--- title: "HubSpot Customer Portal vs Memberships: Which One Do You Need?" description: HubSpot's support portal shows tickets. Memberships gate pages. Here's what each does, which hub and tier it needs, and where both stop. image: https://allgusto.com/hubfs/brand-2026/blog/hubspot-customer-portal-vs-memberships/pair-1600x900.png --- [Skip to content](https://allgusto.com/blog/hubspot-customer-portal-vs-memberships#main) [![All Gusto](https://allgusto.com/hs-fs/hubfs/All%20Gusto%20-%20Logo%20-%20Black%20-%20Transparent-1.png?width=340&height=226)](https://allgusto.com/) - [Home](https://allgusto.com/) - [About](https://allgusto.com/about) - [Apps and Themes](https://allgusto.com/hubspot-apps-and-themes) - [Blog](https://allgusto.com/blog) - [Contact](https://allgusto.com/contact-us) [Blog](https://allgusto.com/blog) # HubSpot Customer Portal vs Memberships: Which One Do You Need? Oct 17, 2026 Share A member renews, clicks through to the member resource library, and lands on a plain gray sign-in page with nobody's logo on it. They forget the password, and the reset email that arrives looks like it came from a stranger. That's the moment an association or member organization finds out how HubSpot portals work, and it usually starts with a search for "HubSpot customer portal" that makes things worse. ![Default HubSpot sign-in page next to a branded theme sign-in page](https://allgusto.com/hs-fs/hubfs/brand-2026/blog/hubspot-customer-portal-vs-memberships/pair-1600x900.png?width=1600&height=900&name=pair-1600x900.png) Demo brand, not a client. If you came out of that search more confused, that is not a you problem. HubSpot has two features that both put content behind a login, and both get called a portal. The support portal (what HubSpot used to call the customer portal) lives in Service Hub and shows people their tickets. Memberships, which HubSpot also calls private content, lives mostly in Content Hub and gates pages, blog posts and knowledge base articles behind a sign-in. They share plumbing, they share settings screens, and they solve different problems. This post covers what each one does, which hub and tier each needs, where both of them stop, and how a member organization with tiers, chapters, committees and renewals should pick, including why Professional runs out at two access groups. ## Two features, one confusing name HubSpot renamed the thing everyone searches for and kept the old name in the menu, which is a bold move. The setup article, [Set up a support portal](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/inbox/set-up-a-support-portal), says it covers "the updated support portal experience, which replaces the legacy customer portal," and the old article is now [Manage customer portal settings (legacy)](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/inbox/manage-customer-portal-settings). The menu still reads Service \> Customer Portal. Memberships has the same split: the KB calls it private content and [access groups](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/website-pages/require-member-registration-to-access-private-content), and the developer docs call it [Memberships](https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/cms/start-building/features/memberships/overview). The support portal also runs on memberships under the hood, so the real question is whether you want HubSpot's prebuilt ticket app on top of memberships, or your own pages. [![HubSpot Knowledge Base note: this article applies to the updated support portal experience, which replaces the legacy customer portal.](https://allgusto.com/hs-fs/hubfs/brand-2026/blog/hubspot-customer-portal-vs-memberships/kb-support-portal-replaces-legacy.png?width=1544&height=468&name=kb-support-portal-replaces-legacy.png)](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/inbox/set-up-a-support-portal) HubSpot's setup article for the support portal says it replaces the legacy customer portal. ## What the support portal actually does The support portal is a help desk with a login, and it is very good at being exactly that. HubSpot's setup article is blunt about scope: "Only tickets will appear in the support portal." Conversations that never became a ticket do not show up. If you have Sensitive Data settings on, attachments cannot be opened from the portal either. Access runs through the same access groups memberships use, and that brings in the cap most member organizations hit first. Per the [access groups article](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/website-pages/require-member-registration-to-access-private-content), Professional accounts can have up to two access groups and Enterprise accounts up to 100. Two is enough for "members" and "staff." It is not enough for a group per membership tier, let alone per chapter or committee, so if your org chart has more than two boxes, read that number twice before you pick a tier. Ticket visibility has quietly gotten better. The setup article lists three customer ticket permission options. A contact can see only the tickets associated with their own contact record. Or they can see all tickets from their primary company, plus their own. Or you can let selected customers see company tickets, where only contacts who match property filters you define get the company view. For a member organization, that third option