If you’re planning on changing your content setup, you might be contemplating HubSpot vs. WordPress. It’s not the easiest decision, as your choice will determine your stack, scalability, and budget.
Your content management system (CMS) sets the pace for content creation, SEO capabilities, and even CRM integration.
Get it right and you can scale blog posts, landing pages, and email marketing campaigns.
Get it wrong, and it can slow down your growth before you say the word “scale.”
This guide is for agencies, marketers, and website owners who want to scale content marketing and link growth without costly chaos. We’ll compare HubSpot vs. WordPress, from editors to marketing automation and security.
By the end, you’ll know when HubSpot Content Hub fits, when WordPress wins, and when hybrid makes sense.
HubSpot CMS is an all-in-one CMS built on HubSpot CRM. It offers content creation, marketing automation, and analytics dashboards.
You get a drag-and-drop editor to ship pages fast, plus SEO tools, A/B testing for pages, and dynamic content for personalization.
Security and speed are handled for you. You get SSL certificates, a global content delivery network (CDN), and firewall protection.
HubSpot CMS
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WordPress is a free, open-source CMS that you host with your chosen hosting provider.
It’s also extremely popular. Research by W3 Techs shows that WordPress powers 43% of all global websites.
You control everything, from themes to plugins, dynamic content, and security. Most hosting providers (such as Hostinger and Cloudways) offer free SSL certificates, backups, email, and technical support.
Technical and optimization plugins give you the option to add anything you need, including a CDN, video and image caching, and web application firewalls (WAF).
Even though this CMS is great if you want to start a WordPress blog, it’s much more than that. You can build complete sales funnels, membership areas, and automated multilingual directories.
It’s a great suite of tools for any business, small or enterprise-level, that needs full control, customization, and maximum return on investment (ROI) by lowering costs.
WordPress
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Tooling shapes what and how fast you ship. Let’s compare editors, AI helpers, and content collaboration.
HubSpot Content Hub includes a visual drag-and-drop editor, approvals, content staging, and brand kits. Of course, there are many themes for HubSpot CMS Hub. The platform’s AI features help outline, draft, and repurpose assets.
There’s also a content remix option. This uses Breeze, HubSpot’s AI, to turn a webinar or blog post into emails and social media snippets that match your brand voice. That cuts time from ideation to distribution, and keeps messaging consistent across channels.
For collaboration, roles and approvals help editors and approvers move fast while staying on brand.
Version history tracks edit changes for audits and rollbacks. This is useful for agencies and global teams that need global brand control without having to spin up extra tools.
HubSpot Content Hub
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WordPress ships the Gutenberg editor with a variety of blocks and pattern libraries.
You can create a landing page with pre-designed or custom blocks, save sections as patterns, and reuse them across campaigns.
If you need more control, page builder plugins like Kadence or Elementor add grids, dynamic modules, and templating that fit non-technical users.
A big upside when working with WordPress is the huge amount of available functionality.
You’re not a fan of the Twenty-Twenty-Five default theme? There are dozens of free WordPress blog themes you can choose from.
Want to switch to another page builder plugin that adds technical features? You can install the new plugin and get to publishing in a few hours or days, depending on how complex your website is.
Want to add custom code that makes massive sales pages seem a lot shorter by fetching pieces of the page live when scrolling? Create it once and reuse it as a JavaScript (JS) template or named CSS block.
It’s also very easy to go from drafts to publishing. Draft your blog posts in the editor, see how it will look on various screen sizes, and hit the publish button.
And if you want more speed, you can write and export Google Docs to WordPress. This keeps writers and editors focused on the content, while technical SEO teams and designers can work on the WordPress backend.
Gutenberg, the block editor
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Both platforms can help you rank. The difference is how much is built in, how deep the controls go, and what your team wants to manage.
HubSpot gives you on-page basics inside the editor, plus a workspace with SEO tools that scan live pages and flag issues.
You can set titles and meta, add redirects, and follow recommendations without touching code.
When you connect Google Search Console, you can review query-level data inside HubSpot to see which blog posts and landing pages pull impressions and clicks.
