Nathan Gifford

In the world of CMS, there is an ongoing debate around which solution is better... WordPress or HubSpot CMS. We stand by the fact that no one solution works for all cases, but we recently weighed in on this discussion in a mini-blog series that you can read here. To start, we know that WordPress powers about 43% of all websites, which makes it the clear market share leader. In that regard, it is the most popular. But a slowing trend can be seen in that popularity as other solid alternatives have advanced. Also, just because it’s the most popular or the one you’re most familiar with does not make it the best choice! There are 3 main points that certainly should be considered in this discussion: Maintenance and cost, security, and ease of use. 1) Some would argue that WordPress is better because it is FREE. Many would also argue, us included, that it is NOT free. The software itself is free, but there is cost in web hosting, SSL and firewalls, multiple third-party plugins with license fees, and the huge element of time involved in the ongoing upkeep of the site and environment. Time is money. There’s also something to be said for your peace of mind that is hard to find when fighting with WP site maintenance. 2) Security is a significant and widely known issue with WordPress. Sophos reports that over 30,000 websites are hacked every day, which means about 13,000 WP sites are hit daily. This of course makes it easy to believe that WordPress is by far the most hacked CMS... by a huge margin. According to Sucuri, 4.3% of WordPress websites scanned with SiteCheck in 2022 had been hacked. That's about 1 in every 25 websites... and of course, not all WordPress sites use SiteCheck, so that is not even a complete picture. The higher platform usage makes it a larger target for hackers. The main security issue is tied to the third-party plugins, which are often not being updated and account for 92% of WP security vulnerabilities. 3) Ease of use is a big deal as a WordPress site, in most cases, leaves you with a very restrictive management environment. This forces the marketing team to have to rely on developers much too often, calling them in for what should be routine site updates. There are options to load more user-friendly plugins that give drag-n-drop content editing abilities, but these not only add cost to the equation, they also add a lot of bloat to your website, negatively affecting site performance. We have found that HubSpot CMS is a very effective solution for most websites. You actually CAN setup a HubSpot website on a free account, but there are paid versions of the CMS with a much deeper toolset of course. You can also find many free themes in the Marketplace, including some very popular options developed by New Era There are no third-party plugins, server updates, platform updates or anything else like that to maintain, so you can focus on your business instead of applying band-aids to your website. Security is well-handled also with built in Cloudflare, SSL, and a full collection of security settings that can be enabled and configured. Check out the blog posts linked above to dig more into this debate and reach out to us if you would like to talk about migrating your site from WordPress to HubSpot! You can also see more of our HubSpot CMS work and services at https://hubspot.neweratech.com.