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How the HubSpot CMS Compares to WordPress

This month HubSpot announced the release of CMS Hub Starter. Its economical price tag ($25/month) puts the world of website creation and editing at the fingertips of even the smallest businesses.

But you may be wondering how it compares to other popular, inexpensive options like WordPress? As you search for a CMS that fits your needs, you should be asking questions like this. After all, how will you find the best possible solution? Keep reading for a look at each platform and its features so you can make an informed decision.

What is CMS Hub Starter?

CMS Hub Starter is the latest addition to the CMS Hub family. It is a cloud-based CMS powered by HubSpot’s CRM. With CMS Hub, marketers and developers access the tools they need to create stunning, functional websites. CMS Hub Starter is especially useful for small businesses looking for a way to easily create content, optimize for conversions, and track their site’s performance. 

What is WordPress? 

WordPress is a popular website builder that offers different pricing packages. The most similar to CMS Hub Starter is their “Business” package, which starts at $25/month. Like the other tiers, WordPress Business is open-source software that you have to install or configure to your servers using a third-party hosting provider.

What are the Main Features of CMS Hub Starter and WordPress? 

Both systems come with the necessary tools to create and edit websites, with some differences. Take a look at CMS Hub Starter features and WordPress features:

CMS Hub Starter

  • Premium hosting on HubSpot
  • Content creation through the drag and drop editor
  • Mobile optimization
  • SSL certificate and CDN 
  • Design manager
  • Custom domains
  • 99.9% measured uptime
  • Built-in-AMP support for blogs
  • Website themes
  • Local website development
  • Advanced menus
  • Access to the app and asset marketplace
  • Site export
  • Website structure import
  • Blog import
  • URL mappings
  • 24/7 security monitoring
  • One blog
  • Ten reporting dashboards with ten reports
  • 15 web pages without dynamic content
  • Basic bot features
  • Forms
  • Limited landing pages
  • Standard website traffic analytics

 

WordPress

  • Free domain for one year
  • Hosting
  • Content creation tools
  • Removal of ads
  • eCommerce capabilities
  • Premium themes
  • Video
  • Google analytics integration
  • Access to over 500,000 plugins
  • SEO
  • Sitemaps
  • Automated site backups
  • FTP and database access (useful for advanced developers)

What are the Key Differences Between CMS Hub Starter and WordPress? 

CMS Hub Starter and WordPress are excellent choices for small businesses looking to get up and running with a website quickly. And with different pricing packages, both offer ways to scale up as your company grows. However, there are some aspects to factor in when making your choice.

For example, WordPress has a long history of website development as open-source software. Open source has both pros and cons. Several different people can independently modify or customize it, allowing for endless examples of frameworks, themes, plugins, and extensions to fit any need you may have for your website. You also can dive into the WordPress community to engage with users and ask questions. Yet when there are too many cooks in the proverbial kitchen, you’ll have to deal with numerous updates and changes that can lead to breaks or messy backends. Additionally, a lot of this functionality has to be handled by a developer. If you’re a small business, you may not have a development team on staff.

Similarly, WordPress sites are built using third-party plugins. Not all of these are free. They’ll also need to be monitored consistently for updates. If you miss one, your website could suffer, and your visitors may notice. On top of all this, plugins expose websites to security threats, which could lead to a hacker getting a hold of the vital data you’re storing on your site – i.e., personal contact information. Because WordPress has operated for so long using open-source plugins, it’s very vulnerable to these kinds of hacks.

On the other hand, CMS Hub doesn’t use third-party plugins. Instead, you use flexible themes and content structures backed by 24/7 security monitoring to build your pages. And while CMS Hub Starter is limited in what you can create (15 website pages, one subdomain, one primary domain, and one blog) in comparison to WordPress, HubSpot built it, so it’s easy to use. CMS Hub Starter empowers marketers and developers to do their jobs without stepping on each other’s toes. For instance, if you need a custom template or module built, your developer can do the work and then pass the functionality off to the marketing team. If you don’t, the drag and drop editor makes it easy to change the look and feel of existing themes from the HubSpot asset marketplace. Essentially, you can build your pages whether or not you have a technical staff on hand.

Lastly, CMS Hub Starter is connected to the larger HubSpot ecosystem. You can tap into marketing, sales, and service tools on top of what comes with CMS Hub to truly build a robust digital presence. With WordPress, this doesn’t exist, and you’ll have to buy additional systems to grow your tech stack here and likely have to get them integrated with your WordPress site for seamless functionality.

READ MORE – CMS Comparison – Comparing HubSpot to Wix & SquareSpace

CMS Hub Starter or WordPress? 

CMS Hub Starter and WordPress both have a lot to offer when it comes to the design and functionality of your website. Selecting what’s right for you will primarily come down to your preference. If you like the idea of open-source software that lets you host your site whatever you want and make changes to the CMS on a whim, then WordPress may work. However, CMS Hub Starter is an excellent choice if you want a more hands-off approach to site building, maintenance, and security monitoring.