Topic clustering helps teams map pillar pages and subtopics, then track how those pages perform as a group.
HubSpot’s SEO is simple for marketers and useful for editors who want structure, without needing custom code or a developer.
SEO tools in HubSpot
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WordPress leans on plugins like Yoast SEO and Rank Math for deep control. These plugins handle nearly everything with on-page and technical SEO. They create schema data that describes your website and organization.
You also get FAQ and HowTo blocks inside the editor, so structured data fits your normal writing flow and helps search engines display richer results.
They auto-build XML sitemaps for default and custom post types, and update them automatically when you publish new blog posts or create new types.
You can exclude specific URLs or taxonomies, set canonical URLs, and fine-tune robots directives per page.
Rank Math
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There are many SEO WordPress plugins to choose from. Check some of them and pick one that gives you the most functionality, so you won’t have to use multiple plugins that can slow down your site.
You need numbers that connect content to outcomes. Each platform takes a different route from page views to contacts and deals.
HubSpot includes advanced analytics out of the box.
Web traffic analytics shows sessions by source, device, and country. You can slice by page, campaign, and form, then watch conversion rate changes as you test.
If your team uses Marketing Hub and Sales Hub, website reporting ties content to contacts and pipeline. That gives you one place to check the customer journey.
You can also run an A/B tests for landing pages directly, then roll the winning copy across the site. That reduces tool switching and keeps reports simple for leadership and content teams.
HubSpot Analytics
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On WordPress, you can get similar functionality to HubSpot with just a few plugins.
Google Analytics and Google Search Console offer web traffic analytics and website reporting. The setup takes a bit of wiring, though some plugins make it very easy.
The huge upside with WordPress is that you get control and depth.
You can use a funnel plugin like CartFlows for sales and cart pages. Then, use a video plugin like Presto Player to set up a consistent video playing layout. Connect it to a hosting solution like BunnyStream, and push all tracking and analytics to GA4.
For heatmaps, you can start with Microsoft Clarity, which is free. It also allows syncing to Google Analytics.
This way, everything reports to one platform, and there’s even a GA4 plugin that you can install on WordPress to monitor analytics from there.
Google Analytics plugins on WordPress
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Automation is where page views turn into an enriched sales pipeline. The two stacks give you different ways to build that engine.
HubSpot CRM is native, so marketing automation connects straight to contacts, companies, and deals.
You can launch email marketing campaigns, score leads, trigger dynamic content with smart rules, and hand off to Sales Hub without wiring tools together.
You also get a meeting scheduler and site chat in the same place.
A recent multi-industry survey by Ascend2 found 54% of marketers plan to increase their marketing-automation budgets this year, and 89% say automation helps them build more effective journeys.
HubSpot can help make it easier to create these automations.
Do marketing automations help build effective customer journeys?
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Here’s the downside, though: All these hubs, including the marketing automation, cost extra as you scale up. And unlike 20 years ago, there are dozens of platforms that allow you to set up automations, including N8N, Make.com, and Pabbly.
WordPress does not ship a CRM by default, but you can add one in minutes.
FluentCRM and Jetpack CRM turn WordPress into a self-hosted CRM with lists, segments, automations, and email.
FluentCRM on WordPress
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If you prefer an external CRM, use official or well-supported plugins. The HubSpot WordPress plugin brings forms, tracking, live chat, and contact sync, while the WP Zoho CRM plugin lets you push leads straight into Zoho.
You can also add meeting schedulers and site chats with plugins or embeds, like Calendly on WordPress. This way, booking links live right on your landing pages.
This allows you to speed up SEO content production without sacrificing budget. It keeps your editing team working in the Gutenberg editor or page builder while operations run segmentation and nurture in the tools they know.
Security comes down to who owns the risk and how much you want to configure. Don’t neglect security, or it can bring your business to a halt.
A 2024 report by Cloudflare recorded 6.9 million distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks in Q4 2024. That’s an 83% jump year-over-year.
Want to guess where most attacks came from?
