Several times, the question has come up about whether you can use HubSpot inbound marketing software if you already have a WordPress website. The answer is, "absolutely.”
Over the years, WordPress has become an extremely popular content management system for company websites. 28.4% of websites now use WordPress (July 2017 data), and many companies are opting to use WordPress for their website and HubSpot for marketing automation and CRM.
What you may not know is that HubSpot and WordPress can work together seamlessly to make your WordPress website a powerful lead generation tool. If you need help setting up HubSpot and WordPress, you can learn more about our HubSpot Consulting service.
WordPress and HubSpot Integration Points
Integrating WordPress and HubSpot is as easy as pasting HubSpot’s JavaScript tracking code into the footer of your WordPress theme. Once the HubSpot tracking code is on your WordPress website, it will enable the tracking and analytics tools that HubSpot offers.
There's also a HubSpot plug-in for WordPress that you can install to easily include your HubSpot tracking code in your WordPress website. This is easier than copying the HubSpot tracking code snippet and pasting it into your template files.
If you allow people to subscribe to your blog via email, you can easily include a HubSpot subscription form inside of your WordPress sidebar by cutting and pasting the code from HubSpot into your WordPress theme. There's also HubSpot form integration (including email subscription forms) inside the popular Gravity Forms WordPress plugin.
When you purchase a license to HubSpot, the landing page templates will be automatically customized with your existing website's look and feel from WordPress. This means that you can create landing pages in HubSpot with the same look and feel as your WordPress website.
Similarly, you can cut-and-paste HubSpot call to action code from HubSpot into your WordPress web pages with ease using the "text" view of a post or page in Wordpress.
Lead Generation for WordPress Websites Without Using HubSpot
Any company with a serious digital sales channel is going to hook up their website with marketing automation software and a CRM. But if you're trying to create a proof of concept before you take the plunge, you might decide to use other lead generation tools for WordPress.
I'm not going to pretend that HubSpot is affordable for every business, even though the $200 per month entry-level price is nearly always less costly than cobbling together some of the alternatives I'll include in the list below (time alone to research, install and keep up to date will exceed the cost of HubSpot). I will take some time here to give you some alternatives to HubSpot, even though they are not as powerful and not as integrated as HubSpot.
Please note that inclusion in this list does not represent a recommendation to use them.
HubSpot Marketing Free (formerly LeadIn)
A few years ago, the LeadIn plugin was introduced and eventually was bought by HubSpot. Through a tool called Lead Flows, HubSpot Marketing Free allows you to easily offer content for download or build a subscriber list without having to code these features into your WordPress website. Once someone on your website shares their email address, you’ll know who they are and what pages they visited in real time.
Spokal bills itself as full-featured inbound marketing software for WordPress. It is not a free plug-in, but at $69-$169 per month, it is a less expensive alternative to HubSpot. Spokal appears to offer many of the same features, such as keyword tracking, contact tracking, publishing capabilities, and much more.
OptinMonster is another paid alternative, but isn't full-featured inbound marketing software. Instead, OptinMonster focuses its functionality around creating lead capture forms for your website with the intent of getting email subscribers. This plugin costs between $9/mo. - $29/mo. depending on the level of functionality you need.
WordPress Landing Pages is another free plug-in that lets you create landing pages using WordPress' visual editor, track conversion rates on your landing pages and include lead forms for lead generation.
This free plug-in allows you to use a visual editor to create calls to action buttons for your WordPress pages. You can also track conversion rates on your calls to action using this plug-in.
This free plug-in allows you to tie website activity to a specific person. You can manage your leads in WordPress or send these leads to your CRM, as well as integrate this data with other WordPress plug-ins.
Note: Viktor Nagornyy also offers his thoughts on how you can cobble together a free solution, though the article is a bit dated. Read the article here.
So Why Pay For HubSpot?
I am obviously partial to HubSpot because it runs our website, blog, marketing automation and CRM, and we've seen incredible results from it. It manages leads through the entire sales funnel better than any of these WordPress plug-ins do. Perhaps the biggest advantage to HubSpot is that it is an all-in-one platform, supported by 24/7 technical support. There's simply no plug-in, paid or free, that does what HubSpot does. It's really not a fair comparison.
One drawback to using several WordPress plug-ins to accomplish your lead management with WordPress is that each separate plug-in requires updating. You run the risk of a plug-in author discontinuing the plug-in, or not supporting it in the future, and potentially losing all of your lead data.
The real question comes down to this. Does your company want to rely on a patchwork of WordPress plugins when new business is at stake?
