Company switching from WordPress to HubSpot - when to disagree

[Kekegenkai]

Hey guys, im a WordPress guy currently working in a company trying to switch a lot of customers to the HubSpot Plattform. I try to go against it with my points:

• Monthly cost for the customer https://snaptube.cam/ 9apps

• No access to source-code because HubSpot is a service and not open-source

• A lot of customers dont need the full HubSpot modules (CRM, automation) and if they need you can get the same functions with Mailchimp for much cheaper

• Analytics functions of HubSpot you can basically reproduce with the free Google-Services (Analytics, Serach Console & Data Studio)

I would like to hear your opinion about this topic because i get confronted with it a lot in the last couple of months. Thank you so much!

[miljkovicmisa · Accepted solution]

Hello @Kekegenkai , hello @dennisedson  thank you for opening this conversation, was thinking about answering this but didn't have an exact approach.

I think there are a lot of points to be made on this subject.
1. Definately the cost is an issue, but the way you put it, I think cost should not be of your concern, I'm pretty sure that the sales dpt of your agency will be well prepared to introduce the HubSpot Packages to the prospective clients, I know my agency's people are very well prepared for that matter and HubSpot provides a great deal of resources about introductions and sales points for the teams to be prepared.
And with the addition on the new starter package, costs are reduced greatly, so much in fact I'm getting prepared to migrate a few of our older clients to hubspot as I think we will be showing it to a few of them we find suitable 😜 .

2. Open Source Applications vs Closed/Proprietary Apps is a really vast subject, there is a lot to debate but as a developer I'm just making sure of 3 things:
  1. ☑️ To be able to produce the same quality of code with every tool I use (or even better).
  2. ☑️ To keep my workflow as much intact as possible (because this is how our team works and we don't want to change it every time we pick up another tool, this is for consistancy reasons).
  3. ☑️ To be able to use the same language I use for every project so I don't need to learn a great deal of new specs.

So far Hubspot hasn't dissapointed me, all the above points are intact.
✔️ 1.  I'm using local development with a stack of things (foundation framework with gulp builds all inside a git repository with automatic deployment).
✔️ 2. The workflow of the team hasn't changed, we still develop the websites the way we used to (loosely the following: introduction, briefing, wireframing, initial dev, decisions on tech stack and approaches to content editing, final dev, final approve).
✔️ 3. I'm a developer, so I'm concerned about my languages. html,css,js for frontend. For the backend with Wordpress you need to know the templating language of wordpress and php. Hubspot eliminates the need for php which is somehow cumbersome, and gives you another templating language which is not so difficult to learn (looks like jinja), took me a couple of weeks to be fluent and familiarize myself.

📦 ++ HubSpot integrations with third party tools is great, you should definately take a look in the marketplace link here

🛠 The main advantage from the developer POV is that hubspot takes away the backend maintainance of servers and databases, it is a cleaner workplace for the developer and for the content editor, there is a great deal of ui consistency and no need for plugins (that slow the website by far and also are a potential security risk).

So there you have it: Ease of use, ease of maintenace, secure and powerful; this is how I look at HubSpot.

3 and 4. This is greatly debatable too but one thing that HubSpot has achieved is what its name stands for, it is a HUB of differrent tools. You definately can do a lot of stuff that hubspot does with other tools, maybe some are better too (for the time being) but the fact that all the information is centralized is a great advantage.

Short story:
Recently my team got a big client and we did a preliminary briefing with their IT department to peek into their stack of technologies. They actually use 5 differrent third party tools to achieve a CRM workflow that includes manual work (downloading and importing xml/csv archives) that with HubSpot would take only one single automated action. Not to mention their website which is maintained by another agency on Wordpress  and need a ton of plugins to interact with form submissions and newsletters. And thats not all, their marketing is done from another agency that maintains a different set of tools that need to integrate with the rest of the workflow so more ... plugins.

So there you go.
I hope the points I made regarding the development are helpful to you and give you another perspective.

[Anton · Accepted solution]

Hi @Kekegenkai, 

before getting into it let me ask you a question: Why do you want to access the source code?

As a Devloper who switched from WordPress to HubSpot a few years back here some thouhgts:

• HubSpot CMS is a SaaS - correct. This will give you a huge amout of time to just "do things". E.g.: I still get mails from past WordPress customers that their page needs updates, backups and regular maintenance - with HubSpot (CMS) you don't have to worry about those things. It's always "up-to-date", it's always running and you have a revision history on each file in the DM(Design Manager). So you can always switch back and forth if you need to - and if you accidentally delete something you can always contact the support and tell them to restore those files(files beeing saved for 30 days). 
• The new CMS Starter is perfect for small pages(<15 pages). It's definitly something where you would see the vast majority of all WordPress pages out there. Sure there are whole "WordPress page monsters" out there with mutli-site setups and each page mutli-site containing 30-40(or more) single pages but this isn't the normal usecase. 
• MailChimp is a great piece of software(HubSpot has also a native connection to MailChimp) no doubt, but how is your workflow? Are you creating WordPress Forms and connecting them to MailChimp or do you embed MailChimp Forms in your WP page(most likely you'll get performance drops since you're loading external scripts)? Either way I think it's quite a lot more work involved in the lead generation process
• In case of costs: just calculate how much you pay for hosting(i assume it's somewhere around 10€/montly without a CDN), all of your plugins(e.g. some kind of slider, backup-plugin, maybe CPT, ...), the theme(depending on which one you have you'll need to pay yearly), 3rd party apps like vimeo premium and such things. How much will it be in total? i assume at least the same as CMS Starter. The difference here is that - like I've already said - with HubSpot you don't need to worry about security, performance drops(worldwide CDN by default) - it just works.
• As a developer: You can do/create everything you want.
  • Need a specific (JS-)library? Just copy/paste it into your module/theme.
  • Want to develop with Vue.js or React.js? There are free boilerplates out there.  
  • Do you want/need a staging environment? It's included in the professional- and enterprise-tier
  • You want to build multiple pages with the same layout but you want to save time? create a template for a page type and let the marketers build the pages. If you want you can work with drag&drop areas or with static layout.

