There are a lot of elements that come into play when creating website content. First and foremost, you have to create quality, useful, relevant content.
However, since there’s so much fierce competition whenever someone conducts an online search for your goods and services, you also need to keep in mind additional components — such as SEO, user experience, and the ease of use of your hosting platform.
The most popular content management systems (CMS) options are WordPress and HubSpot. They both offer a myriad of tools to help you create a site that looks and feels like your brand.
However, despite their similarities, they also have glaring differences. Which ones are they; and how can you ensure you’re selecting the right one for your needs?
Digital content management refers to creating, editing, and organizing content for your website. This includes webpage copy, blogs, landing pages, eBooks, infographics, white papers, video, and any other formats that your buyer persona would choose to consume.
Such types of content are created in a content management system (CMS). This software typically comes with pre-built templates for easier page creation, and although you can certainly hire a coder to add features, they also include user-friendly capabilities that require no coding knowledge.
While there are many platforms to choose from, two of the most effective ones are HubSpot and WordPress. They’re both relatively easy to use; and while WordPress is well-known by practically everyone on the planet who uses the Internet, HubSpot is progressively getting more attention.
Both platforms have effective content management features. However, that’s where the similarities end.
This is because while WordPress is the OG, HubSpot offers a long list of additional features that can not only help you design a website and write content, it comes with a long list of capabilities that help you run your website a lot more effectively.
Related Article: Read about these website design tips
Choosing a website theme ensures that all of your webpages look cohesive with your brand. Both HubSpot and WordPress offer users a wide array of options — both pre-built and for custom development, and they all allow you to include images, video content, and modules.
They also allow you to make site-wide large-scale modifications without the need of a web developer.
Yet, there are still slight differences between them:
HubSpot has over 5,000 theme templates to choose from — although do keep in mind that not all of them are available to implement throughout an entire website. Some of them have unique looks that you can use to design landing pages and marketing emails.
If you want to use one of the templates that’s not available for your entire site, you’ll need the assistance of a coder.
WordPress also provides thousands of themes, and they can all be implemented across your entire website.
They also have a large number of customization options that can be implemented without any tech knowledge. So yes, I have to admit it. As much as we love HubSpot, when it comes to themes, WordPress gets a higher score for this one.
Blogging is the raison d’être for both platforms. And while they both offer a really good platform for running a blog, they also have glaring differences:
HubSpot’s interface for blogging is clean and user friendly. It helps you focus on crafting a digital content marketing strategy where every piece of content plays a part.
It has a wide range of integrated features to design and optimize your blog post quickly as you write. So while you can enjoy the fundamentals of a blogging platform — like a distraction-free blog editor, social media posting abilities, and scheduling options — you also get plenty of other useful features, such as:
WordPress was conceived as a blogging solution for people with lightweight, text-focused sites. This is still the strongest element of its platform. Blogging is fast and easy.
However, virtually anything you want to do beyond plain text blogs requires a separate software plugin or additional theme. For example, if you want to ensure each article is fully optimized for search engines, you will need to download a search engine optimization (SEO) plugin.
A landing page is a web page that’s specifically designed to turn website visitors into leads (someone who’s more likely to eventually make a purchase). They do so by including a form where your web visitor includes their name and contact information in exchange for something they find desirable — such as downloading free content or receiving a discount code.
Since its only purpose is to get the visitor’s information, it doesn’t include any distractions.
Both HubSpot and WordPress recognize the different functions of pages and posts. Only HubSpot, however, provides a full set of tools for designing a landing page that gets visitors to convert.
All of the HubSpot design templates are responsive, and you can customize with a drag and drop UI. Additionally, you can create forms to capture lead information, use an optimizer tool to boost SEO value, and A/B test your landing pages.
WordPress is extensible with a wide range of custom themes and software plugins. Some of these can help you develop professional looking landing pages.
However, most of the truly versatile landing page plugins require pricey subscriptions. In most cases, not all features you need will play nicely together.
In the digital age, your website is your best salesperson. With the right CMS, you should be able to manage and maintain a great looking website with awesome user experience (UX).
As with most HubSpot tools, simplicity and user friendliness reign supreme for website management. The drag-and-drop interface can be extended to create custom experiences on individual pages.
