Hubspot versus WordPress

Hubspot Partner Forum Discussion on
Linked In:
“Wordpress v. Hubspot”

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55 comments • Jump to most recent comments

Jon Nugent | Business Intelligence Solutions • We recently
moved off HubSpot's CMS to a Joomla website with a
WordPress blog. The variety of designs and capabilities of
the Joomla and WordPress templates is astounding when
compared to HubSpot's CMS.

The opportunity to take advantage of current HTML5 and
responsive technology with Joomla and WordPress is
unquestionably an advantage for us. We have the ability to
redesign landing and blog pages and WordPress email
templates that aren't relegated to 3 columns and can
incorporate mobile technology.

WordPress is so easy to use and learn.

Follow Thomas

Thomas Zoebelein • I agree. I'm redesigning my website
right now and Hubspot's CMS just does'nt cut it, I'll probably
put it on wordpress as well. Haven't made a final decision
yet though.

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Rebekah Donaldson • I'm floored by this perspective being
voiced by HS partners. HS's value proposition is a heck of
alot stronger than is being acknowledged here.

I'm short on time so I'm pasting here something emailed to
a client recently:

>> Let's call a solution constructed around WordPress "B"
and the Hubspot all-in-one solution "A". The goal is to
compare A and B in meaningful ways to make an informed
decision about the platform. There are both soft and hard
costs associated with B. For example we'd be trying to
anticipate:

Additional tools (MailChimp for nurturing and contact
management? Custom config of goals in Google Analytics to
approximate conversions tracking and do A/B testing?
WordTracker for SEO progress? Hootesuite to manage SMM?
Others?)

Work process (would a developer be involved in common
tasks? for example if you're rolling out a new landing page
and need data to dump to mailchimp, who hooks them up
and is it a rapid process?)

Support (how to troubleshoot if tools/services aren't
working? I'm not referring to troubleshooting individual tools
but rather the entire integration)

Purchase cost (what is the base price to get the needed
functionality?)

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Recurring costs (would we pay per email distribution based
on # of contacts, for example?)

Look and feel (ability to customize template, forms, etc)

Compatability of new marketing system with existing
systems (CRM, online catalogs, etc)

TimothyUnfollow

Timothy Lorang • I completely understand the frustration of
web developers to get the look and feel that they want and
this is the most common complaint that I hear. Especially for
designers who have been working in WP or with HTML5.
Although I think that a talented web designer can make
some very nice websites on HS,
https://services.hubspot.com/website-
redesign/directory?portalId=20286

At least 90% of the businesses can make something that
would be just fine and work very will for them. But the big
advantage that I see in HS, that Rebekah points out, is how
everything works together. As far as the restrictions of web
design, if it is an issue, build the website off the HS platform
and connect to HS for all the other advantages.

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Lisa Ellington • When a potential client comes to me and
wants a truly responsive website, which is happening more
and more these days, I have to steer them away from
Hubspot's CMS. The CMS just doesn't support it.

I hear that a newer, better CMS is supposed to be released
and is in beta but haven't been given any details about it nor
a timeline for its release. If it doesn't have the ability to
create my own framework, I will be hard pressed to call it an
upgrade.

There are many good features about the HS CMS and you
can tweak the code to get quite a bit of good detail into a
site, but this lack of true responsive support is something
that really needs to be changed. Slapping a menu on top of
the site if the viewport is small is helpful, but as a designer,
it makes me want to cry :)

Simon Yohe • Comparing HubSpot and WordPress is like
comparing Apples to Oranges. These are not the same types
of systems, not positioned the same, and don't provide the
same services and solutions. HubSpot's Core Strength is not
a CMS platform for your website. WordPress core strength is
not Marketing Automation / Analytics.

WordPress is a blogging tool that has morphed into a CMS
that many uses to build their site. It has an extensive library
that allows you to add features and services to grow your
features and functionality on your website.

HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing software solution. It
provides tools and services to allow clients the ability to

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perform all sorts of inbound marketing initiatives, automated
marketing campaigns, and creates analytics and reports that
connects all of your marketing efforts into one place.

Remove the equation about what a client site needs to be
built in, and instead, understand and identify what they
want to achieve from a marketing and sales perspective, and
use that understanding to see if HubSpot is the right choice
for them to succeed to achieve their goals.

It also doesn't necessary matter what CMS you use, whether
it is WordPress, Joomla, Expression Engine, MODX, etc...
What is important is that no matter what choice you use, it
is configured and optimized for optimal organic growth.

FYI, we do not use HubSpot CMS for any of our clients at
this time, and our preferred CMS is MODX.

Alexandra Gibson • @Rebekah I don't think that it's a
question of not using Hubspot, but it is a question of the
capabilities and robustness of Hubspot as a CMS alone.

I agree with the other posters that Hubspot's CMS is really
lacking. It's proprietary software which is notorious for
having slower development times; it's just the nature of the
beast. Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla are superior because
of the ability to quickly add modules/plug-ins and the
opensource aspect.

Hubspot can still be used with Wordpress or Drupal (we use
it with all of our clients) but I think it's important to
acknowledge that while Hubspot is excellent in many ways,

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it is only "fair" as a site platform.

You can still use Hubspot for your landing pages, lead
management, automation, and the like (integrated with
Wordpress or Drupal) but I would not recommend putting
clients on Hubspot for everything.

