Recently, there has been some frustration from WordPress users, leading to many organizations migrating from WordPress to HubSpot. For a long time, WordPress has been seen as the premier CMS, with 45.8% of all websites using that platform. However, new-age web builders like HubSpot and Wix have seen growing market shares. If you're considering a change, let's explore a comparison between the two platforms and discuss why HubSpot stands out as an excellent choice when selecting a CMS for your new website.
HUBSPOT vs. WORDPRESS
While both HubSpot and WordPress are two of the top options to build a new website, the two differ in various ways. HubSpot stands out as an inbound marketing and sales platform, offering a suite of tools for content management, lead generation, and customer relationship management. Renowned for its user-friendly interface and powerful analytics, HubSpot continues to grow as a major player in the content management system (CMS) industry. On the other hand, WordPress remains the go-to choice for website creation and management, boasting flexibility, scalability, and a vast array of plugins and themes. With its intuitive CMS, WordPress continues to be the most popular choice among website developers. Here are some key differences between the two platforms you should consider when looking to migrate a website from WordPress to HubSpot.
EASE OF USE
WordPress was mostly known for its easy-to-use interface, empowering users with varying levels of technical expertise to create and oversee websites. However, the site editing experience has recently led to frustration by backend website users (who aren’t proficient coders), with many saying ease of use is not a strength anymore. On the other hand, HubSpot CMS not only prides itself on its user-friendly interface but also distinguishes itself by placing a significant emphasis on inbound marketing principles. This focus is at the core of HubSpot's philosophy, designed to attract, engage, and delight customers through personalized and relevant content. With that in mind, it’s extremely easy to manage any content made with the HubSpot CMS, which is a big selling point for those looking to make the switch.
INTEGRATED TOOLS
Clean data and reporting features are essential when creating a customer-facing website. WordPress allows for highly customizable websites, which is where it has the upper hand on HubSpot. While WordPress offers numerous plugins for various functionalities, including SEO, email marketing, and social media integration, these tools often come from third-party developers and require integration with external services. HubSpot CMS integrates seamlessly with the HubSpot suite of marketing, sales, and CRM tools, providing a unified platform for inbound marketing activities. HubSpot is known for its automation and MarTech stack communication abilities. A website built in HubSpot’s CMS, alongside the CRM, is instantly the single source of truth for all marketing, sales, and services efforts. If your existing site is within WordPress, and migrating it is too much of a hassle, WordPress does integrate very nicely with HubSpot. This allows your site to use all the custom capabilities of WordPress while using the powerful HubSpot CRM for all marketing, sales, and service tools. This integration simplifies workflows and data management for users who rely on HubSpot's ecosystem. Another big difference between WordPress and HubSpot is HubSpot’s growing use of artificial intelligence (AI). HubSpot even has its own generative AI tool called ChatSpot. Many of HubSpot’s CMS tools use AI to optimize performance and efficiency.
sCALABILITY
When it comes to scalability, both WordPress and HubSpot CMS provide solutions tailored to meet diverse needs. WordPress’s scalability ensures that websites of all sizes, from personal blogs to enterprise-level e-commerce platforms. One significant pro of scalability with HubSpot CMS is its seamless integration with the broader HubSpot ecosystem. This integration means that as a business grows, it can easily scale its marketing, sales, and customer relationship management efforts alongside its website. HubSpot's ecosystem can handle increasing traffic and data volume without sacrificing performance or user experience (UX). Moreover, HubSpot's cloud-based architecture ensures that scalability is not hindered by hardware limitations, allowing websites to expand without the need for significant infrastructure investments or technical overhead.
Ultimately, the choice between the two platforms depends on your specific needs, preferences, and long-term goals for your online presence. As HubSpot grows its capabilities, its presence in the CMS world will only continue to grow.
TIPS FOR MIGRATING FROM WORDPRESS TO HUBSPOT
When making the switch to HubSpot, there are some procedures needed for efficient and organized migration. Here are some tips for the migration process:
- Evaluate Your Content: Take inventory of your existing content on WordPress and identify what needs to be migrated to HubSpot. This includes pages, blog posts, images, videos, and any other media files.
- Map Out Your URLs: Map out the URLs of your WordPress content to their corresponding URLs in HubSpot. Existing WordPress URLs cannot be identical when migrating to HubSpot, but modifications can be made to approach 301 redirects meticulously. Nobody wants to lose progress on any SEO efforts by changing native URLs, and despite rumors, hosting a site on HubSpot’s CMS will not negatively affect SEO.
- Optimize Content for HubSpot: During the migration process, optimize your content, ensuring seamless integration with HubSpot's platform. This includes updating metadata, formatting, and organizing your content to align with HubSpot's CMS structure.
Fun fact: HubSpot allows any blog content to be imported directly from your WordPress site! - Test Your Migration: Before making your migrated content live, have your team Q&A all content before sending it live. Check for any formatting issues, broken links, or missing content.
- Monitor and Troubleshoot: Monitor your site after migration for any issues. Quickly address any problems to ensure a smooth transition for your website users. Another step is ensuring the site is accessible to all and ADA-compliant to avoid lawsuits. A great option for making a site completely accessible would be accessiBe, the #1 web accessibility solution for WCAG & ADA compliance.
With HubSpot, website migration is clean and painless. From there, anything is possible with the scalability and functionality of the HubSpot CMS.
GROWTH DRIVEN DESIGN
Migrating to a site is a great opportunity to readdress the site’s purpose, any goals or KPIs that are associated with the site, and potential gaps that need to be addressed. Rather than doing a quick migration, we recommend intentional migrations that align with HubSpot’s Growth Driven Design Methodology. After the site has been migrated, conducting audits focusing on design, performance, and inbound marketing enhancements is crucial. Following that, you can concentrate on a 20% makeover for your site, which yields 80% of the desired impact. GDD relies on three steps that will quickly produce a flexible website. The process includes:
- Strategy: In this phase, the focus is on understanding the business goals, target audience, and key performance indicators (KPIs) for the website. From there, it’s easier to create a strategic plan to develop the website.
- Launch Pad Website: Instead of building a fully completed website, GDD starts with creating a Launch Pad website. This allows your organization to collect user data and feedback immediately, leading to data-driven decisions for future website improvement.
- Continuous Improvement: Once the site is live, the focus shifts to continuous improvements backed by the data you’ve been collecting. Then, HubSpot’s analytics tools allow your teams to track KPIs and identify areas of optimization.
A great website includes visually appealing aspects and is highly effective when trying to achieve business goals. Get the best of both worlds with Growth Driven Design.
When WordPress falls short of expectations, migrating to HubSpot is the optimal choice. With the seamless integration of HubSpot's CMS and CRM tools, along with its robust capabilities for website creation, migration, and customization, HubSpot presents an undeniable solution.
Interested in HubSpot? See what GROWL x HubSpot could do for your organization.