HubSpot CMS Pros and Cons

Are you considering using HubSpot’s CMS? There are a lot of content management systems out there, and the HubSpot CMS is a great one. But it’s not for everyone. More on that later.

While we’re proponents of hosting everything on HubSpot for its ease-of-use and reporting capabilities, there’s another camp that prefers to have HubSpot for things like landing pages and forms, while using Wordpress for the website and blog -- and HubSpot’s flexible API makes it really easy to do that. You can mix and match what you host on HubSpot:

Blog
Landing pages
Forms
Website pages

The reason people often give for hosting different items across different platforms usually has less to do with functionality and more to do with the developer side of things:

Some people feel Wordpress’ plugin and theme offerings are better (which is largely a matter of opinion
There are way more Wordpress developers than HubSpot developers out there

Per the second point, the reason for this is that Wordpress’ market share is 37% of all websites. That’s over a third of the web.

There is no one-size fits all, but my hope is that this blog will help you discern whether or not the HubSpot CMS is right for you. Let’s dive in.

What Is HubSpot?

First off, HubSpot is much more than a CMS. It’s a full platform for sales, marketing, and service. The entire HubSpot techstack is modular, and the hubs (CMS, Marketing, Sales, and Service) all hook into the CRM. So if you’re interested in Revenue Operations, HubSpot is one of your best options (and if you’ve never heard of revops, you can check out our blog on that here!).

What’s great about having the CMS and the CRM connected is that you can leverage smart content to personalize what’s on your website. And that leads us into our first HubSpot pro.

HubSpot CMS Pro #1: Personalization

You can tailor exactly what people see when they come to your website through features like smart content and progressive profiling.

You can use smart content to customize what website visitors see based on:

Country
Device type
Referral source
Preferred language
Contact list membership
Lifecycle stages

HubSpot has incredibly granular filtering and segmentation capabilities. Using features like progressive profiling that feed into contact list memberships, you can build out incredibly granular audience segments.

HubSpot CMS Pro #2: One Hub to Rule All Publishing

If you fall into the camp of HubSpot users that like to diversify their techstack, this could be seen as a con. But at Chief Martech Officer, we love that everything we need is hosted in one place. With email and social, HubSpot becomes your one-stop-hub for all things publishing.

This is particularly good for teams with limited resources. That includes manpower, money and especially time. Not only the time it takes to navigate between and potentially pull information from different platforms, but the learning curve for each of those platforms.

For example, website pages, landing pages, and blogs all have SEO built-in. It’s automatically updated to appeal to Google’s ever-shifting algorithm. With a platform like Wordpress, you would need to install a third-party plugin to optimize for search. HubSpot is ready to go, right out of the box:

Built-in SEO
Social sharing icons
Easily add CTAs to posts, and tie these to campaigns to track conversions

HubSpot CMS Pro #3: Responsive Drag-and-Drop Templates

HubSpot devs and designers may be a smaller pool than Wordpress devs and designers, but the good news is that HubSpot doesn’t require users to be reliant on anyone.

On most other platforms, marketers are forced to be like barnacles attached to developers; when it comes to customization and usability marketers have traditionally leaned heavily on other people to see their vision through.

One of the pros of HubSpot is that you can rely on devs as little or as much as you like. Themes allow marketers to update the look of a website without having to deal with stylesheets. It’s a true WYSIWYG editor.

HubSpot CMS Pro #4: Security

One of the best things about the HubSpot CMS is it comes with total security, right out of the box:

HubSpot CDN can handle high levels of traffic and handles regular virus scans;
Data centers all over the world, so your site has no downtime;
Enterprise-class web firewall;
Standard SSL included;
Reverse proxy support; and
Dedicated team monitoring the CMS 24/7 for attacks or anomalies.

Wordpress is a prime target for hackers and attacks (partially because so much of the internet is hosted on it). HubSpot is definitely not immune to attacks, but the security is unparalleled.

HubSpot Con #1: Development Curve

The good news is you don’t need a lot of dev work with HubSpot. The bad news is that the development curve can be challenging. Even experienced web developers are going to have to do some learning to understand:

Proprietary language for HubL
HubSpot FTP
Design Manager
Kinds of stylesheets
Kinds of modules

The recently released CMS Hub (2020) has reduced friction within the platform, but there will always be a learning curve with a technology this robust.

HubSpot Con #2: Does Not Support eCommerce

If you’re primarily in eCommerce, stick to Shopify. While HubSpot has made some really great progress with their CMS on this front, their own marketing angle still encourages users to integrate with Shopify.

That being said, the integration is pretty powerful. You can host your website on Shopify while injecting your marketing strategy with the power of Inbound.

HubSpot Con #3: The Support Isn’t Great

We hate to say it, but HubSpot technical support is not very helpful. They’re responsive and eager to help, but the quality of information you get from them can be extremely hit-or-miss. Sometimes you get someone who’s really savvy with the platform, and sometimes it feels like you’re talking to someone who thinks “301 redirect” is a boy band.

Do you have more questions about the HubSpot CMS? Are you wondering whether HubSpot is right for you? We happily offer free consultations! Schedule a chat with us anytime: