Choosing your website CMS: HubSpot VS WordPress

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Do want to see what I've got in my stocking then, Craig? Let's see if you've been a good boy this year. My God. What is that? Your Cherry B. Cheers. 


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So what we're talking about today's HubSpot versus WordPress and specifically the point around. And we've had a few instances recently whereby we've had this discussion with clients around whether they should stick with WordPress, whether they should go all in on HubSpot, particularly when it comes to the website CMS.

And I think the biggest question to start with is why some HubSpot customers choose to stick with WordPress? think based on the conversations we've been having recently, I think there's a number of reasons why.

Organistions are staying with WordPress when they've got HubSpot and they've invested heavily in HubSpot. There's probably firstly an understanding or perception that maybe HubSpot isn't as powerful at all as WordPress and maybe it has limitations in terms of what can be achieved in comparison. We know that's not true, but it's a message that's peddled a lot by the industry and will be reinforced by the industry.

I think obviously WordPress is by far the market leader from a website perspective. And I can't remember the stats, but it's some crazy like, you know, over two thirds of the internet, even more possibly are running on WordPress. it's the status quo, it's the go-to platform. So, and HubSpot is a relative newcomer in CMS terms.

There's still that... outdated perception that HubSpot isn't quite comparable to the capabilities in WordPress. to be honest, when it first was released as a CMS, was pretty shit. But it's really, really developed over the last few years, particularly. we've worked with all the websites we do, are all built on HubSpot. And there really isn't any limitations in terms of traditional website design and how that moves into development on a

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CMS platform like HubSpot, there's no difference to what can be achieved with WordPress. But that perception is not necessarily pervasive across the industry. So that's the first point. think that where that perception comes from is important. You touched on it there around what other organizations that maybe haven't used the HubSpot CMS before are talking about HubSpot. So we've used WordPress, we've used HubSpot, which gives us the

So I'm already feeling the cherry bee kicking in. Yeah, yeah, good. Yeah, yeah, goes to Strong. is. Mood shine. where that perception comes from, I think is important because ultimately, and again, this is not necessarily related to our recent experiences. I talked about the start, but.

We've seen some organizations in the past reference the limitations of HubSpot without ever having tried to use it as a CMS. Now we've used both WordPress and HubSpot and therefore we were able to call out the differences and the benefits of each and to be clear, in some circumstances, the benefits of using WordPress outweigh the benefits of using HubSpot and vice versa, but most of the time for a HubSpot customer.

The benefits of using HubSpot CMS outweigh the benefits of using WordPress. And we'll come on to some of those things in a second. I do think, that some of the other reason that some people choose to stick with WordPress is because it's what they know. And you said, you know, 70-odd percent of the internet's built with WordPress to a degree, and it's not the case for everyone.

That would also mean that more marketers have experienced WordPress, experienced in previous roles and therefore feel comfortable with it despite in our view some of its limitations. Yeah and it's a case if it ain't broke why fix it? Why go through the perceived pain which again we'll come to a bit later transitioning away from one CMS to another if you don't feel it's necessary. Well that touches on another point doesn't it? If it's working and they get it and they...

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and they can't see the benefits of moving to HubSpot, then they're not necessarily feeling pain, they're missing an opportunity and I think that's a different driver for a purchase decision like that. Because HubSpot is a more expensive platform, even when you're rolling all the various plugins and et cetera. We'll talk about TCO in a sec. I think there's another reason related to it, if you're an organization that's looking to get...

website revamp and you go to market looking for potential website agencies that will help you in that process. You you'll probably go through process of due diligence, shortlisting to a number of different agencies. The vast majority of those agencies will recommend WordPress or another platform other than HubSpot because the vast majority of organizations or partners that work with HubSpot are more traditionally HubSpot.

optimization or not brand agencies, not website agencies. There's obviously a handful. But generally, I think if you're a client looking for a new website, you want it to be impactful, creative. want the real wear factor from it. And you'd probably more associate a brand agency to achieve that than maybe a HubSpot partner. most brand agencies would recommend WordPress because they've got no connection to HubSpot. don't offer wider marketing services.

