I don’t go to my favourite coffee shop because of the coffee, although the coffee is great. I go because the staff don’t ask me 1,000 questions, the atmosphere is relaxed, and there is usually space to relax for 10 mins out without having to perch in a window.
Our favourite website engine these days follows similar logic.
We build primarily in HubSpot. Not because of the CMS tooling, although it’s excellent these days. We use it because it pays attention to visitors by default, automatically tracking everything we could need, and seamlessly hooks into all aspects of campaign activity.
Ultimately, no one really wants a website, they need one. They need it to complete a critical step in the buyer journey. When you start with that journey, rather than the website, you need some pretty solid reason not to use HubSpot to build on.
Things that might take thought, time and negotiation with a traditional CMS are…just there.
| CMS feature | Traditional CMS | Hubspot CMS |
| Ease of content editing | 3 | 5 |
| Drag-and-drop page builder | 3 | 5 |
| Design flexibility | 5 | 4 |
| Third party plugin dependency | 2 | 5 |
| Built-in SEO tools | 3 | 5 |
| Personalisation (smart content) | 2 | 5 |
| Marketing automation integration | 2 | 5 |
| Built-in analytics and reporting | 3 | 5 |
| CRM integration | 2 | 5 |
| Security and hosting | 3 | 5 |
| A/B testing capabilities | 2 | 4 |
| Support for gated content and lead capture | 3 | 5 |
| Ease of integration with email marketing | 3 | 5 |
| Scalability for B2B needs | 3 | 5 |
| Built-in form builder | 3 | 5 |
There is a licencing cost, of course. This might be double what you would pay for a reasonable sized hosted WordPress service. But achieving the simplicity and ‘journey focus’ of HubSpot in WordPress would demand substantial plugins, widgets and additional services. In our experience these will typically exceed the HubSpot licencing and only partially close the functionality gap.
Not all websites suit, or need, HubSpot CMS.
When selecting a CMS for your website our strongest advice is simply this. Don’t think about your website, think about your buyer journey.