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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.

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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)

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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.

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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

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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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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.

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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

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

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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.

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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.

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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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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?

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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.

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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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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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