Your website defines your business and acts as the first impression of your brand. A good website has a likable design and content layout, but a great website has high quality, search engine optimized content with intuitive design, and a lot more.

With content management systems, figuring out the ‘lot more’ is easy. Two very popular CMSs are HubSpot and WordPress, and there’s always a raging debate within the community about HubSpot vs. WordPress as to which one’s the better choice.

The Key Differentiators Between HubSpot and WordPress

The Product

Hubspot and WordPress are fundamentally very different in terms of their purpose and target audience.

HubSpot is a SaaS platform where customers are billed monthly or annually as per their usage, and this is covered in the form of a monthly subscription service. This platform, along with a CMS, offers a CMS Hub, which is a whole suite of tools integrated to handle everything from inbound marketing and customer management to lead generation and general content management. 

WordPress, on the other hand, is everything that HubSpot is, but without the marketing tools. In other words, it is an open-source, free content management system that does exactly that – manage content and no more.

In simple terms, HubSpot is like the Netflix of content management – like Netflix offers you various genres, languages, and content types, HubSpot offers you its entire platform with all its tools. You decide which ones to use, how, and when. Like Netflix gives you personalized recommendations, HubSpot can be personalized towards your target audience. You decide the plan that works best for you, and let the software work its magic without worrying about management, reliability, maintenance, security, etc.

Whereas, for a generic B2B website WordPress is a mere starting point. As starting points go, it is the cheaper option since it is open-source. But its plugins, integrations, and the technical expertise required to maintain the website and integrate security features into it could make the overall package quite costly, time-consuming, and in many cases, plain annoying. As a product, these two cater to very different audiences, but in most cases, HubSpot fits your needs if it fits your budget.

Analytics and Website Performance Tracking

Website analytics are critical to maximizing leads from your traffic. A comparison of HubSpot vs. WordPress here shows exactly why the plugins can be annoying. With HubSpot, you get analytics and all inbound marketing tools included in the SaaS solution it provides.

WordPress users, on the other hand, would need to use plugins like Jetpack and Google Analytics plugins to get that information. Businesses who’ve chosen WordPress as a CMS and need marketing and analytics tools are either using HubSpot for marketing or have used the HubSpot blog WordPress extension to migrate their blogs and content from WordPress to HubSpot.

Maintainability

Routine tune-ins and check-ups for websites are essential to make sure you’re not burning through traffic and the website does not have any bugs or glitches. Without technical knowledge, this can be hard. For a B2B website, WordPress users will need to add plugin-ins or hire technical staff to take care of these things.

To be fair, these aren’t rocket science, and people learn through online courses and manage it themselves. However, ideally, you want the service you paid for to make it more convenient for your marketing and technical teams to focus on fulfilling core business objectives. With HubSpot, you can do just that – focus more on what’s important while software updates, SEO indexation, privacy, security, etc. are all handled without any add-ons.

Security Features

There are two sides to the coin when it comes to the HubSpot vs. WordPress debate for security. WordPress users argue that they are in control of their security in that they can pick and choose which security plugins to add, but that’s just an extra hassle for most users.

With HubSpot, you get in-built features like SSL layer, activity logging, IDS, real-time threat monitoring, etc.

Pricing

While WordPress is free to use, the total cost of ownership, add-ons, and integrations, development of those integrations, maintenance, etc. can eat up your finances in the form of hidden, unexpected costs. In addition, you need to consider domain hosting, security, and update costs.

HubSpot offers its product the CMS Hub in four subscription-based models – free, starter, professional, and enterprise. These are charged at $0, $25, $400, and $1200 per month respectively. On average, HubSpot costs you about $4800 for its middle tier, while WordPress costs can range between $5451 - $82,558 per year depending on your integrations.

Final Thoughts

WordPress is a great fit if you’re a new e-commerce business with no technical knowledge or teams, or if you’re looking for only passive income through methods like affiliate marketing. However, you need to be mindful of adding the various plugins and integrations and calculating the cumulative costs. 

On the other hand, HubSpot offers you a comprehensive package of services spanning the entire lifecycle of a website visitor. This makes it ideal for businesses who are looking to strengthen their business, boost their brand credibility and get new leads. If you're considering HubSpot CMS Hub and ready to see how it works, schedule your free demo today!

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