Follow Robb

Robb Bailey • I second Simon's comment - why on Earth
wouldn't one use Wordpress AND Hubspot together? We are
using Hubspot for what it was built for together with
Wordpress, using it for what it was built for.

Simple, right?

John Reeve • We use both HubSpot and Wordpress. We
were using Wordpress long before we became a HubSpot
customer and we're not going to transfer 400+ blog posts
over to HubSpot. So we use the plugin instead.

Anyways, there is a HUGE difference between the two.
Wordpress is strictly a CMS. There are some plugins that will
give you visitor stats, and possibly some plugins that will do
conversion assisting. But that's it. Wordpress is for writing
and delivering content on your web site.

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HubSpot, on the other hand, is so much more. It's a CMS
with advanced tracking bolted onto it. We can use HubSpot
to analyze site visitors to see what they are doing before
they convert. We can A/B test Landing Pages and Calls-to-
Action. We can segment and send emails to our contacts to
follow up with them after they've signed up for our services.

But the advanced tracking is really the primary differentiator
for us. We had theories on how our customers interacted
with our site before they would sign up. HubSpot has
confirmed many of those theories and has helped us revise
areas of our site to help increase those conversions.

If you are going to use HubSpot for just a CMS, don't
bother. Use WordPress instead. But if you need advanced
analytics, tracking and conversion assisting / lead nurturing,
you will need something like HubSpot.

John Campbell • I'm a new partner and was asked this same
exact question by a WordPress developer. It took me about
2 minutes to explain the OBVIOUS difference between the
two on what I would consider limited product knowledge at
the time. As stated previously, one is a marketing
automation tool, the other is not. Is this seriously something
that partners are facing and having trouble explaining to
clients?

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Rhonda Hurwitz • @John, if you feel like being specific, I'd
love to know more about what you meant here:

"... the advanced tracking is really the primary differentiator
for us. We had theories on how our customers interacted
with our site before they would sign up. HubSpot has
confirmed many of those theories and has helped us revise
areas of our site to help increase those conversions".

Ellie Becker • This is a timely conversation. We are working
hard to understand what we gain and lose for clients in
various WordPress/HubSpot integrations in terms of the
analytics capabilities. And in terms of CMS...From my
experience, it's not always a piece of cake to build out pages
and landing pages in Wordpress without IT help in very
designed sites. There are other issues too. For example, the
Yoast SEO plugin for Wordpress is very robust. But in my
opinion, it doesn't provide the value of the Keywords
capabilities in HubSpot with regard to integrating and
measuring SEO as it relates to all online marketing efforts.
For a number of Wordpress-based companies I speak with
they are pretty happy with their segmented inbound
marketing efforts and it's hard to get them to see the value
of integrating with HubSpot. Glad to see that this debate is
coming up for other Partners. And I'm looking forward to
learning how others are combining the two.

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Sara Helmy • I second John - big time. We are very new to
hubspot and it is wonderful and exciting, in our experience
so far, the Wordpress CMS allows us to do more when you
focus purely on CMS. As soon as you add in Hubspots
capabilities, you literally have it all! I actually really wish
that Hubspot would allow outside CMS integration in every
package they offer, rather than in strictly professional and
enterprise. Even though we are new, I strongly feel that if
they did we could sell double and make many more of our
partners extremely happy - happy with their web design and
happy with their data!

John Reeve • I would love to elaborate. We offer an online
time, task and project management app called Intervals. We
give a free 30 day free trial. We've been trying to attribute
paying customers back to the original ad they saw on
Google.

There are two reasons why this has proven a difficult task.
First, roughly 20% of our paying customers create more
than one trial account before they convert. This makes them
hard to track. Second, they do a ton of research before
signing up for a trial account. Again, making them hard to
track.

We were sure this was the case but couldn't prove it.
HubSpot helped prove this is what was going on and
articulated what they are doing before signing up. It showed
us that some contacts are creating multiple accounts. It also
showed us how much research they were doing before
signing up for a trial.

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HubSpot shows us which pages are viewed most right before
signing up for a trial. It also shows us what content they are
reading during their trial account. Now we can optimize
those pages and generate more content to address these
trends.

Rebekah Donaldson • Remember the posted
question/comment was about struggling to articulate the
differences between Wordpress and Hubspot. The CMS was
cited as a reason to switch. That's what I was objecting to.

-- We all agree that design and conversions are related.
Clearly every client website must meet a high standard for
usability and professionalism.

-- I also agree that in rare cases the lack of responsiveness
is a dealbreaker.

-- I can't, however, think of a case in which lack of CMS
flexibility should ever be a dealbreaker.

If my team were bumping up against Hubspot's CMS
limitations, I'd think we'd gotten off track. We shouldn't be -
- and please excuse my french -- wanking too much on
design.

Again, yes every client website must meet a high standard
for usability and professionalism. Hubspot's CMS has the
elements and flexibility sufficient to meet and exceed that
standard - except if responsiveness is a *requirement*.

