Your website is your most important digital marketing asset. When you get it right it helps your business grow, from attracting new customers to providing existing customers with an outstanding experience. Choosing the right content management system (CMS) for your website and your business is therefore critical. We see many businesses struggling to achieve their goals because their CMS is holding them back – from slow page loading to obstructive administration to not having the features marketeers need.
When it comes to choosing a CMS for your business, there are many options on the market. WordPress has been the most popular choice when it comes to CMS. Considering HubSpot for a CMS might be seen as a more unusual option as they’re mostly known for their brilliant Customer Relationship Management platform. In this piece, we’ll highlight advantages and disadvantages for both platforms to help you make the best decision for your website. You might be surprised by the result…
HubSpot CMS vs. WordPress
WordPress
WordPress is an open-source blogging platform at its core. It can be installed for free on your servers or by using a third-party hosting provider. It has been developed by the community over many years and has relied on cooperation and coders providing their skills for free to build it. This is both a strength and a weakness. The platform was designed for blogging – that’s all! Not for corporate websites or woprst still ecommerce but people use it for this purpose through the addition of plug-ins.
WordPress plug-ins ‘plug-in’ additional functionality. What a module to add Google Analytics? There’s a plug in. Want to create sophisticated forms? There’s a plug in. Plug=-ins are code components written by other people that add onto the core WordPress blog functionality. The average WordPress site now has nearly 40 plug-ins. That’s 40 lots of code written by other people (not checked or validated as there is no regulated marketplace!) all hoping to not conflict with each other, not slow the site down too much and not fall over when updates to the core happen. Problem is ALL of these problem DO happen. Building on WordPress with plug ins is building on foundations of sand.
HubSpot
HubSpot are fully in-control of HubSpot CMS; they pay the developer to do what they want and you have to pay HubSpot to cover that cost. It means that the HubSpot CMS has always been built following a single directed plan, properly resourced and it has been built to be a power commercial website CMS, NOT a blogging platform you can add to! HubSpot also control who can write software to be used within HubSpot CMS. SO yes, there are developers creating extra features and design themes you can buy. BUT, and it’s a big but, all of them have to pass quality control tests before they can be part of the ecosystem. This means that they are not going to bring your site down and they have been tested and validated by HubSpot.
HubSpot also built the CMS as a core Hub within their ecosystem of Marketing, Sales, Service and Operations. It’s designed to be integrated deeply with activities in these areas. So while you can install the HubSpot WordPress plug in on a Wordpress site, Wordpress is not integrated with HubSpot or with any other growth system like HubSpot is.
SaaS vs Hosted Open Source
With HubSpot’s CMS Hub being a SaaS product, there is a recurring cost that you pay on a monthly or annual basis. With this, you’ll gain access to not only HubSpot’s content tool and it covers their premium hosting and 24/7 security features and threat mitigation, updates of the system and live support (Professional and above) of the platform.
You shouldn’t underestimate the massive difference in security between a big SaaS provider like HubSpot and having your own server space and then having to update the software, the plug-ins, watch out for hackers and protect your site and the server space it sits on. Too many companies are complacent about this until it is too late and they face massive disruption and bills! So, while a cheap hosting space and free software looks like a cheaper option, it doesn’t take into account the time cost of ensuring security and correct operation.
CMS Capabilities
Content creation and layout tools
When HubSpot designed CMS Hub, they built the system with marketers and developers in mind. HubSpot CMS provides hundreds of approved themes as well as allowing you to build your own from scratch. You’ll then be able to create, modify, and add pages with drag-and-drop layouts. Because CMS Hub is built on top of a single unified database, you’ll have all the data you need to personalise your customer’s experience through tools such as smart content.
One of the great features of HubSpot CMS is the way that you can build marketeer friendly page layouts that are both beautiful and easy to use. You can build page building blocks in a way that doesn’t bloat the page code and also locks the site design within constraints of the brand. These flexible components mean that product and service pages can vary and don’t have to follow rigid templates.
