HubSpot CMS vs WordPress - Which One Will Suit Your Web Dev Needs?

To squeeze the most out of your marketing, your business needs a proper website. And a proper business website needs additional functionalities to boost your performance. 

Which CMS will fulfill real business needs? And what is a CMS in the first place?

Why does your company need a CMS?

Content Management System is a tool to create, publish, and manage the content of your website. If you want something more than just a static website, you’ll welcome a CMS. The basic function of CMS is to enable hassle-free changes on your website. Advanced features let you create luring content and track and analyze users’ behavior.

But why should you care about it at all? 

Can’t you just focus your marketing on traditional paid media? You could, but it would be a waste of huge potential. Traditionally, companies had to pay for advertisements in newspapers or television. Nowadays, every company having its website is, in a way, a publisher. It gives business owners a great opportunity because on your page you can publish whatever works for your business for (almost) free.

So, a CMS is one of the basic tools of content marketing. Most businesses use it to lure new leads and prospects. With user-friendly CMS it’s easy to keep customers up to date and build a lasting relationship. What’s more, a website with a comprehensive CMS beneath can serve as your sales-person as well. And because you don’t want your marketers to call a developer every time they want to add a new photo, you’ll welcome a CMS in your company. But which one?

HubSpot CMS vs WordPress in Web Development

Both HubSpot CMS and WordPress are used for web development. However, they differ in many ways, starting from their purposes through pricing and execution.

WordPress was launched in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. It is an open-source CMS created especially for blogging. WordPress provides free and paid versions, as well as free and paid themes and plugins. Basic functionalities include content creation and management. Although it’s very user-friendly and easy to start, some development knowledge is needed to apply more advanced features or changes. About 450M sites are using WordPress.

WordPress may be less intuitive than HubSpot, but HubSpot was founded as a marketing company in 2006 by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah. HubSpot CMS is part of the HubSpot environment that contains CRM, e-mail marketing, and analytical tools. It enables website creation and content management. Moreover, HubSpot offers lots of built-in marketing functionalities. HubSpot is used by a smaller number of websites (ca. 350,000), but unlike WordPress that is used mainly for simple blogs, HubSpot is used for high-traffic sites (e.g. e-commerce, complex business sites).

HubSpot CMS vs WordPress: What are the differences?

Now it’s time to compare these to systems according to 8 crucial factors. Each of them shall influence your choice. Let’s check: HubSpot vs WordPress.

1. Easiness of use

Both systems are user-friendly. It’s easy to operate with the most basic functions. Neither requires its everyday users to be developers themselves.

Verdict: Draw

2. Easiness and speed of development

Easiness of use is one thing, but how difficult it’ll be to create or migrate your website in either of the two systems?

HubSpot and WordPress are both easy to start with. However, HubSpot offers built-in modules supporting creating, integration, and marketing, whereas WordPress requires additional plugins to be installed. Installing WordPress plugins often seems easy, but later, you’ll need developer skills to make everything work.

Our real-life experience shows that creating an advanced business website requires help from developers in either situation. On the other hand, HubSpot provides you with business marketing tools right from the very beginning.

HubSpot’s “drag-and-drop” makes it extremely easy to create a new site or landing page

Verdict: HubSpot

3. Security

The main security challenge with WordPress are plugins you need to implement certain functionalities. You need to pay close attention to updates of your WordPress and all the plugins in use. And as your business grows, so does your website and your needs. It means more plugins and more potential gateways and breaches.

On the other hand, HubSpot doesn’t need many add-ons. The system includes most functionalities you might need and integrates with tested third-party applications. You can feel even more secured with built-in functions like:

• Firewall
• VPN + Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)
• An intrusion detection system (IDS)
• Distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation
• 24/7 security and threat monitoring

Verdict: HubSpot

4. Support

Here the situation is simple. You cannot count on much support from WordPress unless we think about guides and solutions from other users.

HubSpot provides not only knowledge-base, but also professional support for business users (e-mail, online chat, and phone).