So I'm curious Timothy... has the following changed in light

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of the above discussion?
>> I have been struggling with articulating the differences
between online marketing with a tool like HubSpot that has
a subscription fee and using free tools like WordPress

Rebekah Donaldson • @Robb -- akum's razor

TimothyUnfollow

Timothy Lorang • Rebekah, that’s a good question. This
whole discussion, which has been very interesting, reminds
me of the story of the seven blind men who were asked to
describe an elephant. Well it’s either like a tree trunk or a
slim vine depending whether you encounter the leg or the
tail. A big part of this depends on what your job is and what
you are trying to accomplish. For example this whole
discussion about the CMS, I’m not an advanced web
designer so I tend to stick to the simpler WordPress themes
and I think, from my perspective, that the CMS in HubSpot
is great. On those occasions when I can’t get something to
line up just right or something is acting funky I just call up
HubSpot tech support and they are always a great help.
That is not something you can do with WP. On the other
hand I’ve heard others complain that they are frustrated by
some of the pre-formatted styles in HS. It seems that is part
of the CSS and there are plenty of companies in the services
section now that fix those things if it really bugs them so

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much.

This discussion has been very helpful because it has shown
those areas where experienced minds have come to
agreement and where there is some honest disagreement.
Often times objections come via a second source such as a
prospect who was told by a “web designer” that HubSpot is
too expensive. So it has given me a clearer idea of the types
of objects and how others are feeling and reacting to it.

In the end we really need to concentrate on the client’s
needs. Do they want conversions and sales? Then they need
to follow this process. Do they want to do it with fewer
headaches and measurable results? Then they need
HubSpot.

Rebekah Donaldson • p.s. I want to post about this...
anyone not want to be quoted (if need be - not sure what I'll
pick out) and linked to? I'd position you as a thoughtful HS
partner making a useful point (even if we disagree, that's
always the case!).

John McTigue • We have a responsive design for our website
coming out on the HubSpot CMS this month. It can be done.
We are also doing client sites that way now too. Stay tuned
for examples.

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The other consideration is the new HS CMS coming out later
this year (I assume - somebody correct me if I'm wrong).
I'm also assuming that's going to be responsive (HTML5?).

To me this debate boils down to inertia. How much of an
effort would it be to move from an old CMS to a new CMS,
and what are the costs/benefits? Sometimes we recommend
moving the main site, sometimes not. In either case, the
most important thing is NOT the design, it's the content. You
are definitely wasting your time and money if you do a
redesign without giving a high priority to increasing the flow
of high quality content.

Jon Nugent | Business Intelligence Solutions • The cost of
moving from an old CMS to a new CMS is more than just
about money. As I posted earlier we moved from HS' CMS to
a Joomla CMS with a WordPress blog.

We put the project out to bid and the most expensive bid we
received was for $12,000 and included site redesign, SEO,
and a number of other things that were important.

We ultimately chose to migrate our site to Joomla, which
cost $500 and purchased a Joomla template for $59. We did
some minor redesign on our site to take advantage of the
new HTML5 and responsive technology that is so important
for smart phones and tablets.

What we gained by moving off of HS' CMS is versatility.
We're changing our blog layout again this weekend by
replacing the old template with a new template that cost

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$29.

What we lost in the migration were the landing pages we
created on HS and the SEO value of those landing pages.
But those landing pages are being replace by more stylish
HTML5 and responsive technology landing pages.

We still rank in the top 1 million sites and for a company
that has less than 25 people that is pretty good ranking.

When you migrate to a new design or a new CMS, HS has a
lot of white papers that offers advice on what to consider
during the migration. Also HS has developer notes on how to
migrate off their CMS.

We also saved $3,000 a year moving off HS' CMS that was
associated with HS hosting our site. We're hosting our site
on bluehost for less than a $100 a year. The whole migration
from the HS CMS to the new CMS took a month to complete.

Steven Moody • Hubspot was fundamentally a white-hat
SEO CMS. They've built out some great features over the
years to move into the marketing automation market, and
I've heard promises of the CMS overhaul, but perhaps its
time they abandon this completely? Marketo, for example,
doesn't offer a CMS feature and it doesn't arise in
conversations, partly because the target buyers are larger
and have separate people focused on conversion versus
general website UX.

Wordpress and Joomla are incredibly robust tools. Wouldn't
it be better if Hubspot stopped competing with them for the

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CMS while still maintaining fantastic prospect tracking and
conversion accessories like the dynamic CTA?

Lisa Ellington • @John McTigue I'm curious as to how much
time/effort it took to build a responsive HS CMS.

and FYI all -- if you are curious about the "bones" of the
CMS, it seems that it is built of off DNN (Dot net nuke). A
free, open source CMS. At least some of the code
(references to the RAD menu, etc.) has clued me into that.

John McTigue • I would say it probably took our
designer/developer a couple of weeks to figure everything
out the first time. Going forward I would say it probably
adds 30-40% onto the normal web design cycle. Designers,
developers, usability experts and content managers need to
spend some time figuring out what should be shown on the
different devices and how to scale things appropriately.
Simple design is a real plus.

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Lisa Ellington • Thanks, John!
Is this built off of foxboro? 30-40% is pretty high.

John McTigue • Lisa, our site's on Brighton. I think 30-40%
is not high, since you are basically designing your site and
content for multiple platforms. There's a lot to consider, and
a lot to lose potentially if you don't. It's not about having an
attractive look, it's about which content is going to give you
the best chance to convert leads on a smartphone, tablet or
desktop. How do you deploy that content naturally? How do
you present forms that are easy to read and fill out? Takes a
lot of planning and (as George Bush would put it)
"strategery".