Why would that make sense? if they're in a pitch process, as we've seen, that you can't underplay or underestimate the platform element of the decision making process. It's really, really key. know, if you've got a couple of competitors that are all on WordPress, and no one else is serving up any other platform, it's not really a platform decision. The decision's already made. It's WordPress. We've got three agencies we're going to evaluate. And it's really about who's going to the best fit in terms of the

the creative, the process, et cetera, et cetera. But when you throw HubSpot into the mix, that's when it changes the game completely because then there's another platform that they haven't worked with and there's lots of other benefits as we'll talk about that maybe a brand agency wouldn't consider when developing a website. Yeah, or wouldn't know of because they've never built a website on HubSpot. Yeah, yeah. Or manage clients that run HubSpot. So there's another thing in there, I think, which is that ultimately if people have

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Invested in HubSpot to a degree, but don't necessarily know yet whether the business is going to go all in on HubSpot. Say for example, they have their sales team running from HubSpot or they don't, or whether they plan to use the service hub or whether they plan to use the marketing hub in a more extended capacity. If they've invested in but they're not at that point whereby it's embedded within their organization and their system of choice for all of their customer facing applications, then

There is also that concern around putting your website into that basket until you've fully committed it to it as a business. Because ultimately a website, and this is probably another thing, there is a perception that moving your website from one platform to another is a really extensive and challenging and difficult process. It's not really. I think there's many ways of achieving it in a fairly pragmatic way.

But of course, if you have concern about whether HubSpot is going to be your platform of choice for a long time, then moving something as sticky as your website into that platform with perceived problems around having to shift it again in the future if you were to not use HubSpot is another reason that certainly we've come across as a reason for sticking with WordPress. And so I suppose to sum up this first part of the podcast, which is essentially looking at why companies will stick with

WordPress. It's a case of maybe a perception that the platform, the HubSpot platform from a CMS perspective isn't strong. Maybe the company doesn't necessarily hold a huge amount of stock in its website. I we see some pretty dire websites still. the fact that the platform's not quite on the same part as WordPress is something that's reinforced by

the supply side of the industry, so agencies, cetera, that are used to working on that platform, why would they want to work with anything else? There's a whole new skill set they've got to develop. So there's various other reasons why you might, the other reason is potentially the perceived pain of moving to a new platform. So all these things would lead to a company sticking with WordPress, even though they're investing more and in Humps Bar.

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more than anything, it's not so much that it's broken so you need to fix it. There's some significant pain by sticking with WordPress. works, does a job. real- of the time. Well, most of the time, and we'll talk about it, I'm sure, but the real point here is if you have HubSpot, you're investing in the platform. This is a real missed opportunity if you're not moving to the CMS. And we should be clear as we talk about these benefits now that many organizations do recognize that opportunity and have taken that.

opportunity. And many of our clients have as well. Let's talk through some of the benefits then. So what are the benefits from your perspective? Well, I think as HubSpot positions its CMS, it's built for marketeers, not developers. And I think from my experience, I'm certainly the least technical in the room right now. That's not hard. Well, it's a low bar.

You know, we work with a lot of clients and we tend to work with marketing functions primarily. So we know that a lot of marketers will complain about the fact that they've got WordPress, they don't really know how to use it beyond the very basics and then therefore relying on a developer in-house or maybe an external agency to do some fairly rudimentary things that they need and they need to be done quickly. can't, you know, they can't...

try and schedule some time with their own developer, maybe doing some client work or have other projects. They have to wait a week to get a landing page to their portal. And it's the same with an agency. They will go back and say, well, yeah, we'll put this on the schedule. If you want to stand up a landing page for a campaign needs to be done within hours, not days. Tomorrow, the page isn't built until next week, then it's not going to be helpful. And I think we should be clear that there are ways of building WordPress that make it a platform that can be managed by a marketeer.

if they have some experience with that build. a lot of the time, majority of the time, it's either ring-fenced or protected by an agency that naturally might want that recurring revenue to come through and may be quite protective over the update for that reason. I don't think with WordPress, it's easy to break potentially. I there's a fear that if you start messing around with it, you're going to start messing around with code and then suddenly the homepage starts to...

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get skewed and it's not presenting as it should and therefore you don't know how to rewind that. There's fail states within HubSpot because it's built for marketers. You can just flick back to a previous version and any errors that were created by some stupidity within the platform is just instantly removed. I think there's a nervousness that going beyond the basics within WordPress, you're stepping outside your comfort zone. You don't really know what you're doing. There's a danger that

shit, we're going to break something here that is going to be real problem. the end of the day, I don't think what can be argued with is that HubSpot is a more usable platform than WordPress. even if it is maintainable, because it's built in a way that allows that and it's not being protected by an agency in terms of updates, then it's not as usable as HubSpot. And that brings into it a benefit of its own right. that's the more usable a platform, the more you're going to get out of it at end of the day. And so

