Jul 17, 2018

Blog Software: HubSpot vs. WordPress

By: Jacob Smith

Inbound Marketing

It should come as no surprise that we think WordPress is the greatest. Why then, have we migrated this blog and those of our clients to HubSpot?

HubSpot is the best inbound marketing platform. The tools it has around lead capture and marketing automation are second to none. Your blog is a vital part of your inbound strategy and it makes sense to house it all in one place.

It's not all sunshine and roses, but it is the right choice for most our clients. Here are our thoughts on HubSpot's blog software.

The Good

The content creation process is better out of the box on HubSpot. You can create draft posts and send a link to reviewers to be able to comment, no log in necessary. This is possible with plugins on WordPress, but not nearly as easy.

The other boon is integrated reporting. You can see how your blog contributes to site traffic and lead generation all in a single spot. What gets measured gets managed and integrated reporting is key for properly managing your program.

We wouldn't feel comfortable compromising on design. The HubSpot templating language can take some getting used to, but it does the job. We can implement the same high quality designs on either platform.

Finally, HubSpot offers dead simple RSS to email subscriptions: no plugins, no API connects to troubleshoot. And HubSpot allows people to subscribe daily, weekly, and monthly. By allowing users to decide how often they get emails, you increase engagement and retention.

The Bad

HubSpot only offers tags for taxonomy. There is no ability for hierarchy. For many blogs this isn't an issue. But if you had hundreds of posts, allowing for filtering on multiple fronts could be necessary.

The only export option is CSV. That's not the greatest, but it's better than nothing.

The Ugly

Blog search is still in Beta. It's a bit baffling that search isn't something that was a version 1.0 feature, but it wasn't. We've been using the Beta search with a few clients and it works well, but still is a bit of a pain to set up.

WordPress search has it's own foibles, but you get a lot of points for showing up.

You do have to host the blog on a subdomain. This really should go into "The Indifferent" category. It used to be that you would lose domain authority by having your blog on a subdomain. Current wisdom holds that search engines are smart enough to know there isn't much of a difference between blog.abravenew.com and abravenew.com/blog.

The Best Choice For You

Moving your blog to HubSpot isn't always going to be the best choice. But if you looking to run a highly functioning inbound program on HubSpot it probably is.

You do have to be smart about migration and setting up proper redirects. You can expect to see a dip in your page rank, but the long term gains you will see with a more robust content program will be worth it.

As with most technology decisions, the right choice for your company requires taking the time really dig into how you will be using the technology. Our rule of thumb: if you are using HubSpot, your blog should be on HubSpot.

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