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Lisa Ellington • Thanks, John!
Is this built off of foxboro? 30-40% is pretty high.

John McTigue • Lisa, our site's on Brighton. I think 30-40%
is not high, since you are basically designing your site and
content for multiple platforms. There's a lot to consider, and
a lot to lose potentially if you don't. It's not about having an
attractive look, it's about which content is going to give you
the best chance to convert leads on a smartphone, tablet or
desktop. How do you deploy that content naturally? How do
you present forms that are easy to read and fill out? Takes a
lot of planning and (as George Bush would put it)
"strategery".

Robb Bailey • @Steven Moody, my thoughts exactly. I asked
Hubspot about why they provide an integrated CMS vs
suggesting WP or Joomla.

They replied that less sophisticated Hubspot subscribers ask
to have the CMS integrated into the dashboard, so the result

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is a true all-in-one point and click solution. This prevents
them from having to hire a developer, etc. - which is a big
deal for DIY'ers according to Hubspot. Apparently there's a
big enough market to justify keeping the Hubspot CMS, at
least for now.

I'm thinking that Hubspot users with a budget of around
$10,000 per year (or under) will likely use the Hubspot CMS
for the reasons described above. But for users that can
afford to build an open source based site with all the robust
features they come with, Hubspot's CMS quickly disappears
from the conversation (at least the conversations I'm
having). :)

As Steven pointed out, the open source CMS combined with
a CMS-less Hubspot account gives users an ideal setup with
tons of leverage.

Peter Caputa • What do you guys value about the open
source CMSs?

As many of you know, we are redeveloping the CMS
currently and plan to launch mid-year. The leadership and
product managers are reading this thread. If you guys could
be more specific about what features/benefits you get from
other CMSs, that would be helpful. Real stories about real
client situations would be helpful

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Lawrence Berezin • Dear Peter,

First, let me share my bias...I am a Hubspot "True Believer,"
and have been for many years. My main business uses
Hubspot. I have a WP lawyer's blog. What I like about WP is:

1. Choice of themes. For example, I love the kinda recent
Hubspot website re-design. I would have to hire a
professional website designer to recreate a similar looking
design on my Hubspot website. With WP, I can purchase a
premium theme, install it for $70 or less, and customize it
myself. I love the look of my lawyer's blog on WP.

Other than that feature, I can't image my business without
Hubspot :

- Jetpack for WP is a useful tool, but cannot come near the
feature rich marketing and SEO (old term) analytics offered
by Hubspot. I have both sites hooked up to Google, but
Hubspot's analytics are a joy to use.

-The Call-to-Action tool keeps getting better and better

-The ability to build a form, or landing page to offer a
download to a potential lead is totally wonderful (I don't like
the "download" plugins I've found for WP).

-Social sharing and monitoring- mahvelous!

-I love sneaking a peek behind the scenes of my
competitor's websites

-Incredible Hubspot "Academy"

-Super Tech support

-And much more...

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WP is a wonderful open CMS,that is available to all for a
minimal investment. If affordable to me and my client,
Hubspot is by far-and-away my absolute first choice.

I would love any thing Hubspot could do to make its design
more customizable would be terrific.

Peter Caputa • Thanks for the thorough response, Lawrence.

As many of you know, we are working on re-architecting our
CMS. We've been rolling this out. The new email tools and
new landing page tools are live for some customers. These
two things are built on the new CMS. (Blog tool is next.
Then, full CMS with page manager, etc.)

This new COS is architect-ed much like other CMSs where
designs can be implemented much more smoothly. With the
launch, we are launching a "template marketplace". You can
see the beginnings of it here:
https://marketplace.hubspot.com/65360/templates

What else are we missing to make you guys consider using
the HubSpot CMS over other alternatives?

Lawrence Berezin • My take on Hubspot vs. WP

http://youtu.be/_hnOCUkbix0

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Follow Jon

Jon Nugent | Business Intelligence Solutions • What I value
about open source CMS' is the ability to use high quality and
visually appealing templates that take advantage of the fast
moving mobile landscape.

For example, sinced we moved off of HS CMS in December
we've changed our blog template twice to help our clients
use the content we provide in a more purposeful and mobile
way. For example, our new blog site,
www.busintellsol.com/blog takes advantage of the versitility
of WordPress templates and technology that wasn't available
to us before.

Another value I see in open source CMS' is the thousands of
open source developers whose sole purpose is to make their
templates more visually and technically appealing.

The other marketing automation vendors as stated before
have not built a CMS but have developed capabiliites to
better use and connect with open source software.

Since you mentioned that the leadership and product
managers have been reading this thread, I would imagine
that the cost of building and maintaining a proprietary CMS
along with a marketing automation applicaiton have crossed
their minds. To me this will result in added development,
hiring and operational cost which will be passed on to the
customer and add little value.

I understand that HS could recoup the cost of developiing a

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CMS by convincing customers to host their site with HS but
it's not long before customers realize that they are paying
an extreamly high cost for a proprietary CMS hosted by HS.

Lastly Joomla and WordPress are free. The templates are
anywhere between free and $100 and business people love
free.

