Hippo CMS vs WordPress: Ultimate Comparison in 2022/2023

When it comes to website content management systems (CMS), there are a few popular options to choose from. Two of the most popular CMS options are Hippo CMS and WordPress. Both have their pros and cons, and it can be difficult to decide which one is the best for your specific needs.

In this article, we will compare Hippo CMS and WordPress in detail, to help you make a data-driven decision.

Hippo CMS vs WordPress– Brief Overview

What is Hippo CMS

Hippo CMS is an open-source platform that lets you create personalized experiences across all channels. It’s basically developer-friendly and enables you to create content just once and publish it to websites, Social Media, REST services, mobile apps, and so on. Hippo CMS got acquired by Bloomreach a few years earlier and merged with its Commerce Experience Cloud. So, now it’s basically a SaaS platform.

What is WordPress

WordPress is a free Content Management System (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL (Programming languages). It was initially designed for blogging but now evolved into a versatile CMS. You can rely on WordPress to create a simple blog as well as a fully operational website, eCommerce platform, or mobile application. WordPress is well recognized as the easiest CMS tool due to its rich collection of features and customization.

You don’t need to have coding or designing skills for creating the website you need. There are around 10,000 themes and 60,000 plugins in the WordPress repository to help you create any type of website.

WordPress has a large community with thousands of people from all over the world and they are the pioneer behind WordPress development, growth, and success. WordPress is licensed under GPL so you are free to download, install and modify it based on your need.

What sort of users are Hippo CMS and WordPress aimed at?

According to Enlyft (a research platform)- companies using Hippo CMS are mainly from the Computer Software industry and are most often found in the United States. Hippo CMS is basically used by companies with 50-200 employees. Now as a part of the Bloomreach SaaS environment, Hippo is getting popular with even small businesses.

On the Other hand, WordPress has a market share of over 60% in the CMS industry. A majority (around 72%) of WordPress are small, 21% are medium-sized and 6% are large (over 1k employees). As a full-fledged CMS, WordPress is popular among people from all over the world and in all niches. But still, about half of WordPress customers are in the United States and the United Kingdom.

How many people use Hippo CMS and WordPress?

Hippo CMS users were around 400-600 before getting it was acquired by Bloomreach. It has a market share of about 0.1%. Other major platforms in the CMS industry include- WordPress over 60% and Wix.com about 8.21%.

And there are around 450 million websites built with WordPress on the internet. And it’s increasing day by day.

Hippo CMS vs WordPress- Differences You Should Consider

Interface & Ease of use

Hippo CMS Interface and ease of use

You already know that Hippo CMS is a content management provider got acquired by BloomReach. It provides a more personalized experience for eCommerce consumers.

BloomReach’s machine-learning engine is integrated into the Hippo Java-based CMS technology to leverage data and algorithmic intelligence. Now they offer a truly digital experience and performance-based solution.

Hippo CMS’s environment is developer-friendly and not initially designed for general users or newbies. As you can see in the above screenshot, Bloomreach Headless Experience Manager is more complex than other regular CMS. Page building, formatting, categorization, and customization are all you need to do at once from this dashboard.

Bloomreach and Hippo CMS require-

• Basic knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
• Working with your computer’s command line and a text or code editor.
• Latest LTS version of Node.js installed

You should join their training program first to build and run your project.

WordPress Interface and ease of use

As a beginner-friendly CMS, WordPress comes with a simple dashboard with different menu options listed in the sidebar. Just Have a look at the screenshot below. You can easily create posts and pages, customize your post-pages, design, add navigation menus, and so on.

WordPress makes it easy for absolute beginners to start and maintain their own websites without any technical experience. From blogging to eCommerce website development, everything is super easy with WordPress. Security, SEO, user registration, comment, feedback, and integration of other third-party tools, all are under your control.

Apps, Plugins & Extensions

Hippo CMS apps/extensions

As a SaaS platform, Hippo provides a personalized experience for developers. Their service includes 5 basic features-

• Content – Headless Experience Manager integration
• Pathways and Recommendations integration
• Commerce integration
• Search and Merchandising integration
• SEO integration

Hippo and Bloomrech also have a dedicated community to get connected and help each other to solve regular issues. They have training programs, blogs, documentation, and other essential resources.