Competitors.
DDoS attack types
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HubSpot hosts your site and includes a global CDN, auto SSL certificates, and a WAF with DDoS mitigation.
On Enterprise plans, you can set security headers like HSTS and content security protocols (CSPs). These help lock down transport and content sources.
Platform-level security patches and 24/7 monitoring reduce change risk and admin work, so your team spends more time shipping content and less time chasing updates.
With WordPress, you control the hosting service and every security feature.
Most hosting platforms already provide SSL and basic security. Add firewall protection if it isn’t included.
Security plugins like Really Simple Security are affordable and can set up HSTS, force HTTPS, and set CSPs. These protect your backend and your users by preventing man-in-the-middle attacks.
Really Simple Security on WordPress
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Cloudflare is a great free CDN that also adds on firewall protection and caching. Some hosting providers, like Cloudways, offer cheap upgrades to add Cloudflare Enterprise for a few bucks per month, adding a powerful WAF to protect your website.
Keep the plugin list lean, test updates in staging, and set a backup schedule you can actually restore from. Consider plugins like WPvivid Backup Pro.
Don’t forget to protect the backend. That means enabling automatic security patches, rotating API keys, scanning for malware, and turning on multi-factor authentication.
If something looks off, run a WordPress security audit so you can find vulnerable themes or plugins before they become incidents.
This is where there’s a wide gap when comparing HubSpot vs. WordPress.
Both stacks can be cost-effective. The spread depends on license tiers, hosting provider choices, IT assistance, and how much you build in-house.
HubSpot is a suite of hubs that include the Content Hub, Marketing Hub, and Sales Hub. The Content Hub starts with a limited free plan. Prices vary drastically based on package and team size.
Individuals and small teams can start off from the free package up to the Content Hub Professional, which costs $441 per month for three user seats.
Anything below the highest package limits the number of pages to 30 or fewer, which makes it unusable if you want to start a blog.
For businesses and enterprises that need advanced features like content approvals, the price rises to $1,470 per month for five seats.
That’s only the Content Hub, though. If you choose the Professional version for content and marketing with 7,000 subscribers, and starter plans for the other packages, the price rises to $1,116 per month.
HubSpot pricing
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WordPress software is free via wordpress.org. Of course, you still need to add a hosting service, premium page builders and plugins, and optional dedicated servers as your site grows.
That said, if you build one website with a staging area, you can keep the price and stack extremely lean.
The actual price depends on the platform and plugins you choose, but it can be far less than HubSpot.
Here’s a rough example stack:
You want a simple way to decide. Start with your goals, team skills, and how much control you need over your stack. Then pick the platform that fits how you plan to grow.
Choose HubSpot when you want an all-in-one marketing platform. This combines Content Hub, HubSpot CRM, email marketing, and Sales Hub all in one place.
You get everything built in, including security and hosting.
The downside is that the functionality and limits you get depend on your plan. This can quickly increase costs to thousands of dollars per month, especially as your business grows.
Choose WordPress when you want full control of your CMS. You can choose custom themes and plugins that handle everything from custom blocks to security to optimization and analytics.
You can decide what to layer, how, and which systems to connect together.
Costs rise depending on the server size, plugins, and number of sites.
If you want a mix of both worlds, you don’t have to choose between HubSpot vs. WordPress.
Run WordPress for content creation speed and design freedom. Then, use HubSpot marketing for lead generation and nurturing.
Add HubSpot forms to WordPress, sync contacts to HubSpot CRM, and keep attribution clean.
If you prefer, host your main site on HubSpot and point /blog/ to WordPress with a reverse proxy configuration. Editors keep their flow. Ops keeps pipeline data tight.
HubSpot vs WordPress comes down to control versus cohesion.
HubSpot Content Hub gives you an all-in-one marketing platform with native CRM, email marketing, and on-page SEO tools, but at a steep price point.WordPress gives you custom themes, page builder plugins, SEO tools, and full control and customization. Plus, you can publish faster by using Wordable.io to go from Google Docs to WordPress in seconds.