Can you build a gamified platform on HubSpot?

charitydefense · ‎Aug 4, 2016

I know there are some challenges in building websites on HubSpot, especially when it comes to accessing server-side code. I’m wondering if it would possible to build the following platform on HubSpot.

Background: We’re a startup nonprofit that challenges the many counterproductive ideas our society has about charity. If we can reverse counterproductive thinking about charity, we believe the nonprofit sector can solve social problems much more quickly.

Platform: We’re looking to develop a gamified education platform called Charity School, which would be a sort of Khan Academy for charity with a grassroots organizing twist. We’d host video content on a training platform similar to HubSpot Academy – and then we’d have a tracking function where we’d be able to see which users have driven the most people to Charity School. We’d need the following functions:

Gated section for Charity School, username required
Charity School video content, similar to HubSpot Academy
User profile that tracks progress through Charity School videos
Survey that tracks the impact of the video trainings
Share button within user profile, which auto-generates a tracking URL – track new users to “parent” user to show who’s educating the most people
User profile that tracks users recruited
Leaderboard that tracks top recruiters (visits, views, test completion, etc.)

automatetoday · ‎Sep 24, 2016

Hey Jason,

I know how far you are in the process of development, and looking at the dates on this you may have already made a decision in your platforms.

Regarding a membership site, you could use WordPress and gamification with BuddyPress and LearnDash, and then control it all with a CRM called active campaign. Depending on the number of contacts you have in active campaign, it’s pretty inexpensive on a monthly basis. I have an app for development that I pay $9/mo. for.

Don’t let the cost be deceiving of value, active campaign is a major force in marketing automation. With WordPress, you can tie together with a plug-in called activemember360, or maybe use Zapier between HubSpot and WordPress.

In any regard, take a look at WordPress, WooCommerce or ThriveCart(for shopping cart), LearnDash( for course material), BuddyPress(for gamification), ActiveCampaign, ActiveMember360, and Zapier. You can connect everything with those tools without extensive API work.

With more API, you could probably bypass ActiveCampaign and ActiveMember360 and use webhooks directly between HubSpot and WordPress.

Christan

boulter · ‎Aug 9, 2016

Yes, that adding the tracking code would work.

You could write some custom code using the HubSpot APIs to push whatever data you wanted into your HubSpot contacts.

charitydefense · ‎Aug 8, 2016

Jeff, thank you for the reply. I’ll pass this feedback along to our developer.

Alternatively, would it make more sense to build this using a platform like Drupal? And, then drop in HubSpot tracking code to all our site pages? If we were to go this route, would we be able to push all our data into HubSpot or would that be problematic?

Thank you for the help.

Jason

boulter · ‎Aug 6, 2016

Hi Jason.

HubSpot does not currently support user login or really any sort of custom data storage other than custom contact properties. Given that, I don’t think HubSpot will meet your needs for authentication or user data.

However, you could build a static app in JavaScript which is hosted on the COS and store your use data in another service like Kinvey or Firebase.

Jeff

APIs & Integrations