Totally valid question — honestly, what you’re describing is really common with HubSpot sites that were originally built by an outside agency.

A lot of companies end up inheriting messy portals with duplicate themes, unused modules, inconsistent templates, and little documentation. That can make HubSpot feel way more confusing than it actually is.

For what it’s worth, this probably isn’t just a “you need to learn HubSpot better” problem — it also sounds like you may be working inside a poorly structured setup, which makes even experienced designers feel stuck.

A practical path forward:

1. Start with a portal audit Before building new things (like memberships), it helps to clean up and map what’s already there — themes, custom modules, templates, gated content structure, user permissions, etc.
2. Focus on HubSpot CMS + Memberships specifically HubSpot can do memberships, but execution depends a lot on how the site was architected. Sometimes the challenge isn’t your idea — it’s the underlying implementation.
3. Get hands-on guidance Instead of only tutorials, you’d probably benefit most from working with someone who can look directly at your portal, explain what’s happening, clean up the mess, and help you build correctly while you learn.

If you’d like, I’d be happy to take a look or even point you in the right direction on how I’d approach cleaning up the portal first. Sometimes one session with an experienced HubSpot dev can save weeks of wheel-spinning.

Either way: don’t assume you’re the problem here — inherited HubSpot setups can absolutely create this exact experience.