WordPress was originally designed for bloggers to manage content. One significant benefit of operating a WordPress website is the vast array of third-party templates and themes at your disposal. Among these, some are available for free, while others may require a purchase. Nevertheless, when opting for a third-party theme, it's worth noting that you become dependent on the developers to consistently update their themes in line with the evolving WordPress versions.
While there is a vast array of themes to choose from, and like HubSpot, no limitations with what a developer can do through clever CSS and HTML coding the issue, what WordPress had, was that the underlying database had a single content zone for each page. The Guttenberg update that allowed a more flexible way of laying out content has helped a lot but WordPress still suffers from the need to create complex custom fields and a less than user friendly back end administration experience in order to provide a modern and beautiful front end experience that can flex to page needs. While Drag and Drop designers like Elementor have now thankfully fallen out of fashion because of the control and code issues created, there is still inflexibility caused by the legacy of WordPress’ modest blog beginnings.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
WordPress doesn’t come with native SEO functionality but it does have several plugins (some paid, some free) which can help – Yoast is one of the most popular add-ons for SEO. It allows you to score pages against the inclusion of certain items against target keywords. Yoast was transformational in applying SEO best practice onto WordPress websites. However the world of SEO has changed and hyper-optimising individual pages is not where SEO now is. Its about entity understand, content clusters and internal linking. You can use tools like InLinks on Wordpress sites but this is external to Wordpress.
CMS Hub includes a powerful SEO recommendations tool based on content clusters , as well as on-page SEO tools built into blog, landing, and website pages. The other thing is the speed and compliance to Google Core Web Vitals is typically better on HubSpot sites because of the speed of the architecture. With the native content tools and integrations with Google Search Console, this will allow you to develop your SEO strategy by leveraging data directly from Google to optimise your content for search. However a poor developer can still make a HubSpot website bad for SEO!
Blog
Creating great content is a sustainable way of attracting and generating leads. But to turn first-time visitors into customers, your content needs to stand out and educate customers. Your CMS should make it easy for you to create great blog content, and help you attract the right visitors through search.
With WordPress you are in its sweetspot, after all it’s a blogging tool! You can start blogging out of the blog and it has all of the category and tagging functionality to make it easy for your blog content to be segmented and categorised. Blog posts are fast and easy to create.
HubSpot understand the importance of blogging being at the start of the inbound movement. The functionality is good and in fact, you can use the blogging functionality in HubSpot to also create other forms of structured content such as case study sections, much like WordPress.
Analytics & Reporting
With CMS Hub, analytics are included to help you measure website performance and ROI. You might still want to use an analytics tool like Google Analytics to report on website interactions as it an provide useful information and flexible reporting that marketers are used to. Additionally, because CMS Hub is directly integrated into the CRM platform, you will unlock the power of deeper insights and be able to connect website visits to contacts and deals being closed. With CMS Hub, it’s easy to build lists of contacts who have visited specific pages on your site, downloaded gated content, or interacted with you via live chat or a chatbot, plus much more!
Some editions of WordPress include limited reporting on content, like page views, but require another solution for any deeper analysis. Most marketers choose to use WordPress in addition to an analytics tool and manage each system separately. This can create data silos where systems don’t speak to one another, and result in an incomplete picture with less actionable data. If you are currently using WordPress and are not looking to migrate your site just yet, it is still possible to gather your website data in HubSpot through installing a plugin or adding the HubSpot tracking code.
Which CMS is more scalable?
The true value of HubSpot is apparent after your website is up and running. HubSpot gives your business a full range of tools so you can improve your buyer experience, reduce your total cost of ownership over time, scale with confidence, and stay in sync without data silos. These tools are all built on the same platform and their data exists in one place so your team always has a single source of truth and the reliability of a unified system.
HubSpot uses a markup language called HUbL (pronounced hubble) which is unique to the platform. This means you’ll need a developer who can understand this language which could reduce the pool of developers/agencies available. However, HubSpot’s popularity as a CMS is growing, meaning more developers and agencies are adding it as a service.
