WordPress is the perfect platform for creating beautiful, attention-grabbing websites. However, like with most things, being pretty isn’t enough. You want your website to be a fully functioning machine. In addition to beautiful design, you need a strategy for scalability, personalization, and inbound marketing. One of the most compelling reasons to choose WordPress as a CMS is its integratability; the key to equipping your site with the best capability is to choose the right tools.

For transforming your WordPress website into a lead-generation and conversion machine, HubSpot offers analytics and data tracking that helps you become familiar with the entire customer journey. One popular misconception is that HubSpot and WordPress are conflicting solutions. In actuality, Hubspot is a complementary solution to your WordPress website. The HubSpot plugin adds an analytics dashboard, facilitates easy form creation, assists in demand generation via email, allows you to easily add live chat to your website, and lets you see everything about your contacts all in one place. For more info on Hubspot as a recommended WordPress solution, check out the WP Engine Solution Center.

To learn more about HubSpot for WordPress users and the future of the integration, we sat down with David Ly Khim, Senior Growth Marketing Manager at HubSpot, at the WP Engine Summit.

Tell us a little bit about the WordPress plugin and how it can benefit WordPress users.

There are two ways you can think about the HubSpot plugin for WordPress. The first way is for people who are using WordPress as their CMS and HubSpot’s marketing software. They can easily connect the two platforms to use HubSpot’s marketing, sales, and customer service tools with their WordPress website.

The second one is for anyone who is using WordPress but is looking for an all-in-one solution for sales, marketing, and customer service. We have found that WordPress users usually have dozens of plugins enabled. That can slow down their website and the idea of connecting all those tools with APIs can be daunting. This often leads to a situation where data isn’t interconnected or reliable. Customers really want an all-in-one solution. For anyone who uses the plugin and the marketing sales tools, all the information gets passed through the free HubSpot CRM so people can rest easy knowing that their data is stored safely.

Why is a WordPress integration important for Hubspot?

The biggest reason is that a lot of our customers use WordPress because of its flexibility and affordability. For customers who are conscientious about their budget, it’s often the most sensible option. Other customers are die-hard WordPress users and budget-aside, you’ll never see them use another CMS.

We know that choosing a CMS is unique to the customer and we respect the decision to choose WordPress. For us, it’s about providing an easier way to use HubSpot and WordPress together. That’s why we have a renewed focus on making the plugin more robust and compatible to solve for that specific type of customer.

What does the future look like for WordPress and HubSpot?

That’s a good question. Right now, WordPress is going through a lot of changes. The release of Gutenberg is shaking up the community and is an opportunity for us to join in, and contribute to the WordPress community. Our goal is to contribute to the way that WordPress is moving and also remain an innovator within the community itself.

We’re thinking of all the ways that we can help WordPress users take their marketing, sales, and customer service to the next level.

I believe there’s a world where they don’t need 12 different plugins to grow their business on WordPress.

We want to offer a centralized hub for their customer data to run their marketing, sales, customer service. That way they can manage their contacts and subscribers from one place so that they can spend more time running their businesses and less time trying to understand and connect all the tools. It’s about cutting down on technical obstacles and adding simplicity to their WordPress dashboard.