WHY UPDATE?
People are people, and so are programmers. Where there are lines of code, there will always be bugs.
HubSpot templates are no different, and a good template designer should be regularly pushing out updates.
The problem: many people do not know how to update to the latest version of a purchased template from HubSpot's Marketplace. Let's see how in these three easy steps.
HOW TO
Step 1:
Go to Content > Marketplace > Purchased
Step 2:
Click on one of the template's purchased assets/packs. It will bring up a sidebar that gives the option to "Install newest version."
Step 3:
Click "Install newest version."
This will inject a new, updated copy of the template's asset(s) into your Design Manager. The good news: the newest templates will not overwrite existing templates that have been edited or are associated with pages. If you need them on your live pages you'd need to use the "Swap Template" function for them. If this is an email template, you shouldn't need to worry about it affecting existing content unless you have some drafts or automated emails written.
[Need a little more help with your HubSpot web design? You've come to the right place.]
WHAT TO EXPECT AFTERWARD
So you clicked update - now what?
If you will notice in the screenshot below, after we updated our Everest email template (shameless plug: check out this video on what it can do), there are now two copies in the Design Manager. The updated template has a unique ID attached to the end of the name.
It is the same with modules. A template's dependent files and modules will all download with unique IDs and be linked to the updated version.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Some Frustrations
It can be a little frustrating if you purchased a large template pack and you have dozens of pages using its templates. You would need to manually swap every template to the newest one. It would be nice if HubSpot created a method for template authors to push updates to their template(s) and have a "batch update" option for the user (like Wordpress or other CMS's). Consequentially, we would need an option to roll back to an earlier version if the update broke the website.
The Bright Side
The good news is this: if you download the most recent version of a Marketplace template, your existing content won't break. Thank you for that, HubSpot.