Since WordPress is open source, you’ll likely require different plugins and solutions to create your company’s digital experience. Because each plugin used to extend the platform is built by different software providers, it will take custom development work to ensure that these tools work together and provide value for your business. As well as this, some plugins will stop being updated or maintained which can cause huge issues if you have no one to turn to. This not only makes WordPress harder for your team to adopt, but it limits WordPress’ ability to scale with you as you grow your business.
WordPress uses PHP as its programming language which is very well-known amongst many developers. This means you should have a large choice of agencies, freelance and contractors to work with. As well as being able to create custom solutions in PHP and run these on the same server as your Wordpress website (something you can’t do with HubSpot CMS) you can also use JavaScript for extending functionality on your website. JavaScript libraries and coding allows you to do a wide variety of things online but you are going to need a coder with experience of these to create them for you whether you use WordPress or HubSpot.
Hosting & Security
Website security is a critical consideration for any business. HubSpot CMS is a hosted platform, meaning that HubSpot takes care of security updates and backups giving you peace of mind as you build your site. This means that you don't have to worry about the technical aspects of website security and can focus on creating content and generating leads. CMS Hub comes with premium hosting and security features right out of the box. With standard SSL certificates, a web application firewall (WAF), a global CDN, and 24/7 security and threat monitoring, you can rest easy knowing your website is protected from bad actors. As well as this, HubSpot’s ecosystem uses verified CMS integrations so any integration you use will have been vetted.
As an open-source platform, WordPress doesn’t have out-of-the-box security features. With WordPress being self-hosted, it's up to you to ensure that your server space as well as your website is secure and reliable. Whilst the platform has a range of security plugins, these need to be installed and configured correctly as these are often how bad actors are able to compromise your site. This doesn’t mean WordPress sites are more vulnerable, it just means you need to have someone reliable to manage your website security.
The ‘Real’ Cost of Ownership
Total cost of ownership is an important factor for any business when choosing a CMS. Often inexperienced marketeers only look at the headline costs and not the true total cost of ownership when making decisions something that they and their companies can come to regret! When looking at the costs it is important to factor in all the elements of running a website. These include the following:
Comparison of Running costs for WordPress and HubSpot CMS Professional Website over 2 years based on a ‘standard’ B2B website.
One factor that is not included in the above comparison is the time saving of the people making edits to the website. If your marketing team are making changes every week (which is typical) then the better user interface of the HubSpot CMS is likely to save at least 25% of edit / add / reporting time. It would be even more if you have to use custom fields for your page layouts. If just a day a week is spend by your team working on the site this adds up to a saving of more than £2000 per year. If more people or more time is being spent working on website content then this saving is going to be much higher.
Which platform is best for your business?
WordPress is a versatile platform that has been successfully used for lead generation or ecommerce businesses (although if you have an ecommerce shop, we would strongly recommend comparing WordPress vs. Shopify). It tends to be the default CMS businesses choose because it’s popular and there are many developers who will offer this service. Developer like it because they make more money from it; charging for updates, maintenance and even hosting if that is provided by the developer. All these revenue streams are gone with HubSpot so it’s no wonder that developers won’t tell you how good it is. But for performance marketeers who want to focus on getting more leads, more sales and faster growth – WordPress has had its day.
HubSpot is a great choice for non-ecommerce websites and lead generation businesses who want to use their website as part of their digital marketing efforts. The platform brings all the tools marketers need to attract, nurture and close leads in one place. The whole system has been designed with marketers in mind, making it easy to perform day-to-day tasks without requiring help from developers.
Get in Touch
If you are thinking of changing your website remember that there is lots to consider as well as the platform. We are experienced in developing HubSpot CMS websites and importantly planning to get the best performance out of any new website. Want to know how you can create a new site or migrate your current website to HubSpot CMS and make the most out of this platform? Our expert team will be happy to have a conversation with you. Speak to a member of our team on 0333 772 0509.
