The CMS CLI is replacing FTP

FTP is an aging technology from the 1970s that relies on FTP clients we didn't build. To deliver the best developer experience we can, it doesn't make sense to continue investing resources in the maintenance of an experience that you’re not satisfied with. Instead, we want to focus on tools that enable you to do your job more effectively and efficiently. We believe that the CMS CLI (Command Line Interface) is one of those tools.

What's happening?

We’ll be sunsetting FTP and replacing it with the CMS CLI to provide a better developer experience. 

Why is this happening?

We've been listening to your feedback and many of you wanted a better experience, including:

• 2-factor authentication (2FA) support.
• Single sign-on (SSO) support.
• More useful contextual error messages to help you debug and troubleshoot your code.
• The ability to upload themes.
• The ability to take advantage of continuous integration when building on HubSpot.
• The ability to manage serverless functions on CMS Hub Enterprise.

Unfortunately, we don't have the flexibility to add useful features that you want to FTP. FTP requires regular maintenance to keep it secure and functional. This is time and energy that would be better put toward improving the developer and customer experience on HubSpot.

Enter the HubSpot CMS CLI (Command Line Interface). The CMS CLI is a recently announced local development tool you can use to watch, upload, and fetch files to and from the HubSpot developer file system. 

• The CLI uses personal access keys, a new way to authenticate that doesn't require 2-factor authentication and supports users in accounts using SSO.
• Provides the same contextual error and warning information you get in the Design Manager.
• Because it's a command line tool, you can connect it to a GitHub Action to enable continuous integration.
• CMS Hub Enterprise released with serverless functions, which grant the ability to build highly sophisticated web applications on the HubSpot CMS. Using the CMS CLI, not only can you upload your functions, but you can manage secrets and get logs for your functions, making it easier to debug and troubleshoot.

We encourage you to check out our getting started tutorial for an introduction to building on the HubSpot CMS with the CMS CLI.

When is this happening?

FTP support will be sunset on Wednesday, May 27, 2020. We realize that you may not be familiar with command line tools, but we encourage you to give the CMS CLI a try. We built it to be easy to use for developers of all skill levels. As you get started, reach out with any questions in our developer forums and #local-development Slack channel.