What is HubSpot CMS Hub?
HubSpot is primarily a free CRM customer relationship management software to help companies manage their customers throughout their customer journey. The HubSpot CRM is the bedrock of the core of the business. As time passed, HubSpot added additional Hubs that could stand alone as separate products but can be bolted on for added functionality. This gives a company one relationship, one CRM, and a centralized hub for marketing, sales, operations, and customer service.
The CMS Hub is one of the newest hubs and provides businesses an opportunity to build their website, landing pages, and blogs using their drag and drop page building platform. One of the great features is using your CRM data to personalize website content using smart content logic on your websites. HubSpot CMS is cloud-based and not an open-source platform to build websites.
WordPress vs HubSpot CMS Features Comparison
For this review, I am going to look at some of the main features when considering a content management systems for your business. Each component is given a grade of 1 through 5. 5 being the best and 1 being the worst score possible. I provide a comparison table with a total score at the end of this section.
What makes me credible to write this review? I have used WordPress for more than ten years for my sites and as a developer. I have also used HubSpot CMS for about seven years and have seen significant improvements to the platform. My opinion is skewed towards the benefits of using a CMS for a business vs. a personal blog.
Drag & Drop Page Builders
By default, WordPress recently added blocks which makes adding content a lot easier but it isn’t an actual page-building experience similar to what you might find in WebFlow or Squarespace. You have to install third-party plugins like Beaver Builder, Elementor, Divi page builder, or SiteOrigin builder.
HubSpot has a page builder built into its CMS. So you benefit from solid documentation, customer service, and product feature updates coming from the same place.
- HubSpot CMS: 5 winner
- WordPress: 3
Content Translation
WordPress has plugins you can use for translation, but from my experience are visually clunky and look like afterthoughts, and are not seamless with the CMS. HubSpot CMS has localized translation built into the product, which makes it extremely easy to use.
- HubSpot CMS: 5 winner
- WordPress: 2
Ease of Use
Imagine asking a room of people to design their ideal car. You would get a wide variety of designs, some being cars and other trucks. This inconsistency would make making piles of similar vehicles very difficult and time-consuming.
This visual sorting example is one of the critical components of website usability. Consistency. The repeated patterns make it easier to use because you can assume one behavior will be the same in a different application section. In HubSpot CMS, this is the case because it is designed and developed by one company master at website design and usability.
Since WordPress requires plugins designed and developed by different people with different skill sets, you will have different usability patterns for various plugins. This can cause confusion for content editors and makes things feel clunky.
- HubSpot CMS: 5 winner
- WordPress: 3
Security & Speed
If you use WordPress, you can decide if you want to self-host it or use a hosted option. Security and speed will be comparable to HubSpot CMS if you use a hosted option. Self-hosted WordPress has an edge in security if you have a very skilled server admin. Since you have control of the server, you can set up things exactly as you need them and block countries and IP addresses you do not want access to. HubSpot makes adding a brand domain name easy and also provides an SSL certificate. This makes setting up a website a lot easier for many people.
- HubSpot CMS: 5 winner
- WordPress: 3
Server Control
WordPress wins this category because you can self-host on your server, which will give you total control because it it isn’t proprietary software. HubSpot CMS requires a CNAME DNS record in your name to point traffic to their servers. Also, HubSpot CMS uses HubL language, which is limited in functionality compared to the open source software PHP WordPress uses.
- HubSpot CMS: 2
- WordPress: 5 winner
SEO
WordPress has a lot of SEO tools & plugins like yoast seo you can add to help with search engine optimization. HubSpot CMS has an advantage here because it is built-in. Also, they provide SEO features like recommendations to monitor the results of a popular SEO technique called pillar and hub content model.
- HubSpot CMS: 5 winner
- WordPress: 4
Customer Support
If you use a WordPress-hosted solution like Kinsta or WPEngine, you will benefit from customer support. Still, you may run into roadblocks if you ask for support with a plugin compatibility issue. Since many functionalities found in standard plugins are built into the HubSpot CMS, customer support knows how to help you with everyday issues.WordPress support can also be found in their community forums and the core software product is actively being updated. But since it is open source, a 1-1 reply isn’t guaranteed and its possible you may not get an reply back.