Lisa Ellington • When I am building custom websites, I don't
use an open source CMS, I use Expression Engine. Here are
some of the top features in EE, which I'd put on my wish list
for the Hubspot CMS.

1. Multiple templates without having to jump through hoops.

2. The ability to have complete control of the framework. I
want to create a truly responsive website and control the
grid design completely.

3. I'd like to be able to version the site or at the very least
create a sandbox duplicate the site so that its easy for me to
make changes without affecting the live site.

If anyone has done a complete re-design to an existing HS
site that is over 50+ pages and it hasn't been horribly
painful, I would love to hear how they did it.

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Ellie Becker • For Pete...Thinking of HS hosted sites/Basic
users/sites custom built on the HS CMS...When the new HS
CMS launches, will existing sites be upgradeable?

Dharmesh Shah • Fascinating thread. I was riveted the
whole way through.

A couple of quick notes:

1. I'm generally a huge fan of open source and also a big fan
of WordPress. It's great for a lot of things. The challenge
with WP for much of the market that we sell to is that there
are *so* many options. Great options for templates. Great
plugins for SEO. Great plugins for forms. The reason we
decided to build something as part of HubSpot is that we can
then simplify so much of this.

2. The other BIG advantage of having a CMS that is part of
the platform is that we can then integrate functionality in
much smoother ways. Though some of that is possible via
the HubSpot WordPress plugin, since we don't control the UX
of WP, there are limits to what we can do.

3. Yes, the new Content Optimization System in HubSpot
has been designed from the get-go to be responsive,
designer-friendly and much, much cleaner.

There are trade-offs and pros and cons to both sides
(WordPress vs. HubSpot). If you're solving for raw flexibility
as the primary consideration, it's hard to argue against
WordPress. If you're taking a broader, business-oriented
view, HubSpot likely has the edge.

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But, as the CTO of HubSpot, I'm understandably biased.

Follow Simon

Simon Yohe • I think the one point that was just hit was
"simplify"...

When the new CMS rolls out, those companies who simply
need to have a simple corporate, marketing site, the
HubSpot platform would make the most sense. The ability to
integrate HubSpot features is a huge advantage as it will
simplify their ability to update content on their site.
However...

For websites where there needs to be additional functionality
that a general CMS cannot provide outside of its core, it
makes it difficult not to go with a 3rd party platform and
instead look to integrate HubSpot features manually or
through other tools.

For many, you need to simply weight the pros and cons of
each, and decide what action you must take for your clients.

On a separate note... I think another thing that should be
brought up in this discussion it is simply not "WordPress vs
HubSpot". WordPress is just one of many CMS platforms
that can be used. It is important to understand that the core
part of this conversation is not simply whether to use
WordPress or HubSpot, it was more about understanding the
differences between using an outside CMS and integrating
with HubSpot then simply using the built in CMS with

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HubSpot.

As previously mentioned in another comment earlier on, we
currently do not use the internal CMS for our clients sites,
and use MODX as our choice of CMS, but I am open and
interested in seeing the development of the new internal
HubSpot CMS. We have been very happy with what we have
seen rolled out with Optimized Landing Pages and believe
that HubSpot is on the right path.

Remington Begg • I think that you can achieve just about
anything with the existing Hubspot CMS that you can with
Open Source such as Joomla, Wordpress etc And if that's not
the case, then value of the Pro level of Hubspot Comes to
Mind... That Handy tracking code is exactly what some
people need.
ChooseImpulse.com is built in joomla, and integrates with
hubspot pro nicely in our opinion.

When I talk with clients about "why Hubspot" the Hubspot vs
Wordpress debate doesn't really happen because the
features (and benefits) of Hubspot are the "reason to be on
Hubspot"

If the client want's "both Wordpress and Hubspot
functionality" then they need to go Pro, if they can only
afford the basic plan, then they have to choose what's more
important to them at that time. Upgrading to Hubspot may
be in their best interest later down the road.

Hubspot is built for companies who see value having
everything in one place, who WILL USE THE TOOLS, and

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who have the budget for it.

Wordpress in my opinion, is for those that don't have the
budget, or that want to "tinker" and make it work "almost as
good" as what Hubspot provides out of the box (unless they
use the hubspot code)

Personally we have not had any issue with Communicating
the difference between the options. It really is Apples and
Oranges (as mentioned above)

PS: For those that have questions about the "mobile version
of hubspot" we wrote a brief blog post on how to tweak the
layout to achieve your goals.

Here's the link: http://1mpul.se/UW0a9Z

6 days ago • Like

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Rhonda Hurwitz • @dharmesh, What is the ETA for the new
CMS? Q2 or Q3?

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Follow Rebekah

Rebekah Donaldson • Feedback to Dharmesh, Simon, Pete,
Lisa, Remington, and Jon here:

Dharmesh
* Yes "If you're taking a broader, business-oriented view,
HubSpot likely has the edge." Well put. The business-
oriented view takes account of *risk.* And what I outlined
as solution "B" (see above in thread) is higher risk for our
client than for us.