Even if people do continue to perceive WordPress as a more powerful, maybe a more flexible platform because of the thousands of plugins you can add into it, then if you can only use it up to 60 % of its capacity because you've got limitations in the team that maybe can't push it that far based on their own capability, then you're getting 60 % usability out of a platform that in your view maybe has a higher

capability. you're not reaching the pinnacle of that web platform's capability because of its lack of ease of use. Whereas with HubSpot, because ease of use is up here, you're going to get the maximum value out of the platform because you can use all of its features easily and benefit from them easily. And personalization is a good example of that. Now, there's some stats from marketing profs, which are pretty conservative probably, look at how personalization, for example, improves

deal values and i think it's around nineteen percent which obviously not insignificant and you can do personalization with wordpress with various plugins between your CRM and the wordpress platform fairly complex implementation and that highlights a point with HubSpot you can add a bit of smart content in there with really limited technical capability

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In fact, you don't need any technical capability at all to do it. And the point I'm making is that that makes it more likely that you will and can, and therefore you'll get in the benefit from that side of the platform that you may not get if there was the technical barriers in the way that WordPress presents, despite it still being possible. The vast majority of people, although it is possible, wouldn't be able to do that within WordPress unless they've got a really strong developer.

that knows their way around WordPress and the various plugins. they were marketed with developer-esque capability, but whereas we know that's rare. I think it's not downplay ease of use. Ease of use is massive. It's a massive use case because, again, from inbound recently, the big message from HubSpot is we're in a slow growth economy, so you can't afford to operate slowly. You've got to be really

agile and nimble and work fast. And we see a lot organizations when they've got these fragmented tech stacks and they're working with different platforms and CMS that maybe they haven't got the skills in-house to really make the most of, it slows you down hugely. that means you can't get to market quickly and you can't execute campaigns in the time that you want to. So, you know, there's so many internal barriers to doing some of real basic stuff that someone with HubSpot

or all in is benefiting from. And if you compete with that, it's not a good place to be. It's marginal gains with all of these websites, CMSs, at the end of the day. They all do the same thing. You can build a website on all of them, but it's the marginal differences in how they allow you to operate the platform and the capability that they provide, which really can help you stand out, particularly on ECVs, because we might be talking that in WordPress,

It takes you a day to send up a landing page and in HubSpot it takes you half an hour, which is a significant difference anyway. if you, that by the number of times you're having to make those it's really significant. does, I mean, ease of use, would imagine is top of the list for most people. know, the sort of flip side to that argument is, okay, we want something really complex, really sophisticated. And I think a lot, sometimes we've encountered those conversations with

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potential clients and they want the sophistication but there's no real rationale for it. It's just we want to have the best available. Yeah and there is rationale for some people to have that sophistication and when we talk sophistication we're talking like headless. Yeah. CMS particularly. But let's explain headless for those that don't know what headless means. Well I'll do my best at explaining it Craig. You've thrown that spanner right in the way. You can't put a word like headless in there and not be able to explain it. Essentially it's when you have a separate front end, a separate back end.

That allows you to, let's not start talking about backend. You've had half a cherry. It's already deteriorating, isn't it? conversation. You basically have a separate front end from backend and that's really useful if you want to distribute content from the backend to the front end and you have multiple front end applications. So say for example, you have an app on the app store, you have a website, you might have five websites for different regions across the globe.

You might have some other areas whereby you want to distribute content. If you want to do that through a traditional CMS platform, then you're to have to have either some form of integration into something else or a separate CMS platform for a lot of duplication, a lot of time and effort. Whereas if you have a headless CMS setup, there are benefits to speed improvements as well, et cetera. People can Google that. you can distribute content from the back end to all of the front ends.

from one central repository, which makes data management really easy. there are benefits of using a headless CMS for some customers. For some customers. We had a conversation with an organization this week, and they were talking about the fact that they'd been through a whole process back and forth. They originally had the HubSpot CMS. They were growing more in sophistication, and they were sold on the

notion of PEDLUS, CMS. Don't think it was with WordPress in this instance. was a contentful thing. So they migrated to that. Just couldn't work it. Couldn't work with it. Were worried about breaking it. Didn't have the skills to really develop it. And it restricted some of the basic stuff that they wanted to get done day to day. So they were developer reliant, as you referred Exactly. So they're locked into an outsourced company.

