On April 7, 2020, HubSpot announced its newest feature, serverless functions. What are serverless functions? Serverless functions are bits of executable code which are hosted and maintained in HubSpot’s cloud environment. The maintenance and execution of the code is handled by HubSpot. With serverless functions, developers can implement advanced functionality without hosting and maintaining their own servers. This includes building advanced front-end website features, integrations with other parts of HubSpot’s systems, such as HubSpot CRM, interactions with external API’s, and much more.
One advantage of using serverless functions deals with website growth. As a website grows, developers spend a lot of time managing and upgrading custom code. Traditionally, platforms have had large, unified codebases that, when a few feature introduced or a bug was fixed, the entire platform had to be deployed to ship the new code. It’s upkeep like this that takes away from other projects and writing software. Since serverless functions remove the need to set up and manage new servers, it is easier to scale as the business grows. Other benefits include decreased expenses for servers and improved uptime.
Many developers have shifted to moving pieces of back-end code to serverless functions. Developers only need to upload their code and tell their platform how to use it. This allows for new code to be applied quicker and easier, improving the application and experience of your site and decrease downtime during a deployment.
While the possibilities of implementing serverless functions are endless, HubSpot suggests a few ways to start using this feature, like collecting data and storing it in HubDB or having form submissions send data to other systems.
Spin Group is excited to start using this feature. We often build external systems to sync data between HubSpot and other systems, and much of this can be replaced with serverless functions. For example, we might sync a HubDB table to a Google Spreadsheet to keep a list of locations always up-to-date on a website. Or, to sync HubSpot content with a sister WordPress site - like menus, or even HTML code like changes to page headers and footers.
HubSpot’s serverless functions feature is currently available for Enterprise customers only. We hope it will be open to all plans in the future. Be on the lookout for more blogs on our website with real examples on how we use serverless functions!