Lisa
* Re redo on HS with 50+ pages, yes. One just now rolling
out now is www.fasttrack365.com (might be able to view old
site at http://fasttrackaust.com but it's about to be
redirected).
* I second your wish list

Robb
* You make an interesting point about budget affecting
interest in an alternate CMS. I don't know the overall
breakdown but all our clients' budgets are quite a bit more
than $10k/year and if they have a HS subscription we use
the HS CMS. Maybe it boils down to: The total value of all-
in-one is higher than the total value of a hybrid solution
providing greater flexibility.

Jon, Simon and John
Thank you for your detailed responses... I'm learning alot
from them! Simon - your responses are dead on IMHO.

Pete
Thanks for your questions to us. This is cool.

5 days ago • Like

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Robb Bailey • Responses to Rebekah, Dharmesh, and Peter:

Rebekah
*In regards to the budget mindset, our experience with this
decision (from our client's perspective) to use WP CMS vs HS
CMS has been largely a budgetary one. The low end
(Hubspot Starter) offers the fully hosted, CMS integrated
version of HS. For clients who can afford the $200/month for
the software, and don't have an extra several thousand to
make a fully integrated Wordpress site, the decision seems
to be made by budget more than "can I get the most out of
this tool long-term once it starts working for me". We are
recommending that our clients start off with HS Professional
combined with a site and CMS developed in WP so they don't
have to re-tool after they figure out that they have reached
the HS CMS's limits - which is more expensive for them in
the long-run.

Dharmesh & Peter
*With regards to Peter's request: We have a recent client
who was set up on the Hubspot CMS (Pro account) for over
a year when they came to us, and they love it. They hired us
for some monthly SEO best practices (on-page, tuning,
internal linking, etc.)... But they effectively have 2 websites.
The "front end", which has about 11 pages on the root
domain, and a Hubspot subdomain that's integrated with HS

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CMS (a couple hundred blog posts live there). They hired us
to optimize their website, but we basically have to optimize
2 sites since the blog is hosted on a subdomain. Not ideal at
all. The root domain and subdomain are effectively separate
websites, doubling the amount of maintenance and tuning
needed to fully optimize the site(s). We cleaned up the 11
pages on the root domain with relative ease and we're
getting a clean crawl and index on it. The subdomain (HS
CMS) is an absolute mess when it comes to optimizing for a
clean crawl. Lots of jumbled CSS, duplicate title and
duplicate content issues throughout. Our SEO software is
constantly finding errors are unfixable because the HS CMS
is not flexible enough to tweak fully. I realize that this is an
advanced issue, but this type of thing matters a lot when the
client's per-transaction value is high and they want the most
visibility possible from their content publishing. Compare
this to WP CMS based sites with HS tracking code installed,
and the difference is night and day from an SEO's
perspective. On another note, I've noticed client sites with
HS CMS having trouble ranking locally since all their local-
targeted content lives on a HS blog subdomain. Google+
Local is not connecting the HS subdomains with the root
domains well at all right now. If you have any insight there,
I'm all ears. :)

Dharmesh
*To chime in on Dharmesh's comments: Budgetary concerns
aside, I guess the application of the tool depends on if the
user wants simpler, but limited. Or robust, but capable of
more. I agree that this shouldn't be looked at as Hubspot VS
Wordpress, but rather, which combination is right for you:
(Hubspot CMS + Hubspot software) vs. (Wordpress CMS +
Hubspot software)?

Notice both of those options include Hubspot tracking
software. :) I should write a blog post about that very topic.

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Thanks to Rebekah for the comment formatting example!
Robb

George Thomas • I feel like Hubspot is a great tool, but with
serious shortcomings in terms of how some of the features
were developed, integrated and are presented. More often
than not, my troubles arise when I'm doing work in the CMS.
It's quite obvious this platform was built around DotNetNuke
(another open source CMS similar to Wordpress), in
particular the blogging functionality seems very like a DNN
module called Articles (I think?).

Our lead dev has used both Wordpress and Hubspot's CMS
(in addition to others and even building out a licensable
ASP.NET MVC-based e-commerce CMS) so I'd say he has a
lot of experience in this domain. Here's are some bullet
points he gave me:

* DotNetNuke used to be fairly terrible to use compared to
other CMSes, but they were the only viable ASP.NET CMS.
Hubspot used DotNetNuke to jump start their platform.

* It's clear that Hubspot's weakness is their CMS. They seem
to realize it (I hope) and are actively trying new solutions
(probably integrating something DNN 6.x or 7.x-based into
their platform, which is closer in terms of ease-of-use in
skinning and the back-end to something like Wordpress).
I'm just guessing here though. *Dharmesh?*

* Hubspot's analytics are amazing. Almost magical to
someone who has never used something like it before.

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* Wordpress's built-in analytics suck.

* Wordpress is a fantastic CMS. But, if you're using the
standalone version, you now have to maintain a server.
Good luck when you have unexpected traffic spikes!

* Using a standalone Wordpress install, however, offers
considerable opportunity in terms of being able to muck
around in the system and change whatever you need to
change. With great power comes great responsibility. If you
can handle that power, you can do great things.

* You can get somewhat close to Hubspot using free tools
like Wordpress, Google Analytics, et al. You're gonna spend
a lot of time getting that to a workable solution, although if
you do it right, you should be able to re-use it for other
sites. It's complicated though; I'm not downplaying that.

* You're not going to match what Hubspot has without
development. It's possible, but be prepared to spend months
doing it.

