I'm often asked which web platform I should use. The main options are HubSpot, WordPress, and Webflow. If I answer the same question several times, it would be worth explaining to a large audience.
Before I explain my approach to answering this question, the first thing you need to know is that Google doesn’t care what web platform or CMS you use, it’s the output that matters.
Google I am interested in:
- Pages load quickly.
- The content is updated or optimized effectively.
- Sites break or go down.
All of these platforms should help you build a site that ranks well on Google. It's the details that matter and how they align with your team's goals, needs, and strengths.
To help people make the best choice, I use three criteria.
- Flexibility: Essentially, the ability to build and add features and content. In other words, is it more open or closed?
- ease of use: Are there lots of handy shortcuts or is it a lot of manual work? And how easy is it to find resources?
- Security and Reliability.
Let's explore each one in a bit more detail, specifically the differences between the platforms.
(Disclosure: I worked at Webflow from 2018 to 2019.)
1. The flexibility of the web platform
WordPress is the most flexible and open of the three platforms we’ll cover here: you can basically do anything you want, add plugins (or not), add code, modify and control everything.
The problem is that it's so flexible that if you have people on there who don't know what they're doing, problems can quickly arise (more on this later).
Webflow is not as flexible. You can edit pages and do basic operations, but it is much more closed and limited, except that it allows for some very cool design and animation features. In general, tweaks and updates are relatively difficult and the CMS is not intuitive.
Webflow is best suited for certain types of setups. For example, if you have a basic marketing site with a blog and a few feature pages and want it to look polished, Webflow is a great choice. However, if you plan on incorporating things like multimedia resource sections or content types, it can get rigid quickly.
HubSpot sits somewhere in between the two: like Webflow it's closed in nature, but it's more intuitive to use and allows site owners to easily add more customized features.
Learn more: SEO during website development and post-launch: Important considerations
2. Ease of use of the web platform
WordPress is easy for just about anyone to use. One of the big benefits of choosing WordPress is that there is a huge community of WordPress designers and developers, so you can easily find cost-effective, highly skilled experts and keep costs down. The infrastructure is more mature, and options like the WordPress engine and managed hosting allow you to create fast sites with relatively little friction.
Webflow has some frustrating limitations, for example the drawback of the sitemap is clearly defined: you can choose to either use the automated sitemap (usually of medium quality) or manually edit it in the UI every time there is an update (very tedious).
There are also a lot of basic features that you can't do in Webflow, such as having to add GTM code to every page instead of just once, and because it's a CMS system, it requires a lot of custom fields that aren't required on other platforms.
Let's not even get into the issue of permissions – Webflow access is really bad and frustrating, and multiple team members working on the same site will likely keep logging each other out without a proper system in place.
Webflow is the least accessible of the three options due to a combination of its difficult-to-use nature and a small (very design-focused) developer community.
As for HubSpot, it performs very well out of the box and has a lot more features than Webflow. The basic SEO and blogging features are very good. The hardest part is design. There aren't many web designers that specialize in HubSpot, and it has custom coding, so it can be difficult and expensive to get your HubSpot site to look as polished as you want it to.
We should also mention that HubSpot has a great bonus: if you're also using HubSpot as your CRM, integrating your site with your CRM is super easy compared to other setups.
Learn more: SEO and website design: How to build a search engine friendly site
Get the daily newsletter search marketers trust.
3. Web Platform Security
If you are wondering what the pitfalls of WordPress are, you have reached that point.
WordPress engine, managed hosting, or managing your site yourself are the least reliable of the three options.
After all, the problem with flexibility is that you can easily break things by installing a bad plugin, a plugin with security issues, etc.
Of the three options, WordPress makes it incredibly easy to build a decent site.
You get access to a ton of features, you get to add a WYSIWYG builder, etc. But it can lead to horrible looking, bad performing Frankenstein sites, especially because it's too easy to use and you end up with a ton of “contributors” making changes to the site with a limited overall view.
With a team of experts and strict permissions, this isn’t an issue. If you have security and hosting expertise, you can combine these strengths with the flexibility of WordPress to meet industry-specific security requirements. (Fintech is a great use case, as it has even higher security requirements.)
If you want to use WordPress, one solution is to use a managed services hosting platform such as WP Engine, which offers security for an additional fee.
Webflow and HubSpot, especially Webflow, are built to be more tightly controlled, making your site harder to breach.
If you’re new to site building, this might not seem like a huge benefit, but if you’ve ever had an inopportune time bug on your WordPress site (or it’s happened to you multiple times), it might be enough to make you consider a competing product.
Learn more: 12 SEO Pitfalls to Avoid During Website Platform Migration
Summary Recommendations
To summarize my recommendations succinctly, here's what I tell people:
- You have a tight budget and lots of WordPress expertise and If you understand that building a site will require a lot of content updating and customization, then WordPress is the way to go.
- If you're using HubSpot as your CRM and aren't looking to build the most gorgeous site in the world, choose HubSpot.
- If aesthetics, design, and interactive features are your priorities, and you have the right experts who can execute them, Webflow could be the best choice for you.
One final note: Webflow is the newest of the three platforms and is building a community of fans and developers pretty quickly, so this advice may be outdated in a few years.
Whatever platform you ultimately choose, make sure you stay on top of updates and features, and have a safe testing environment and the necessary guardrails to keep your site running properly.
Contributors are invited to create content for Search Engine Land and are selected based on their expertise and contributions to the search community. Contributors work under the supervision of editorial staff, and contributions are checked for quality and relevance to our readers. Opinions expressed by contributors are their own.