is the one that maps to real life: the primary contact at a member company sees every ticket for the account, and everyone else sees their own. The [legacy settings article](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/inbox/manage-customer-portal-settings) adds replies, CSV export, a support form, up to 10 ticket property columns, basic theming, and the option to relabel "Tickets" as Orders, Cases or Requests. ## What memberships actually do Memberships are a velvet rope, and HubSpot sells you the rope, not the party. You create access groups, put contacts in them, and mark pages, blog posts or knowledge base articles as requiring membership. HubSpot sends registration emails, contacts set a password, and from then on they sign in at the same paths on every HubSpot site with memberships, `/_hcms/mem/login` and `/_hcms/mem/logout`, per the [developer docs](https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/cms/start-building/features/memberships/overview). Access groups come in two kinds, according to the [access groups article](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/website-pages/require-member-registration-to-access-private-content): static, where you add contacts or static segments by hand, and dynamic, where contacts join automatically based on filters. Dynamic groups are the ones a member organization wants, because a filter on membership status or tier means a lapsed renewal drops someone out of the gated resource library without anyone touching a list. A few other limits in that article matter more than they look. Private content only works on connected subdomains, not default HubSpot domains like hs-sites.com. Each contact gets at most five membership emails a day, and HubSpot notes that password-protected content is kept out of search but not encrypted. Sign-in is flexible. You can use email and password, social logins with Google or Facebook (the developer docs cover the `membership_social_logins` module), or [single sign-on for private content](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/website-pages/set-up-single-sign-on-sso-for-private-content) through SAML or OpenID Connect. The SSO article notes that new JWT applications were sunset on February 5, 2025, that SSO can be configured for one HubSpot-hosted subdomain per identity provider account, and that when SSO is on, login pages are handled by your identity provider instead of HubSpot. What memberships give you out of the box is a gate and some system pages. What they do not give you is anything on the other side of the gate. The pages members land on are whatever you build. The developer docs make that explicit: once a visitor is logged in, "the developer who created the private content can render data about the logged in contact using data from the CRM." Can. Not does. [![HubSpot Knowledge Base: Professional accounts can have up to two access groups, and Enterprise accounts up to 100.](https://allgusto.com/hs-fs/hubfs/brand-2026/blog/hubspot-customer-portal-vs-memberships/kb-access-group-limits.png?width=1544&height=398&name=kb-access-group-limits.png)](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/website-pages/require-member-registration-to-access-private-content) Access group limits from HubSpot's private content article: two on Professional, 100 on Enterprise. ## Which hub and tier each needs This is where the invoice lives, so it is worth getting exactly right. The table comes straight from the KB articles linked in each row. List prices are left out on purpose: HubSpot's [Content Hub pricing page](https://www.hubspot.com/pricing/content) would not load its pricing data when I opened it, and tier prices change often enough that you should read them off the page yourself on the day you buy. | | Support portal (formerly customer portal) | Memberships (private content) | | --- | --- | --- | | Hub and tier | Service Hub Professional or Enterprise ([support portal KB](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/inbox/set-up-a-support-portal)) | Content Hub Professional or Enterprise for pages and blog posts; Service Hub Professional or Enterprise for knowledge base articles and customer portals ([access groups KB](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/website-pages/require-member-registration-to-access-private-content)) | | Legacy plans | Legacy customer portal still documented, migration recommended ([legacy KB](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/inbox/manage-customer-portal-settings)) | Legacy CMS Hub Professional does not support memberships; legacy Marketing Hub Enterprise can gate pages and blog posts (access groups KB) | | What members see | Their tickets, and optionally their company's tickets | Whatever pages you build | | Access groups | Uses private content access groups or self-registration | Professional up to 2, Enterprise up to 100 | | SSO | Service Hub Pro or Enterprise, for knowledge base and customer portals ([SSO KB](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/website-pages/set-up-single-sign-on-sso-for-private-content)) | Content Hub Pro or Enterprise, for blogs, landing pages and website pages (SSO KB) | | Domain | Connected domain; system domains will not send membership emails | Connected subdomain set as primary or secondary for the content type | | CRM data on the page | Ticket