I had a new client ask me what I thought of HubSpot. I told him I’d do an analysis for him and give him my true opinion. I’d love to see some comments correcting me if I’m wrong, but I think I nailed it here. Let me know what you think.
CREATE SECTION
If you create your content with HubSpot, if you ever decide to leave HubSpot who owns the content? Do you lose all that you’ve created? Do you lose the rankings that the content has helped you achieve when they take it offline? SEO takes months to start seeing the benefits but they last a lifetime. Does that mean you are tied to HubSpot for a lifetime as well?
Why wouldn’t you just create this content on your own website that you control and own? When your content starts to produce results and therefore becomes vital to your business and valuable to you, wouldn’t you like to have the piece of mind of knowing you have full control over it? And even if you did retain rights to that content, moving it to a new server, even if the domain is the same, can sometimes lead to a drop in rankings because of IP address issues and server speed. Both of which you can control if you control the host your content is on.
OPTIMIZE SECTION
Google’s search engine has such a huge market share that no other search engines really matter to us SEO’s. I don’t care how my customers rank in Bing or Yahoo or even Ask because they produce no business for my clients. Google has a “Keyword Grader” that is specific to Google’s own results – https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal a “Page Grader” that is specific to Google’s results – http://www.google.com/webmasters – and a “Link Grader” that is specific to their own results – (http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/. I only care what these tools say are good keywords because if my main focus is to rank on Google, all I want to know is what Google thinks about their own keywords. There is nothing better than going directly to the source.
PROMOTE SECTION
In terms of social media and email marketing, both of these components can be added and fully automated with WordPress or any website in general. I use a plugin from http://www.aweber.com that as soon as someone signs up for my newsletter is sends them out 1 email every week for 6 months or until they unsubscribe and they actually let you put a form not only on your website, but on Facebook, YouTube, and anywhere else you want as well. They are the #1 email promotion company in the world in terms of features and price ($19 bucks a month!) I then have a Dashboard with all the statistics such as how many emails were opened, how many were clicked on, how many unsubscribed, etc. Nothing, I mean nothing beats aWeber.
For social media I use a plugin called Ping.fm that right after I hit my “Publish” 
button to publish new content it goes to Ping.fm and Ping.fm sends it out to about 30 networks including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and many others. So where it looks like HubSpot works with just Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. I think much better can be achieved in terms of promotion. I didn’t even cover Pinging or RSS either, two additional ways to promote your website can be set up to build hundreds of backlinks with the push of a button if you know what you’re doing. You just have to know how to set it up.
CONVERT SECTION
I have one thing to say here. Google Analytics. Google Analytics is the most used conversion tracking software in the world. They are practically on every major website. http://www.google.com/analytics. They provide the most detailed data on tracking and conversions that you can get. And again, it’s coming straight from the source. It’s easy to set up (add the plugin and enter your account info), and reports can be automatically emailed to you each day, week, or month to show you exactly how things are going with all your marketing. I have over 100 sites in my Dashboard I watch daily. I would use nothing else. In terms of lead and prospect management, WordPress has a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) plugin or I would use a Free Personal Account with http://www.salesforce.com, which also has a WordPress plugin. There are also many other services that integrate with WP that would be 100% adequate and do that same job HubSpot can do.
ANALYZE SECTION
I go back to Google Keyword Tool, Google Analytics, and Google Webmaster tools here. The only part of this that you might need to visit something different is Competition, and for that we have http://www.spyfu.com, or http://www.compete.com, two of the most comprehensive competition focused search engines available.
MY CONCLUSION
UPDATE
I feel like HubSpot is probably worth the money if you are have limited knowledge of all the methods I mentioned above and would like everything manageable under one roof. However, for the more technically adept, there are better tools that can do a better job and you won’t be tied or limited to any one source. This is an industry that changes daily, literally. Google changes it’s algorithms and one thing that works for search or social media today, can change overnight. I’ve seen BMW’s site erased from Google index because of a couple of mistakes they made and who they partnered with. I’ve seen a friend lose over 500 clients website rankings because he used a system similar to HubSpot (can’t recall the name but I’ll find it if you’d like) and because of a mistake they made Google penalized any site associated with them. Not to say that would happen to HubSpot, but again, you don’t have the control. You want to have total control over your system. You need to be able to use the best services out there, especially because they can all be integrated together just like HubSpot does for you. I feel strongly that limiting yourself to one company and one set of tools will hinder your ability to be successful as you could be with out them.
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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Zach, and thanks for taking on this subject. I’ve been considering an article like this one myself. Personally, I have 3 businesses. Two use Hubspot, one uses Wordpress.
In fact, one of my companies is an inground swimming pool company and using the Hubspot inbound marketing system now for roughly 16 months has turned my site into the #1 swimming pool builder website in the country. Our blog gets prolific traffic. By following exactly the ‘system’ of Hubpsot I’ve experienced tremendous success.
Although nothing you say here Zach is necessarily wrong, I think you’re greatly suffering from a case of ‘The Curse of Knowledge’. What I mean is that you speak of plugins and tools and analytics like most small biz owners really get what your saying. In reality, about 95% of all small business owners in the country would not understand much of the vernacular found within this article. So many tools to use and implement can be very, very confusing–especially for ‘non-techies’.
