the site, to map the existing architecture and agree what had to move first.
Scope: every page, including the unlisted ones
Architecture and development, In staging
Site structure, the HubDB modules, the drag-and-drop templates and the Weglot integration, built before any content moved onto them.
Templates and translation settled first
Content migration and QA, Page by page
Every page and 68 documents and resources moved across, a redirect mapped for each URL, then UAT with Emesent's cross-functional team.
Redirects validated before the cutover
DNS and launch, With Emesent's IT team
A coordinated cutover with redirect validation and live monitoring, so the site never went dark.
Zero downtime on the DNS cutover
Post-launch optimisation, After go live
Language and form refinements, additional builds, then hands-on HubDB and CMS training and the handover.
The marketing team owns the platform
Five principles we held to
Rebuild the platform, keep the look
Every page matched the original design, rebuilt on templates the team can edit, so none of the plugin problems came with it.
Get the order right
Structure and templates, then translation, then page by page migration, so each layer had clean inputs before the next one started.
Protect what was earned
A redirect for every URL, validated in UAT before any cutover, so years of search authority moved with the site.
Design for clean data
One form model across every language, so CRM data and attribution stay intact whichever market a lead comes from.
Build for independence
Hands-on HubDB and CMS training, so the marketing team owns the platform instead of joining an agency queue.
Seven language markets, and one form behind all of them.
Running one website in several languages?
CMS, Marketing and AI, on one portal.
The website moved inside the account that already held the CRM. Everything below reads from, or writes to, the same contact records.
CMS Hub
Where the pages live, and where the marketing team now publishes.
- Every page rebuilt, unlisted ones included
- Drag-and-drop templates
- HubDB modules for specs, case studies and resources
- 68 documents and resources moved
- A redirect for every URL
- Zero downtime DNS cutover
Marketing Hub
The same site in seven language markets, feeding one set of records.
- Weglot across seven language markets
- A single form model for every language
- Smart content rules per audience
- Every web interaction written to the CRM
Content and Breeze AI
What the move put within reach, and what Emesent is already using.
- AI blog post narration
- Content remix
- HubSpot's customer agent, live on the site
- Answers drawn from the whole portal
Seven markets, one set of templates.
All live on emesent.com today. The English homepage and the Japanese form were published at launch; the rest were captured on 23 September 2026.
Ask me anythingbox in the corner is HubSpot's customer agent, which answers from the whole portal because the website now sits inside it.
Four goals. Here is what came of them.
What Emesent asked for before the project started, and where it stood five months later.
Goal 01
A site marketing can publish on alone
We built drag-and-drop templates and HubDB modules, and gave the team hands-on CMS training at handover.
1
portal for the website and the CRM. The marketing team now publishes pages and supports events on its own, without an agency ticket.
Goal 02
Clean lead data in every market
We built a single form model translated through Weglot, with every interaction written to the contact record.
7
language markets on one form. A lead from Japan and a lead from Germany arrive in the same fields in the CRM, so attribution stays intact.
Goal 03
Search authority carried across
We moved every page, unlisted ones included, and mapped a redirect for each URL.
68
documents and resources moved with the site. Nothing was lost on the way, and the site's SEO was preserved.
Goal 04
A cutover the business did not feel
We coordinated the DNS cutover with Emesent's IT team, with redirect validation and live monitoring.
0
downtime on the DNS cutover. The rest of the business didn't really notice any difference
, which for a migration is the result that counts.
Delivered on time and on budget, across five months. With the website and the CRM now reporting from the same portal, Emesent also expects sharper marketing attribution from here.
Katie names the clearest result first: It has just simplified life for us, for the marketing team. It's made our day-to-day workflows more efficient. It's reduced friction in managing the website.
New content is turned around a lot faster
, and the outsourced agency arrangements are something Emesent has been able to pull back a bit
. Seven language markets now run on one platform with a single clean form model, and HubSpot's AI features are in active use on the site.
“Surely something will go wrong eventually....? Nope. Nothing ever went wrong. We are so glad we chose Neighbourhood to handle our website migration project. Moving our site from another platform to HubSpot had the potential to be nerve-wracking and full of bugs, but our experience with Harry and the Neighbourhood team proved the complete opposite. They were efficient, professional, and delivered what they promised - on time and on budget. Neighbourhood will certainly be the go-to for our next HubSpot project.”
Katie K
Head of Platforms, Emesent
Who ran it
Harry Spicer-ShortAI & Digital Strategist
Led the discovery, the redirect map, the page by page migration, the DNS cutover and the CMS training.
HubSpot Impact Award winner, Neighbourhood since 2023
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