properties you choose, up to 10 columns | Contacts, companies, deals, tickets, quotes and line items on private pages; custom objects need Content Hub Enterprise ([CRM objects docs](https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/cms/start-building/features/data-driven-content/crm-objects)) | The legacy line is the trap. If your account still says CMS Hub Professional, memberships are not available, full stop, and HubSpot's article says you need Content Hub Professional or Enterprise instead. Plenty of member organizations bought their HubSpot website years ago and never looked at the plan name again. Look before you plan a members area, not after. ## Where both stop: deals, company records and custom objects This is the part of the brochure HubSpot leaves blank. A member organization wants logged-in members to see something other than tickets: their membership record and renewal date, their company's dues invoices, the committees they sit on, chapter rosters, maybe registrations held in a custom object. Neither feature does that on its own. The support portal is tickets. A 2023 Community answer from HubSpot staff in [Can Custom Objects be displayed in the Customer Portal](https://community.hubspot.com/t/can-custom-objects-be-displayed-in-the-customer-portal/92766) said it was "not possible to display Custom Objects in the Customer Portal." That answer is old, and the portal has changed since. HubSpot hasn't published anything newer, and the current setup article still lists only tickets. Memberships can do it, technically, because HubL can pull CRM records onto private pages. The [CRM objects developer docs](https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/cms/start-building/features/data-driven-content/crm-objects) list contacts, companies, deals, tickets, quotes and line items as available on pages that require a password or membership login, and custom objects on Content Hub Enterprise. The catch is in the verb again. Someone has to build those pages. The thread [Creating a Customer Portal Beyond Tickets: Rendering CRM Data in HubSpot CMS](https://community.hubspot.com/t/creating-a-customer-portal-beyond-tickets-rendering-crm-data-in-hubspot-cms/86626) is a good snapshot: the answer from someone who had built these was that the pages "need to be almost completely custom made by a developer," with `crm_associations` and `crm_objects` doing the heavy lifting. In [User Portal](https://community.hubspot.com/t/user-portal/108185), a builder trying to give parents access to their children's records concluded, "It seems a custom layer is required to achieve this." The gate is the easy part. The hard part is deciding which member sees which record, which properties are safe to show, what happens when a contact belongs to two member companies, and what the page does when a record should not be visible. Get that wrong and you have built a very nice-looking way to show one member company another's dues. That is architecture and access design. It is not something a theme or a settings toggle answers, and anyone selling it as one is skipping the hard part. ## Picking one for an association: tiers, chapters, committees and renewals Most HubSpot for associations questions come down to the same handful of jobs, and each one points at a specific feature and tier. Match yours to a row. | If your members need to... | Use | Needs | | --- | --- | --- | | Read a gated resource library, guides or member-only pages | Memberships | Content Hub Pro or Enterprise | | Get different content by membership tier (for example, standard vs premium) | Memberships with one access group per tier | Content Hub Pro covers two groups in total; more tiers need Enterprise | | Have separate areas per chapter or committee | Memberships with an access group per chapter or committee | Content Hub Enterprise (up to 100 access groups) | | Lose access automatically when a renewal lapses | Memberships with dynamic access groups filtered on membership status | Content Hub Pro or Enterprise, and a reliable status property | | Ask questions and track the answers, or let the primary contact see the company's tickets | Support portal, with company or selected-contact ticket permissions | Service Hub Pro or Enterprise | | Sign in with their employer's credentials | Memberships or support portal with SSO | Pro or Enterprise of the matching hub | | See their membership record, renewal date, committees or registrations | Memberships plus custom pages built for it | Content Hub Pro or Enterprise; custom objects need Enterprise | Plenty of organizations land on both: the support portal for member questions, memberships for everything else. That works, as long as you plan subdomains and access groups once instead of twice. If you land on memberships for the gated pages, the first thing you will notice is that HubSpot's default sign-in, reset and 404 pages look nothing like your site. That is the narrow problem [Gatehouse, a HubSpot member portal theme I built](https://allgusto.com/hubspot-apps-and-themes/gatehouse-member-portal) solves: branded system pages and members-only templates, and nothing on the CRM side. ## FAQ ### Can I use the support portal and memberships together? Yes. The support portal already runs on private content settings, so the two share access groups and sign-in pages; plan which