The CMS Hub takes customization to the next level with the new developer tools. Thanks to the flexible themes system in HubSpot, developers can build experiences for marketers in a way that makes content creation easy and tailored to the marketing team's needs and preferences.
Simply put, marketers can take ownership of the website, freeing up developers to focus on other projects that have a bigger impact. Plus, teams can either choose from thousands of templates within the HubSpot marketplace or craft a custom theme without needing tech help.
The typical result HubSpot users see with these tools: beautiful websites built on the CMS Hub that are fully optimized and ready to help businesses hit their goals.
Most people can spot a WordPress site immediately. Sites built using this CMS tend to look very similar, likely because it takes a lot more legwork to customize and build a unique site that stands out amongst the crowd of other WordPressers.
WordPress provides you with basic tools for keeping your content organized and accessible. Updating a page is relatively simple, and updates are visible to site users right away. However, if you want robust options for the design of individual pages, you’ll need specialized site building software.
Without SEO, your company website is like opening a store without a door. You need your audience to find you when they're searching for solutions to their unique problems. Therefore, being well-versed in SEO best practices is crucial when creating online content. This is one of the features that makes HubSpot take the cake.
Inbound digital marketing is built on a strong foundation of keyword research, technical SEO, and on-page SEO optimization. And HubSpot comes with enterprise-grade SEO tools packed in.
These tools will help you evaluate and tweak each page as you write them — and can even teach key SEO concepts. Some other noteworthy SEO features available in HubSpot include:
When you first sign up for WordPress, you don't get any native SEO functionality. However, you can access both free and paid SEO plugins. In fact, the vast majority of bloggers and marketers using WordPress rely on a handful of third party SEO tools.
But with more plugins come more potential headaches. Not only can you add more cost, but you're also at the mercy of other plugin developers. Software management and general maintenance will be at the hand of separate entities.
You can’t improve what you can’t measure. And since there’s so much competition around content online, you should monitor your content’s performance regularly.
A CMS with limited analytics won't give you much context on how your content is performing and what parts of your strategy need to be adjusted. Not all analytics features are created equal, so it's important to find a CMS that provides enough data to empower you to improve your strategy and hit your goals.
HubSpot helps you keep marketing scientific by centralizing, visualizing, and reporting data. It gives you the total view of your sales funnel, working hand in hand with best in class CRM tools.
The best part about HubSpot's analytics tool is that it's comprehensive and well organized, so all the data you need is in one place. You have access to both basic and advanced content analytics to help you track everything — from sessions and visits to conversions to bounce rate, attributed revenue, and beyond.
Your analytics reporting can include information about search analytics, competitor tracking, contact timelines, page performance, and more. For example, your website traffic reports shed light on high performing and underperforming pages, while also giving you a better understanding of the customer journey so you can deliver more impactful content to your audience at the right time.
Measuring content performance with WordPress is a little more complex. While you get access to the basic metrics — like sessions — you have to put in a little more effort to get a full view of your performance in a way that's comparable to what HubSpot delivers.
You usually need to introduce a third party software widget that allows your site to communicate with Google Analytics. Additionally, depending on your goals and needs, you might need to integrate paid analytics tools.
Ultimately, this introduces more complexity to your site, reducing performance and often creating new security holes.
Email is vital to most businesses that are building their online presence. You can use email marketing and automation tools to streamline your processes of your marketing strategy, like lead nurturing email campaigns or newsletters.
Without the right automation tools in place, your team will likely spend countless hours writing emails, scoring leads, and keeping contact properties up to date in the CRM.
Marketing automation is HubSpot's bread and butter. They provide several awesome tools to simplify many tedious tasks.
In terms of email, you can run simple A/B tests and add personalization tokens to customize your messaging to recipients. Plus, your CMS integrates seamlessly with email tools, so you can automate newsletters as you publish your content.
One of the best marketing automation features included in HubSpot is workflows. You can create targeted workflows using list segmentation to personalize your emails to each contact in your database.
As with most CMS platforms, WordPress does not have any native email marketing or marketing automation capabilities. When you want to deliver true relationship building to all of your inbound marketing leads, you’ll have to rely on secondary tools.
MailChimp and AWeber integrations are popular, but once again, you rely on third parties. This can lead to more headaches with software management and potential integration hiccups.