- HubSpot CMS: 5 winner
- WordPress: 3
Extensions & Plugins
WordPress will probably always win this category because it is open-source software and has long and established WordPress community-building WordPress plugins. You can build pretty much any website with WordPress. A WordPress website can become an e-commerce website, LMS, blog, or portal because there is a deep collection of solutions built for this CMS platform.
HubSpot CMS has a lot of great native app integrations. Also, if your extension is javascript based, you can create a lot of the functionality you need using a custom module. A custom module is a component you can add to a page that has data fields, HTML, CSS, and javascript. If you have ever used Advanced Custom Fields in WordPress, it is similar to this but more portable.
- HubSpot CMS: 3
- WordPress: 5 winner
Ecommerce support
WordPress has a popular plugin for eCommerce called Woocommerce. There are also a lot of services like Shopify and Bigcommerce that are exclusively for eCommerce. So if you are looking to be primarily an eCommerce site, I would use one of those solutions.
You could use HubSpot CMS for eCommerce, but it would require more work to stitch together your need like payments, sales reporting, product feed creation, email automation, shipping, etc.
- HubSpot CMS: 2
- WordPress: 5 winner
Forms & marketing
HubSpot has a feature-packed marketing automation tool. If you plan on having email workflows and lead generation, HubSpot is a great option.
WordPress has plugins, but they are not seamless, and the form builders are hard to use.
- HubSpot CMS: 5 winner
- WordPress: 2
Files & media management
HubSpot CMS file manager makes hosting images, videos, PDFs, and documents accessible. Some WordPress hosts limit the file types and sizes you can host.
One feature I like with HubSpot CMS is the ability to upload and replace a file and automatically redirect all links to the new file.
- HubSpot CMS: 5 winner
- WordPress: 3
Data migrations
Moving sites and data to HubSpot is pretty straightforward, and if you have a large area, they also offer a site migration service. Moving sites out of HubSpot CMS to WordPress can be done, but it is a pain and more of a manual process.
Also, since WordPress is so prevalent, most hosts and developers know how to work with these files and site migrations.
- HubSpot CMS: 3
- WordPress: 5 winner
Blogging
WordPress was originally created as a blogging platform, and so is a strong platform for business blogging. But HubSpot is continually making updates to narrow the gap. The main difference between the two is HubSpot has analytics built. HubSpot helps you use your blog posts to drive new traffic, invite subscribers, build trust in your brand, and even nurture your leads.
- HubSpot CMS: 3
- WordPress: 5 winner
Website Analytics
Imagine you want to view how well a landing page is performing. You click on the page, and then you are presented with a traffic report and how many form submissions it has. This at-a-glance report is provided by default inside HubSpot. This makes it really easy to digest and see what is working.
With WordPress, you either have to leverage plugins or view data in outside tools like Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and then merge them together with your form submission data.
Your website needs to be optimized for search engines, and HubSpot understands this and so provides help with a solid site structure, site speed, mobile optimization, structured metadata, and topical keyword usage to optimize your SEO.
- HubSpot CMS: 5
- WordPress: 3 winner
Theme Development
If you are used to building WordPress themes, moving to HubSpot CMS will feel very contrived. Developers have way more control of their development workflow and management because WordPress uses PHP and doesn’t care too much about what you add to it as long as you have the core functions in place.
HubSpot CMS, however, requires developers to follow their rules and often runs into limitations. The limitations I have faced have been rare, and I remind myself my frustrations are less critical than the frustrations of the end-user. Themes are products for a marketer to use to build pages, and they don’t care how they are constructed as long as they do what they need them to do.
I create and sell HubSpot themes in their marketplace, and the majority of first time customers do not ask me support questions on how to build and use the CMS. This speaks volumes about how they have perfected the experience for their customers.
- HubSpot CMS: 4
- WordPress: 5 winner