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and they have to go cap it on every time they want some basic changes done because they're so worried about breaking this headless And that is worth it if you have the kind of set up that I've just described. Either you're running an e-commerce site where you've got loads and loads and loads of content you want to publish easily across multiple assets or you have multiple front end environments for your content. That trade off is normally worth it in that scenario but some of the clients that we see have a simple

simple kind of B2B website that isn't very, isn't hosting thousands of assets like an e-commerce site might be. And therefore they're getting all the downsides without any of the benefit because ultimately they're not any better off. Apart from some of those speed benefits that I mentioned earlier, then they would be if they had a more traditional CMS setup. the company that we talked about at the start of that piece was

They've gone full circle. HubSpark went to Contentful, now they're back with HubSpark. it was just like... For that reason. Yeah. It's just like we just need to get back to be able to stay in control of our own website. Yeah. Which I think also touches on a point that we mentioned earlier, which is the ease of transition to a CMS like HubSpark from WordPress. So why don't you explain the process? It is fairly inexpensive and it is...

automated to a degree, but maybe talk through that process. Yeah. So it is commonly perceived to be almost akin to redeveloping your website. And some people assume that the cost would be similar. And that is not the case for the reason that you mentioned around automation. So HubSpot have a tool that allows, basically scans your website, brings all the code in, and it takes you probably to about 70, 80 % complete.

Some of the interactivity isn't there, any gradual loading that you would do isn't there, but it's a very cost-effective way of getting your website into HubSpot. You'd need to work with a developer to add the finishing touches, but we're fractions of the price of an actual website redesign and development process. certainly for those customers that have chosen to stick with WordPress, but then do go all in on HubSpot, maybe they get more confidence in it, maybe they're running more of their functions from it, that is always an option for them.

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And maybe that's part of the thinking around why they might stick with WordPress until they direct reach that point because they know. And to be honest, most times they don't know, but some may know that that is a fairly straightforward migration process as of when the time is right for them. Reporting as well, I think is another benefit. Well, the reporting benefit comes from the embedded nature of HubSpot and the CMS. And we always say to clients that the value, the more you have in HubSpot, whether you've your website, marketing,

sales, service, ops, the more of those that you have, the benefit kind of amplifies, it multiplies. It's greater than some of its parts sort of thing. And that is very true when it comes to reporting particularly, because this sounds a bit kind of theoretical, but we have really seen the value in reporting when it's cross-departmental.

the intersection basically of the different functions. obviously if you have, not meant to say obviously. So if you have your website performance data in HubSpot, you have that connected directly to your CRM data. have your marketing, email, automation, et cetera, data also in HubSpot. You've got your sales pipeline in HubSpot with deal revenue and values and deal velocity and

and targets and forecasts and you have potentially some other maybe commerce, cetera, data in HubSpot. Basically you're running it wall to wall. Then you can look at the data in your platform, not on an isolated basis like you might do if you had WordPress and you were using Google Analytics and you could analyze data from a website perspective in isolation, but you can understand the impact that different departmental functions have on each other.

And that's where this real value in reporting and data. and not decrying GA because it, you know, it can get really, really, really granular with that, that reporting platform. But you can see things such as how the type of sale impacts deal velocity or the type of, number of marketing interactions impacts deal value or the number, how

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you know, how long it took in the sales process versus how many tickets are raised. So we were talking to a client yesterday, day before about some of this and they were talking about the potential of looking at what types of clients ultimately result in more tickets because then they can choose to work with certain clients and choose to work with others. So they have kind of anecdotally talked about, you know, that some of the client profiles, whether it be based upon how much revenue or how many people

that that client has, that demographic data basically, has a direct correlation on how easy or difficult or problematic they are to service. So if you're running your service desk and your sales process out of HubSpot, you can directly correlate the type of client that you've won to the number of tickets. And if you can spot the trends in that, then you can target organizations which are gonna be less problematic for you to service.

whether they're bigger organizations are more problematic or smaller organizations or organizations in between, the impact of that on your business could be dramatic. And if you will run in isolated platforms with no integration or clunky integration, it didn't allow that cross departmental reporting, all you'd be able to see is the number of tickets and the types of sales. It's, you can't connect the dots. It goes back to missed opportunities. It goes back to ease of use. goes back to

just having everything in one place and just moving between these things. It's not just a CMS, all this functionality sits around it. And it's, it just makes life so much easier and more effective. Well, on the point of making life easier, what you also don't have with HubSwap, because it's not an open source platform, is the need to constantly maintain and update plugins from a security perspective.

