Why not HubSpot CMS?
Over the years we’ve been asked a hundred times to comment on “WordPress vs. Hubspot”, so we thought we’d put our answer down here for the record.
First off, when it comes to CRM/SFA tools, there’s no comparison. HubSpot Marketing Hub is the best choice on the planet. Better than Marketo. Better than Eloqua. Better than anything else, by far. More than 90% of our clients use Marketing Hub, and we integrate their form and chat capabilities for demand gen in the B2B sites we build all the time. We’ve got to be one of HubSpot’s most vocal advocates when it comes to its marketing capabilities.
But not when it comes to CMS. Let’s start with some data and not just our opinion.
HubSpot’s offering (CMS Hub) holds just a 0.3% share of the web CMS market. Less than one percent. W3Techs breaks down the traction of CMS brands you probably know as follows:
- WordPress 61.7%
- Drupal 1.2%
- Adobe 1.2%
- Webflow 1.1%
- HubSpot 0.3%
That’s the market telling us all that WordPress is more universally adopted as a CMS of choice than HubSpot.
Now, why we think the numbers are as they are.
The skills gap
Finding a skilled HubSpot CMS development partner isn’t as simple as picking up any old team of web developers. Unlike WordPress, HubSpot requires a unique set of skills that are relatively hard to find so there’s a very limited pool of qualified dev teams.
WordPress is open-source, based on the ubiquitous and well-established PHP framework, with literally thousands of highly qualified dev teams available globally. In contrast, HubSpot CMS is more of a locked-down, proprietary platform with its own set of tools and frameworks that aren’t as widely understood by developers at large. HubSpot uses its own HubL language for server-side rendering, and few developers know it.
Making things worse, even within the HubSpot development community not all developers are actually HubSpot-certified. Given the relatively niche nature of HubSpot CMS compared to WordPress, the pool of qualified developers is limited. While agencies specializing in HubSpot development exist, their number is relatively small when compared to agencies specializing in WordPress, which has a significantly larger developer community.
Many agencies and freelancers may offer HubSpot development “as one of their services”, but we’ve seen that doesn’t necessarily mea they possess deep expertise in the platform. The end result is often that businesses using HubSpot CMS can be left sorting through a variety of partners with varying levels of competence, which is time-consuming and frustrating.
The cost factor
Another obstacle when searching for a HubSpot CMS development partner is the cost. Due to the niche expertise required, agencies or developers that specialize in HubSpot CMS often charge a premium for their services. This can be a significant hurdle for organizations with limited budgets. While businesses may want to work with experienced developers, they often face difficult decisions regarding the tradeoff between quality and budget, and can find themselves struggling to justify the costs without fully understanding the benefits. This adds another layer of complexity when choosing the right partner.
Bottom line
If you’ve been thinking about going (or staying) with HubSpot as your CMS, we hope this perspective will help guide you in making an informed choice.
As we said at the start of this post, HubSpot’s great as a marketing automation platform. Its ability to integrate seamlessly with WordPress is flawless and well-established. And we don’t just support the concept of WordPress / HubSpot Marketing Hub integrations – we’re experts at performing them.
So just do that.