* Every design, application, tool, etc. has compromises
somewhere. Nothing is perfect.

* Hubspot's compromise is the CMS. Their analytics are
great. But, they have an out-of-the-box CMS engine (with
considerable modification) rather than building another one
from scratch themselves. It's not a good technical CMS (it's
clear some things were bolted on to the blogging module, in
particular).

* Hubspot's strength: they have an easy-to-use and highly-
integrated package. Wordpress doesn't offer you title writing
tips for the keywords you're targeting, for example. They've
done the legwork for most of us and 80% will do great with
what they have to offer. Try to recreate their Prospects
feature!

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* Hubspot: training is great. It doesn't go super-deep
sometimes like I would like, but it'll get you to an
intermediate level of knowledge about inbound marketing
and how to use their platform.

* Wordpress's strength: they have an easy-to-use CMS that
is very modular. You can get down to the bare metal and
change it around as much as you want.

* Wordpress's compromise: their analytics suck and you
can't easily recreate Hubspot with outside tools for free.

Our Conclusion:

Life isn't black and white. It's not one or the other. If we
have a client that wants to pay for it, we recommend
Hubspot for them. However, we don't always use their CMS.
We use Wordpress with tracking codes installed or in some
cases, straight HTML/CSS.

A lot of clients DON'T want to pay for Hubspot though and it
is probably overkill for the web presence they want. In that
case, Wordpress and Google Analytics are usually enough to
get by.

Hubspot's platform is designed with a clear user in mind. It's
probably 80% of people out there.

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Dharmesh Shah • George: Thanks for the detailed comment.
Will respond to a few of the points/questions in your post:

1. You are correct. The early version of HubSpot's platform
made quite a bit of use of DotNetNuke. But we chose a
different direction years ago. Our primary platform now is a
combination of Java and Python (not ASP.NET).

2. The CMS has been our weakness. It's the one piece of the
system that has not yet the major overhaul needed (like
we've done with other parts of our platform). But, it's the
most important project being worked on *right now* at
HubSpot. An entire team devoted to the effort. The blogging
app is first, which will be followed by the website
management system.

3. We are determined to change from having the CMS be a
weakness to it being a strength. We're serious about it
(investing millions). We have some ideas about how to take
the best practices from products like WordPress and
combine them with our knowledge of marketing and create
what we think will be a system marketers, designers and
developers will love. It's a tall order, but we're passionate
about it.

I just saw an updated demo of the HubSpot CMS yesterday.
It's starting to really come together. Nice, clean HTML that is
responsive, super-cool template editing, open access to CSS
for key parts. Global modules. It's really getting there.

5 days ago • Like

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MarkUnfollow

Mark Kilens • Fantastic breakdown, George! On the training
side. I agree with your assessment. The good news is we're
currently developing a lot more intermediate and advanced
training. You'll be able to find the training right inside your
account under the HubSpot Academy drop-down.

We're also going to be creating a new certification program
for our new CMS. It will include classes, workshops and a
certification process/exam. The certification will mean you
have demonstrated that you can create HubSpot CMS
templates for email, landing pages, blogs and pages.

Let me know if you'd like to talk about training or the new
CMS certification.

All the best,

Mark

Lisa Ellington • Mark, I'd like to know more about the CMS
Certification.

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MarkUnfollow

Mark Kilens • Lisa, it's still being developed and will launch
when we launch our new CMS.

Feel free to send me an InMail and we can setup a time
chat. Would love to hear your ideas!

Thanks,

Mark

George Thomas • I love the idea of advanced training! I am
very excited to see what the next steps are for that as well
as the new COS HS will be launching. I and my team are all
about being the best we can be for our clients and their
needs. Simplicity for them and yet delivering an effective
strategy is always the best route. Thank you Dharmesh and
Mark for taking the time to post on this matter.

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Rebekah Donaldson • Excellent continuing exchange here.

Shut me down if this takes us too far sideways but any
glimmer of hope that an updated CMS might support any
kind of server-side scripting... at say Enterprise level?

Two of our clients need to integrate with a catalog with tens
of thousands of SKUs that's going live soon. We've
suggested handling this by hosting a few pages on a
separate system, like WP, using a separate subdomain (like
products.whatever.com) to point to those pages. Shopping
cart is TBD.

The client asked, "to simplify things and use the better CMS,
why not migrate us entirely to WP?" I went onsite to present
on what that means in terms of managing more
platforms/tools, not fewer; lack of comprehensive support,
etc.

Net net here's a company with significant resources needing
all-in-one marketing software that works with their catalog.
This week we are testing Volusion's Enterprise solution to
decide if that's the answer.

p.s. open to hiring a pro from this forum to consult on this
(platform choice, migration, new systems config...)

Peter Caputa • @Rebekah

I asked our Chief Product Officer when we might enable
server side scripting. His response was something like
"ooomph" in an exasperated tone. I wouldn't count on us

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enabling this anytime soon.

Have you spoken to the team at Ektron?

4 days ago • Like

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Rick Kranz • My firm doesn't come from the world of website
creation. So when a client is focused on how their website
looks and feels instead of how it performs that is a red flag
for us.

To me the HubSpot tool is about making your web
marketing perform and not about making your website look
great. The simplicity of the CMS helps to keep us focused on
performance.