And I'm not going to tell the story that we tell in our blog. No, I think we should tell that story. we, mean, I'll start off. we were working with a client that was on HubSpot and for several reasons they decided to move to WordPress. They'd had some external advice. They were concerned about the sort of, I think it was the concern was

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And it was a few years ago now that there wasn't enough of an ecosystem around the HubSpot CMS. They'd only worked with us on a project, so it wasn't like it was a long-term client. And they wanted to take everything in-house. Understandably, they were concerned that if they did need to go to a third party to get support in future, then maybe there was a very limited pool of available resources and talent. is absolutely true.

so much more choice, we're not going end up in a blind alley. we've seen it with a lot, you see website companies that offer proprietary CMSs, which is a crazy thing to even consider. So they made the decision to move away from HubSpot and we helped them migrate to WordPress. We've got to be clear here because we helped them move to WordPress, but they wanted to do all of the management of that site themselves.

on an ongoing basis. Yeah, we cut it off after go live. Because of their choice, not because of our recommendation. We should be really clear on that. Because of what happened next. Because of what happened next. And what happened next is all based upon the fact that with WordPress, you have to constantly maintain it. You have to constantly keep plugins up to date. You have to basically keep security in check. for a customer, that means you're probably going to have to invest in a partner on a monthly basis to keep.

the security up to that on your platform and make sure it does. So in the story, fast forward to maybe a couple of months, we get an email, urgent website has been hacked. Of course. And that was to a degree, despite our advice, inevitable. And the funny part about this story is who it was hacked by. And there's no way other have put it really than it was hacked by people that basically took over the site to sell marital aids, basically.

description. was a looked like a Chinese hacker had taken over the website and used it to sell his own. Adult wares. And that was not just obviously problematic for the client, but also highly embarrassing for people trying to visit his site. So he's got customers going to his site and being faced with a fairly extensive selection of bedroom goods.

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that was part of the urgency in the email that you sent. The issue was they hadn't had anyone maintaining the site. So I think this, I can't remember the timeframe. It was probably longer than a few months to be honest when they came back to us, but they just let it, as some organizations do, they just leave it. And obviously being an open source platform is quite easy to break into if you're not maintaining it and you haven't got someone looking after it, which you...

is not the case with HubSpot for the reasons you talked about. it's not an open source platform and that's why it's more secure. Every application that gets plugged into HubSpot gets vetted by them, gets reviewed by them and if it goes out of service, either developers stop maintaining that application, as they would call it in HubSpot, then it gets pulled off the market. The problem with the open source market is that anybody could develop an application

a plugin, it's called in HubSpot, that they choose not to maintain, back doors open up, stays on as an available plugin and hackers go in through the back door. I can see you're trying to not laugh. Let's move on. So that's our story. There's some practicalities of the HubSpot CMS offering in terms of everything's all part of one subscription based.

fee that you pay. it easier, but it also makes it less expensive sometimes. So to get a WordPress website fully singing and dancing, everyone that's run one will need to know that there's lots of plugins that come into it and most of them are paid, all the good ones are anyway. Apart from like Yoast SEO, all of that stuff, which is normally free. But you've also got the ongoing maintenance contract, which you're to have to invest in, which you don't have to have in HubSpot. We would recommend having a growth driven design type investment in HubSpot to keep your design up to date.

but it is not necessary to make sure that it's secure and stays up. not just design, you know, benefiting from the new features that Spot roll out on a regular basis. the point is, is that is not a 100 % necessity. It's optional. As it is with WordPress, because otherwise you're to get hacked. Yeah. So if you total up that cost over There's a hosting piece as well. The hosting piece, you total it all together. WordPress is often a more expensive platform from a TCO perspective than HubSpot, despite HubSpot's higher ticket price.

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Yeah. I mean, it's a practical thing, but it's an important consideration. Yeah. Yeah. So maintenance, could also argue the cost of a developer depending on the quality or expertise. It's probably more expensive than your sort of typical marketeer salary. Yeah. So yeah, total cost of ownership. think if that was to work to be worked out, all the hidden costs that come through. Yeah, it's definitely a strong business case for HubSpot as well. Right. So sum up then.

So let's go through firstly the reasons maybe why people stick with WordPress when they have HubSpot. the biggest reason I think is this perception that maybe the platform isn't strong and that's reinforced by the industry. Which is bullshit. Which is bullshit. And the more and more people we speak to and we show them examples of where that's not the case and show them the art of possible.

gradually that myth is being dispelled. think also, if it's working for you and there's no real desire to change, maybe the website isn't paramount in terms of your thinking, then yeah, maybe there's no real strong compelling reason to move to HubSpot CMS. But the main point is it's a missed opportunity, really is a missed opportunity for some of the reasons we've talked about, all the reasons we've talked about.

Ease of use for me being the most important. Yep. Can't argue with that.