This is one reason Hubspot is so special. They offer, bar-none, the best all-in-one SEO powercenter for a small business on the web today, all the while allowing them to create their own content through their super simple CMS. And even better, their entire focus is empowerment—they ain’t about creating reliant clients, as most ‘webmasters’ are. Their goal is to empower through knowledge so that all ‘techies’ and ‘non-techies’ alike can control their inbound marketing destinies.
Wordpress is great, no doubt. Like I said, my Sales Lion blog is wordpress. But the ease of CMS design with WP isn’t nearly as easy as Hubspot, unless you’re code savvy. Personally, I designed all 275 pages on my swimming pool website without almost a lick of code understanding. Notwithstanding, I paid someone to help me with my wordpress set-up because I’m just not at that level yet.
You see Zack, I’m an average Joe business owner. I need something that is simple yet effective. I need all-in-one. I need help immediately if I have questions….a live voice. That is why Hubpsot is so special and that’s why I think their fees are piffle. In fact, I laugh when small biz owners debate on whether their system is worth it.
On a final note, one DOES get to keep their own content. Hubpsot doesn’t chain anyone down, as that would be a really dumb move and they know it. Again, they empower, not enslave. Also, although Google Analytics is good, I frankly like the Hubpsot Analytics way more, and I have both to look at each night, yet 99% of the time I use HS.
Again, I thank you for discussing this topic. I’m clearly NOT a Hubpsot employee. Their system has changed my business and my life, and I frankly feel just about every small business owner should be embracing it as well.
Marcus Sheridan
Owner
River Pools and Spas
Interesting analysis.
I looked through your blog and the good news is that I have come to the conclusion that you are pretty darn smart and quite tech savvy! Having said that, you are probably not representative of the general population of business owners and marketers are all pretty new to all this stuff. …I have 4 “clickers” for my tv with over 100 buttons in aggregate. I use about 7 of these buttons and live in mortal fear that someone will visit my house and click a button and put my system in some sort of state that I can’t get out of. We built HubSpot for mere mortals like me!
Prior to starting HubSpot, I was a vc trying to help startup companies transform the way they market from doing traditional outbound advertising, cold calling, and email spamming. In that process, I had a heck of a time with the mere mortals I was working with in helping them get going with Wordpress, Google analytics, Google webmaster tools, lead management (i.e. Eloqua to aweber), helping them figure out Compete/Alexa, Technorati rank, etc, etc, etc. The problem was multiple logins, multiple ui’s, not enough “handholding”, no human support to call, the systems didn’t
“talk” to eachother, etc. The nice thing about HubSpot is we pull all this stuff together in one system, with one login, with one ui, with handholding (knowledge transfer), and with a real human you can call and ask questions. The additional benefit to doing this is you get a 1+1=3 effect with all the integration. For example, when you create a blog article, it “checks” your seo work automatically before you publish…when you publish it sends it to your RSS subscribers, email subscribers, Twitter followers, and Facebook page automatically. Another example is that because we understand all your keywords, we then “listen” for conversations for you in Twitter, LinkedIn, the blogosphere, etc and surface those conversations for you to engage in.
I think your analysis is fine, but by breaking HubSpot into little pieces and comparing it to the individual system it competes with, you are ignoring the exact reason we built it — the integration.
Brian.
Brian thanks a lot for your reply. I think you nailed it, I responded to Dharmesh, and it probably would be an equally fitting response to you as well. Thanks for taking time out for brand management.
Thanks for the write-up (Disclosure: I’m the founder/CTO at HubSpot).
First, a quick point of clarification: For customers that use HubSpot for content management, we do not own the content — our customers do. We’re not unique in this regard — if you build a site on WordPress.com, the content is yours, WordPress doesn’t own it. You don’t actually have to own/control the servers your content runs on in order to own it.
Second, most of our customers use their own domain name to host their site. As a result, they control where that domain points to (and can change it later).
In terms of a content management system, you really can’t beat WordPress. I’m a big fan of it. And, it’s hard to complain about the price. :) Having said that, HubSpot is not a CMS, it’s an integrated marketing platform that includes several applications. You’ve mentioned several in your article.
For many businesses, WordPress is an excellent choice. It’s free and works well. However, many businesses value the simplicity and integration of HubSpot by having everything under one roof. Though it’s not impossible to take WordPress, add an analytics package (like Google Analytics) a forms system, a database for leads, an email nurturing system, a social media monitoring tool, etc. — that’s not for the faint of heart. It takes time and expertise to do that — neither of which are free.
This is why almost 3,000 companies have chosen HubSpot to improve their online marketing. Most of them know about the other alternatives, but pick HubSpot because they find it does what they need it to do, all under one roof.
First of all, thank you for your reply. I was hoping someone from HubSpot (wasn’t exactly expecting Dharmesh, I feel humbled) would respond to clarify. I think you have made some very valid points. The one particular point that stood out the most, which I now believe I might have overlooked, IS the fact that some businesses do value the simplicity of a centralized point of management. Maybe after 15 years in technology & the Internet, I fly around it discounting the fact that not everyone can build their own central point of management, and rightfully so it does make things simple if it works. I’ll gladly point out that HubSpot would be a great fit for some, and WordPress a better for others. Fair enough?
Zach: Indeed that’s fair. HubSpot is good for some, and not others.
And, I assure you that you are more savvy and experienced with technology than most people. HubSpot is focused on the millions of people that are much less technically adept than you are.
Cheers.