I agree that the HS CMS which we use for ourselves and
most of our clients is not as slick as WP or Joomla but you
can create some very professional looking sites from it. And
we always have the choice to use HS Professional and be on
another platform.

Having said all that I am looking forward to seeing the
improvements in the CMS.

4 days ago • Like

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Bill Cava • Agree with Dharmesh largely regarding HubSpot
vs Wordpress; would also add another option to consider.

Ektron (company I work for) is both a HubSpot partner and
an Enterprise Web Content Management vendor. As a
HubSpot customer, I'd like to think we get it. This HubSpot
case study does a pretty good job of backing that statement
up, captures some highlights over the past year:
http://www.hubspot.com/customer-case-
studies/bid/33879/Ektron-Shifts-to-Inbound-Marketing-and-
Lowers-Cost-Per-Opportunity-by-60. It also means we're in
a pretty unique situation where we can take our own
experiences with HubSpot and turn them into capabilities
that our joint customers can use directly.

A straight-forward example of one such integration point-- a
customized editing experience that enables content creators
to evaluate keywords for SEO as they're authoring:
http://developer.ektron.com/experts/derek-barka/HubSpot-
Keyword-Plugin-For-Aloha/.

Our redesigned corporate website (www.ektron.com) is also
a pretty good example too; we recently drank our own
champagne and used our Ektron HubSpot integration
throughout, particularly for delivering targeted content for
unauthenticated visitors.

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PeterUnfollow

Peter Caputa • Ektron is a step ahead of the market on
content personalization.

We'll enable it for our SMB and MB business in the coming
year in HubSpot's new CMS. But, Ektron already has it (and
will enhance it as we launch more APIs) for Enterprise
customers.

There are a lot of other great features and capabilities that
Ektron has that make it a robust Mid-market and Enterprise
CMS. With HubSpot integrated, it's the best of both worlds
for more sophisticated customers.

I've also really enjoyed working with the team at Ektron.
They have new sales and marketing leadership, Chip Greer,
that is in tune with how to build a modern sales and
marketing system and he's very pro-partner.

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Chip Greer • Thanks Pete!
We've been working since the summer on building best in
class integration with Hubspot, delivering (as Bill states
above) our own website using the advanced features of both
Ektron and Hubspot and on supporting our joint partners in
the field on integrated projects. In any projects where there
are advanced requirements, we'd love to help.

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Tom Wentworth • I'm a big fan of HubSpot, and a long time
CMS guy. Going to be interesting to see this product
develop.

The definition of CMS has almost become too broad to be
useful - Wordpress solves a much different set of problems
than something like Drupal or Ektron. Blogging is pretty
easy, and a good first step for HubSpot because its a pretty
simple content type and the governance processes around

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blog publishing are often pretty simple.

For HubSpot to try and tackle the hard problems of CMS (at
scale) may be a stretch. I do think the "All-in-one"
marketing platform is a noble goal and HubSpot solves many
of the hard problems in marketing, but a CMS isn't purely a
tool for marketing. I wonder if CMS falls a bit outside of
HubSpot's core mission?

Will be watching closely :)

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Peter Caputa • Wowsa. This is quite a conversation. I don't
think there are too many places on the web where people
from so many companies in the same space have such a
constructive conversation. Thanks for joining in Tom.

I agree with you, Tom. There is a big difference between a
simple CMS and an enterprise CMS. Our mission is to be "all
the marketing software you need". We think we do that very
well with SMB and MBs. Our experience on the sales side is
that large companies aren't looking for "one piece of
software for all of their marketing". Integration and
interoperability is more important to them. The fact that we
have lots of tools that already integrate helps us drive usage

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of many of our tools within an organization, but it's
unrealistic to think that all of our capabilities are perfect for
every large org.

As far as a CMS being outside of our core mission, we think
that enabling customers to create, optimize, distribute,
personalize delivery, mobilize, analyze, socialize, ize-iz-ize,
etc "content" is actually the key to our mission.

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Lisa Ellington • That makes a ton of sense, Peter. I wonder
why the basic package users should get penalized, though,
and be forced to use the CMS. Why not open up the code
hook for all levels of product?

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Doug Kirk • Fascinating conversation here! As a HS VAR for
a couple years I've lived the WP (or other CMS) vs. Hubspot
enigma on more than a few occasions. One consistent theme
that pops up on the con side is less about the technology
and more of an emotional response. Inevitably, the idea that
a site living on the HS CMS completely is translated into "I
can never get my site back and will be locked into paying HS
forever." Be it naive or otherwise, this is a hurdle for any
business owner and for the VAR selling an integrated
solution. Selfishly, from an operational standpoint, it is
always, always better to have the whole site on the HS CMS
(I'm not going into the look and feel debate). Otherwise, it's
up to the VAR to manage across two CMS platforms, or far
worse, rely on the client's internal team to integrate code on
the root domain.

If there's a feature that can be added going forward it would
a tool (not unlike httaccess, but more straightforward) that
allows a HS hosted site to be very easily migrated to another
CMS. Now, if we're doing our jobs that should never happen,
but upfront the "peace of mind" value is considerable. Short
of a migration tool, clear, easily understood migration
instructions would be meaningful first step.

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Hubspot versus WordPress

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