subdomain does what first. More in [two features, one confusing name](https://allgusto.com/blog/hubspot-customer-portal-vs-memberships#two-features-one-confusing-name). ### Do memberships need Service Hub? Not for pages: Content Hub Pro or Enterprise gates pages and blog posts, and Service Hub covers knowledge base articles and the portal. Watch the legacy CMS Hub Professional trap in [which hub and tier each needs](https://allgusto.com/blog/hubspot-customer-portal-vs-memberships#which-hub-and-tier-each-needs). ### Can members see their company's data? For tickets, yes, through the support portal's company and selected-contact permissions. For memberships, renewals, deals or custom objects, those pages have to be built; see [where both stop](https://allgusto.com/blog/hubspot-customer-portal-vs-memberships#where-both-stop-deals-company-records-and-custom-objects). ### Does SSO work with HubSpot private content? Yes, through SAML or OpenID Connect, per HubSpot's [SSO for private content article](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/website-pages/set-up-single-sign-on-sso-for-private-content). Content Hub Professional and Enterprise can require SSO for blogs, landing pages and website pages; Service Hub Professional and Enterprise can require it for knowledge base articles and customer portals. SSO covers one HubSpot-hosted subdomain per identity provider account, new JWT applications were sunset in February 2025, and login pages are handled by your identity provider rather than HubSpot. Images and files on an SSO page are only protected as part of the page, so a direct file URL is not behind SSO. ### What about custom objects? Not in the native portal, per a 2023 HubSpot staff answer, and on member pages only with Content Hub Enterprise and a custom build. Details in [where both stop](https://allgusto.com/blog/hubspot-customer-portal-vs-memberships#where-both-stop-deals-company-records-and-custom-objects). Working out which of these your members area needs? Tell me what your members have to see, and I'll tell you which hub, which tier and what has to be built. Business Email \* First Name \* Last Name \* Phone Number What's your biggest challenge in sales and marketing? Company Website Send Message © 2026 All Gusto, LLC - [Home](https://allgusto.com/) - [About](https://allgusto.com/about) - [Apps and Themes](https://allgusto.com/hubspot-apps-and-themes) - [Gatehouse member portal theme](https://allgusto.com/hubspot-apps-and-themes/gatehouse-member-portal) - [Blog](https://allgusto.com/blog) - [Contact](https://allgusto.com/contact-us) - [Privacy](https://allgusto.com/privacy) - [Terms](https://allgusto.com/terms) ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Derek Reynolds", "url" : "https://allgusto.com/about#derek-reynolds" }, "dateModified" : "2026-10-17T18:26:10.309Z", "datePublished" : "2026-10-17T18:27:19.000Z", "headline" : "HubSpot Customer Portal vs Memberships: Which One Do You Need?", "image" : [ "https://allgusto.com/hubfs/brand-2026/blog/hubspot-customer-portal-vs-memberships/pair-1600x900.png" ], "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://allgusto.com/blog/hubspot-customer-portal-vs-memberships", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject", "url" : "https://allgusto.com/hubfs/brand-2026/lockup-header-light.png" }, "name" : "All Gusto" } } ``` ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "FAQPage", "mainEntity" : [ { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Yes. The support portal already runs on private content settings, so the two share access groups and sign-in pages; plan which subdomain does what first. More in two features, one confusing name." }, "name" : "Can I use the support portal and memberships together?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Not for pages: Content Hub Pro or Enterprise gates pages and blog posts, and Service Hub covers knowledge base articles and the portal. Watch the legacy CMS Hub Professional trap in which hub and tier each needs." }, "name" : "Do memberships need Service Hub?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "For tickets, yes, through the support portal's company and selected-contact permissions. For memberships, renewals, deals or custom objects, those pages have to be built; see where both stop." }, "name" : "Can members see their company's data?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Yes, through SAML or OpenID Connect, per HubSpot's SSO for private content article. Content Hub Professional and Enterprise can require SSO for blogs, landing pages and website pages; Service Hub Professional and Enterprise can require it for knowledge base articles and customer portals. SSO covers one HubSpot-hosted subdomain per identity provider account, new JWT applications were sunset in February 2025, and login pages are handled by your identity provider rather than HubSpot. Images and files on an SSO page are only protected as part of the page, so a direct file URL is not behind SSO." }, "name" : "Does SSO work with HubSpot private content?" }, { "@type" : "Question", "acceptedAnswer" : { "@type" : "Answer", "text" : "Not in the native portal, per a 2023 HubSpot staff answer, and on member pages only with Content Hub Enterprise and a custom build. Details in where both stop." }, "name" : "What about custom objects?" } ] } ```