Reimagining Community Engagement on HubSpot: How Salted Stone Delivered for Medisolv

They had a clear vision: replicate the kind of functionality offered by community platforms like Lithium (used by HubSpot for their own community), but do it natively on HubSpot’s Content Hub and CRM. That meant no reliance on third-party tools, no middleware, and no compromise on design or usability.

This was a tall order. HubSpot’s native tools weren’t designed for community forums, ideas boards, or user-driven content moderation. Medisolv needed:

• A forum where users could post questions and start threads.
• A way to upvote, comment, and flag content.
• Moderator tools and automated notifications.
• Azure SSO to restrict access to verified product users.
• Seamless integration with HubSpot CRM to track and enrich customer engagement data.

And they needed it all to look and feel like their existing website.

The Solution

Salted Stone approached the engagement with our cross-disciplinary “multi-hub mindset”—bringing together strategists, developers, UX designers, and HubSpot architects to think beyond the CMS.

We kicked off with intensive discovery and co-planning sessions. Together with Medisolv’s internal stakeholders, we defined core functionality and mapped out key user stories. From these, we created detailed entity relationship diagrams (ERDs) to visualize how custom objects, associations, and workflows would need to interact within HubSpot’s ecosystem.

Key Technical Solutions

• Custom Objects & Associations: Each community post was implemented as a custom object in HubSpot. Replies were linked objects, and upvotes were managed via associations and counter properties.
• SSO Authentication: We implemented login security through Microsoft Azure SSO, ensuring only authorized Medisolv users could access the hub.
• Automation & Moderation: Using HubSpot workflows, we built automated notifications for new posts, flagged content, and upvote thresholds. Moderators received real-time alerts to maintain community standards.
• CRM Integration: All engagement activity wrote back to the CRM, allowing Medisolv to segment users by activity level, feature interest, and topic engagement.
• Frontend Customization: Our development team created a seamless front-end user experience on HubSpot CMS, styled to match Medisolv’s existing digital presence and optimized for performance.
  
  

The Results

The Medisolv Community Hub launched in Q2 of 2024 and is already demonstrating strong traction—both in terms of user engagement and operational efficiency.

Initial Engagement Metrics:

• 250+ threads created within the first 30 days
• 60% of registered users have posted or interacted with content
• 47% increase in time on site versus traditional help center resources
• 22% decrease in customer support tickets among engaged users
  
  

Beyond the numbers, the project succeeded in fundamentally reshaping how Medisolv supports and engages its user base.

The Impact

While the Community Hub is still in its early lifecycle, the impact is already clear across three dimensions: customer success, marketing enablement, and product development.

Customer Success

By enabling peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, the Community Hub has deflected support tickets and created a resource-rich environment for self-service education. Users can search previously solved issues, connect with others facing similar challenges, and elevate recurring pain points—without waiting for direct support.

Marketing Enablement

Because all user interactions are tied to CRM records, Medisolv can now segment users by feature interest, content engagement, and community behavior. These insights power more relevant campaigns, lifecycle emails, and event invites. The community is not just a support asset—it’s a new channel for marketing intelligence.

Product Development

Perhaps the most valuable outcome is the real-time product feedback pipeline. Users are posting ideas, upvoting features, and providing direct input that the product team can track and prioritize based on actual customer demand. This connection between product and user voice will guide future roadmap decisions.

Quality of Execution

We believe this project exemplifies what can be achieved when strategic intent and technical innovation converge within the HubSpot ecosystem.

Salted Stone’s approach emphasized:

• User-Centered Design: From login flow to post interactions, we focused on usability and accessibility.
• Platform Optimization: The site meets Google’s Core Web Vitals benchmarks despite the heavy use of custom objects and API calls.
• Enablement & Training: We provided in-depth documentation, training videos, and live walkthroughs so Medisolv’s internal team could confidently manage and scale the community on their own.
• Future-Proofing: The object-based architecture allows for additional features like badges, reputation scores, and gamification in future sprints.

Conclusion

The Medisolv Community Hub project challenged us to think beyond what Content Hub typically enables. By combining creative design, strategic planning, and technical engineering, Salted Stone helped deliver a fully functional, CRM-integrated, SSO-secured community experience inside HubSpot.

It wasn’t easy—but it’s exactly the kind of puzzle we love to solve.

Would we do it again? In a heartbeat. Because building something this impactful isn’t just rewarding—it redefines what’s possible on HubSpot.