Social media and your content go hand in hand. Or at least, they should. Without proper integration, you and your team might have to spend a lot of time and energy distributing your content and connecting with your community.
HubSpot emphasizes seamless social media management. You’re able to keep your eye on the social conversation and on overall trends in sentiment.
When it’s time to chime in on popular social platforms or schedule out your social messages, you never have to leave your digital marketing command center. You can also measure and assess how your social media strategy is faring by looking at social media analytics.
WordPress has started to edge toward some design concessions that make social media sharing a bit easier.
However, you’ll still need third party tools to maximize sharing, and you won’t be able to monitor your social reach from within WordPress. That’s a lot of extra software to oversee!
Both platforms can be connected to ecommerce stores — most popularly Shopify and BigCommerce. They both allow automated payments and can integrate with accounting software. However, once again, there are glaring differences between the two CMS platforms:
Since HubSpot also has a customer relationship management (CRM) feature, you can sync and segment them for more tailored marketing and personalized workflows.
But wait! There’s more! During Inbound 2021, HubSpot announced a native payment feature to deliver a more streamlined buyer experience. So you can accept payments without integrating with any other platform if you so choose.
WordPress securely uses APIs so you can display and manage your products, as well as accept customers’ payments. There are several ecommerce plugins, many of them designed for different needs — such as products that need to be shipped, or for downloadable content, such as ebooks and music.
No matter what CMS you're looking at, you know you want all the basic needs covered — including speed, stability, and uptime.
HubSpot is constantly evolving and getting better. Their team of expert software engineers ensure the software’s code is always up to date.
You don’t have to lose sleep patching a dozen different items as you would with the average WordPress installation. Your website security is covered, thanks to all the great features, such as the following:
WordPress is notorious for its security holes and flaws, but the open source community does keep the core software fairly stable, providing many website security options.
However, all those extra plugins and widgets mean you’ll often end up with tons of vulnerabilities to exploit. It's difficult to keep track of them all.
For hobbyists and bloggers who plan to maintain a small, niche site, WordPress does what it’s intended to do. However, if you're a business with a digital marketing team, HubSpot stands out as the hands down choice.
It doesn’t matter if you’re working with a small startup or a giant multinational. HubSpot will give you all of what you need and none of what you don’t. It’s also always aligned with the absolute highest standards in inbound marketing, helping you create useful content and test different iterations as you attract the right audience.
The latest reviews for the CMS Hub further support the power of the platform.
HubSpot users are raving on Capterra about how easy the CMS Hub is to use and how great their customer service team is. Here are what real users had to say about why they switched to the CMS Hub:
"We were looking for a CMS that would drive our content marketing strategy, including blogging, email distribution, webinars/events — all connected to a CRM for lead flow and pipeline management." – Matthew M.
"The content management functionality and web development components were a plus for me personally, and I believe the cost was a big driving factor as well." – Andrew R.
"We switched to Hubspot because it allowed us to house our website and all of our marketing tactics under one roof. It made tracking marketing campaigns SO much easier!" – Melissa S.
Admittedly, the right WordPress build can do a lot of neat stuff. However, even its best solutions are a distant second place compared to HubSpot. By the time you snap in all the different software add-ons, you end up with a bloated site that loads far too slowly for today’s time-pressed web users.
WordPress puts you in the position of having to learn, manage, and maintain your platform.
On the other hand, HubSpot abstracts all that extra stuff away. It’s like magic: It just works.
Instead of wasting your time fiddling with technical details, you can stay focused on finding the best ways to use integrated, user-friendly tools to achieve greater marketing ROI.
When your company starts using HubSpot, you also get the benefit of a vibrant community full of digital marketing experts just like the ones in your team. Combined with the excellent training materials HubSpot provides, you really can take your marketing to the next level.That’s a far cry from the do it yourself WordPress approach.
In short, HubSpot offers an all-in-one solution that saves you time and enables your inbound marketing team to work more efficiently.
There’s always a learning curve, even when managing content with user-friendly software. You also don’t know what you don’t know, and you may be missing out on features that could better help you align your CMS practices with your business goals. Let us help you with a free HubSpot audit. We’ll also provide you with actionable steps so that you can boost your ROI. No commitment necessary.