We recently helped our client Bryan Hindman Electric ditch HubSpot in favor of WordPress and ActiveCampaign. It saved them thousands of dollars and made everything easier to manage. If you’re a small business wondering whether you should convert your HubSpot website to WordPress, pull up a chair.
When fancy isn’t functional (for you)
I started using HubSpot 15+ years ago, and it was a completely different platform back then. Today, it’s a massive, impressive tool, mostly built for enterprise teams with deep pockets and entire departments dedicated to marketing ops. There’s nothing wrong with that—unless you’re not that kind of business.
When Bryan Hindman Electric, a family-owned electrical services company in the Riverview, FL, area (i.e. not an enterprise team), first came to us, they were looking for support with email marketing, ad campaigns, and improving their online presence.
But when we peeked under the hood, we realized their existing HubSpot setup was:
- Costing them over $4k per quarter
- Not being fully used
- Creating more headaches than it solved
Our recommendation: Convert the HubSpot website to WordPress
We gave it to them straight: “You’re paying over $16k a year for HubSpot. We can get you running on WordPress and ActiveCampaign, do everything you need (and then some), and bring your costs down by over 50%. Oh, and it’ll be easier to manage.”
Here’s what we proposed:
- WordPress for their website: A one-time development cost for the conversion from HubSpot to WordPress, then a monthly fee for hosting and maintenance
- ActiveCampaign for email marketing and CRM: No onboarding fees, much easier to use, better deliverability
- Zapier to integrate with Housecall Pro, the app they use to manage all of their quotes and job scheduling
- Native ad managers for Facebook and Google Ads
- Optional: use Meta for social media scheduling (free)
Here’s why we exclusively develop on WordPress
Why we pushed for the migration from HubSpot
HubSpot can do a lot. It’s a powerful tool, but it’s not always the best value for smaller teams. Here are the biggest gripes we’ve had with HubSpot lately.
1. Pricing confusion (and surprise costs)
HubSpot’s pricing is based on marketing contacts vs. non-marketing contacts. Sound simple? It’s not. Keeping contacts in the right status is neither automatic nor intuitive, and changes only update monthly. Also, marketing contacts ≠ subscribed contacts. Confused yet? So was I. Oh, and you need to upgrade again to access that one button you thought you already had.
2. Websites that lock you in
Once your website is built in HubSpot, you’re in their ecosystem for good… unless you want to rebuild from scratch, which worked out to be worth the effort for Bryan Hindman Electric.
3. Too much automation, too little clarity
Automations in HubSpot can spiral fast. Want to know why an email went out? You might need a whiteboard and a glass of wine to figure it out.
4. Ads management headache
If you manage ads in HubSpot, they won’t show up in native platforms, like Google Ads or Facebook Ads. If you like seeing the full picture of your ad performance (which, you know, is kind of important), this is a problem.
5. The learning curve
Unless you’re HubSpot certified or have a background in martech, there’s a lot to learn. Too much, if you’re already wearing 17 other hats.
6. Average email deliverability
HubSpot’s email deliverability rate is reportedly 78.9%, compared to 93.4% for ActiveCampaign.
You may also be interested in: ActiveCampaign vs HubSpot: Which is best for your email marketing?
What we did for Bryan Hindman Electric
Once we had the Bryan Hindman team on board with the switch from HubSpot, we:
- Rebuilt their site in WordPress (with a few design tweaks)
- Exported and reimported blogs
- Migrated email campaigns and contacts to ActiveCampaign
- Replaced HubSpot-hosted videos with YouTube
- Set up new automations and integrations via Zapier
The migration made their digital tools easier to manage and far more cost-effective. It also gave them tools that they could understand and grow with.
You may also be interested in: How to integrate ActiveCampaign with WordPress
Should you switch from HubSpot?
Maybe. If you’re a small business spending thousands on HubSpot and not using most of it, switching to WordPress and ActiveCampaign might be a better move, especially if:
- You want more control over your site and emails
- You’re tired of surprise upgrade fees
- You don’t have time to earn another software certification
The combo of WordPress and ActiveCampaign is what we use at Brighter Messaging. We recommend it to most of our clients because it’s flexible, cost-effective, and makes sense for small businesses.
This isn’t a hit piece on HubSpot
For some businesses, HubSpot is absolutely the right tool. But for many others, it’s like using a bulldozer to plant a garden.
If you’re thinking about whether it’s time to convert your HubSpot website to WordPress (or just want a second opinion), we’re here to help. Let’s make your marketing stack work for you, not the other way around. Contact Brighter Messaging to chat about your next steps.