Verdict: HubSpot

5. SEO

WordPress provides no native SEO functionality. However, you can enhance the capabilities with plugins (Yoast being the most popular). Unfortunately, to fully use all the SEO features available, you’ll need to buy the premium versions of plugins. Also, such a plugin is another thing to manage (updates, settings, etc.).

Like other marketing features, SEO tools are included in the HubSpot system. No need for additional services, plugins, or application. You can work on your Search Engine Marketing from the very beginning.

Verdict: HubSpot

Hubspot CMS provides great support for your SEO

6. Analytics and data gathering

Again, your WordPress site will need plugins to gather and analyze data. At the same time, HubSpot not only integrates with third-party solutions but most of all it provides internal analytic tools. Plus, with HubSpot, you can easily perform A/B testing to improve your website.

Verdict: HubSpot

HubSpot provides a limited built-in analytical module

7. Additional Functions

WordPress provides dozens of functionalities, but they’re all hidden in plugins. It means there are thousands of ways to customize your website, it’s only hard to know which one works for you.

HubSpot doesn’t have plenty of plugins or add-ons but it has many functionalities already built-in. To name only some:

• Content search
• Memberships
• Multi-language websites
• Developer Sandbox
• E-mail subscription
• Customer Relationship Management system
• Content Delivery Network
• E-mail marketing
• Live chat

Verdict: draw

8. Costs

HubSpot CMS starts at $250 per month, and WordPress can be yours virtually free. However, as your business grows, you’ll need to invest in any of these systems. Only in the case of HubSpot, everything will be done by professionals from the very beginning.

So, the confrontation between HubSpot vs WordPress isn’t always easy. So maybe there are situations when one of them is more suitable? 

Verdict: WordPress

When should you use WordPress?

WordPress is a nice solution for bloggers and businesses at the very beginning of their growth. If having a simple site and working with it on your own suits your needs, WordPress should be enough. As most businesses grow, though, they encounter the limitations of this open-source platform. Then they seek more mature solutions created for business purposes.

When should you use HubSpot?

Unlike WordPress, HubSpot was built primarily for business. It’s important because all the features and functionalities were chosen according to the real business needs. So if you already know that your business has growth potential, and you want to make use of evidence-based performance marketing, HubSpot is the go-to solution.

Migrating the website from WordPress to HubSpot

Many business owners start their company sites with WordPress. However, when the business grows, so do their marketing needs. The challenge is then to keep the content, functionalities, and history of the old website and, at the same time, make use of the new, better system. In other words, how to migrate from WordPress to HubSpot.

You may wonder if such migration is possible at all. Fortunately, there are solutions to do it. With simple websites, WordPress plugins can help. Also, since October 2020, you can use the new migration process for WordPress implemented by HubSpot. It works well for blog posts, but migrating more advanced features may be challenging.

Most companies that decide to migrate to HubSpot, usually have reached a higher level of website complexity. Then experienced HubSpot developers will solve the problem. These professionals make sure that your new website works exactly the way you need and that nothing gets lost during the migration.

Why is it so important to hire developers experienced in HubSpot migration? Business websites have multiple functionalities and your customers are accustomed to using them. You can’t risk that one day something doesn’t work the way it used to. Moreover, business websites (especially for e-commerce development) have carefully designed layouts, UI, and UX. Poorly performed migration may harm these features and diminish company profits. There are also functionalities a HubSpot developer will implement and adjust to your needs like marketing automation, tracking, or integration with third-party systems used in your company.

HubSpot or WordPress?

As you can see, while WordPress seems to be a convenient solution for beginners, HubSpot is much better for mature companies that need a comprehensive marketing tool. That’s the reason why we’ve migrated our website to HubSpot as well. Ideamotive’s blog also has been moved to HubSpot (previously on WordPress), and now we have everything under the same roof.

Ideamotive’s blog (and a whole site) is built with HubSpot CMS

Profits for us and our clients include an in-depth understanding of the HubSpot environment and thorough knowledge of the migration process. We know what works, what doesn’t, and how to make it roll just the way you need it.

So if you want to get to the next level of marketing and use HubSpot CMS in your company, drop us a line, and we’ll send you our best HubSpot developers. But if you want to stick with WordPress - there are talented WordPress developers in our Talent Network as well.