For me it's always a big benefit to have everything in one place, pay one bill and have the most possible hassle free workspace possible. 

hope this helps, 

best, 

Anton

[miljkovicmisa · Accepted solution]

Hello @Kekegenkai , hello @dennisedson  thank you for opening this conversation, was thinking about answering this but didn't have an exact approach.

I think there are a lot of points to be made on this subject.
1. Definately the cost is an issue, but the way you put it, I think cost should not be of your concern, I'm pretty sure that the sales dpt of your agency will be well prepared to introduce the HubSpot Packages to the prospective clients, I know my agency's people are very well prepared for that matter and HubSpot provides a great deal of resources about introductions and sales points for the teams to be prepared.
And with the addition on the new starter package, costs are reduced greatly, so much in fact I'm getting prepared to migrate a few of our older clients to hubspot as I think we will be showing it to a few of them we find suitable 😜 .

2. Open Source Applications vs Closed/Proprietary Apps is a really vast subject, there is a lot to debate but as a developer I'm just making sure of 3 things:
  1. ☑️ To be able to produce the same quality of code with every tool I use (or even better).
  2. ☑️ To keep my workflow as much intact as possible (because this is how our team works and we don't want to change it every time we pick up another tool, this is for consistancy reasons).
  3. ☑️ To be able to use the same language I use for every project so I don't need to learn a great deal of new specs.

So far Hubspot hasn't dissapointed me, all the above points are intact.
✔️ 1.  I'm using local development with a stack of things (foundation framework with gulp builds all inside a git repository with automatic deployment).
✔️ 2. The workflow of the team hasn't changed, we still develop the websites the way we used to (loosely the following: introduction, briefing, wireframing, initial dev, decisions on tech stack and approaches to content editing, final dev, final approve).
✔️ 3. I'm a developer, so I'm concerned about my languages. html,css,js for frontend. For the backend with Wordpress you need to know the templating language of wordpress and php. Hubspot eliminates the need for php which is somehow cumbersome, and gives you another templating language which is not so difficult to learn (looks like jinja), took me a couple of weeks to be fluent and familiarize myself.

📦 ++ HubSpot integrations with third party tools is great, you should definately take a look in the marketplace link here

🛠 The main advantage from the developer POV is that hubspot takes away the backend maintainance of servers and databases, it is a cleaner workplace for the developer and for the content editor, there is a great deal of ui consistency and no need for plugins (that slow the website by far and also are a potential security risk).

So there you have it: Ease of use, ease of maintenace, secure and powerful; this is how I look at HubSpot.

3 and 4. This is greatly debatable too but one thing that HubSpot has achieved is what its name stands for, it is a HUB of differrent tools. You definately can do a lot of stuff that hubspot does with other tools, maybe some are better too (for the time being) but the fact that all the information is centralized is a great advantage.

Short story:
Recently my team got a big client and we did a preliminary briefing with their IT department to peek into their stack of technologies. They actually use 5 differrent third party tools to achieve a CRM workflow that includes manual work (downloading and importing xml/csv archives) that with HubSpot would take only one single automated action. Not to mention their website which is maintained by another agency on Wordpress  and need a ton of plugins to interact with form submissions and newsletters. And thats not all, their marketing is done from another agency that maintains a different set of tools that need to integrate with the rest of the workflow so more ... plugins.

So there you go.
I hope the points I made regarding the development are helpful to you and give you another perspective.

[dennisedson]

@Kekegenkai 

👋

This is a great question and I want to get @Anton , @miljkovicmisa  opinion as well.  I imagine that you will think I have drunk the koolaid 😉

1.   With the launch of CMS Starter, I think the monthly cost issue should be as strong.  Having come from an agency myself, I would have agreed that the cost was an issue, but at $25, you are most likely spending that when you try to get the feature set of your Wordpress setup at parity with the HubSpot offering. Would love others opinions on  that

2.  No, you do not have access to the source code, but you do have control over the front end of your site by using the local development tools and we try to open up as much as possible with each iteration of the software

3.  see item 1

4.  see item 1

I believe the chief complaint is the cost.  Hopefully with the CMS Starter package, that is not as hard of a selling point anymore.  And for those who do need extended functionality, you get the entire starter suite for $50 which is also a pretty darn good deal. 

That's my two cents for what it's worth!