WordPress Plugins, Themes, Patterns, and more

WordPress lets you build anything you need online and at any scale. Blogging, news, gov, brand, eCommerce, directory, apps, traveling, arts, forum, affiliate, subscription, and so on; WordPress is fit for all. You can find 10k+ themes and around 60k plugins in the WordPress repository and all are primarily free licensed under GPL.

For the last few years, WordPress going to design a block-based environment to make website development and customization easier than ever. So, the number of extensions, patterns, and blocks is unlimited, and it’s increasing day by day.

Blogging and Content Management

Hippo CMS blogging and Content Management Feature

Bloomreach team launched a SaaS Content Management platform specially designed for developers after acquiring Hippo CMS. Hippo CMS is much more focused on enterprise-level eCommerce. If you’re a developer or have the basics of HTML, CSS, and Javascript, you can manage a blog. Otherwise, Hippo is not the right platform for your blogging.

Anyway, let’s shortly check how you can start blogging with Hippo CMS.

• Get access to the Bloomreach Content environment and create your account.
• Open the Experience Manager perspective and log in.

• You can see a list of the channels that have been created. Here’s one as an example.

• Click on the icon for the channel that will launch the editing interface for you. Here you go.

Now it’s your turn to design and customize your blogging environment to give it a real look. And if we talk about content management, especially for eCommerce, Hippo is a game-changer here.

WordPress blogging and Content Management Feature

WordPress got started in 2003 as a blogging platform and then turn into a full-fledged CMS for almost everyone and everything. But no doubt that still blogging feature is the most prioritized part of WordPress. From creation to maintenance, blogging is super easy with WordPress.

If you want to create a blog using WordPress, here’s the 6 step process for you-

1. Pick a domain name for your blog
2. Sign up for your web hosting
3. Install WordPress software for free
4. Log in and write your 1st blog post
5. Change your blog design by choosing a theme
6. Install a couple of essential plugins to make it more functional

Yes, this is how you can start and manage your blog with WordPress. And you need to just invest in your domain name and hosting plan.

WordPress offers two different editors to manage your content- Classic and Gutenberg. Classic editor is the old version and it works like Google Sheet. Gutenberg is a block base editor to manage each of your content as a separate block and it’s easier to manage. WordPress lets you add or embed your piece of content from your personal device or other platforms with just one click.

Ecommerce functionality

Hippo CMS eCommerce functionality

According to Bloomreach- ‘Commerce Experience Cloud, our SaaS solution, is powered by three pillars: Content, Discovery, and Engagement.’

These are the main functions of Bloomreach and Hippo environment. See the screenshot below to get a clear idea of an eCommerce store built with Bloomreach commerce cloud. You can create a personalized experience for your audience if you have a bit of coding knowledge as we said earlier.

Check Hippo CMS’s 6 steps process of creating an eCommerce store.

• Sign up for an account
• Create your first project
• Select your preferred language
• Create sample data
• Retrieve API Keys
• Launch a first sample application

WordPress Ecommerce functionality

In the last few years, WordPress become one of the top competitors in the eCommerce industry as well. You can easily create your eCommerce site by adding your preferred theme and plugin in a few clicks. And all are primarily free.

WooCommerce is the most popular eCommerce site builder plugin. But of course, you always have alternative options in WordPress. And you can turn your single store into a multivendor marketplace like Amazon or Alibaba by adding another plugin.

SEO features

Hippo CMS SEO feature

Hippo CMS’s SEO Support plugin provides an HST Component to ease the contribution of your HTML metadata head elements. The plugin helps to find a proper title, description, keywords, and other metadata automatically.

WordPress SEO

WordPress CMS plays nice with Google and other search engines at the same time. It has loads of themes and plugins to optimize SEO. And your SEO journey is much easier with WordPress because it’s fast and mobile-friendly, community-supported, secure, and easy to manage.

In short, WordPress is a perfect CMS for SEO and ranking websites with ease.

Multilingual and multiple sites

Hippo CMS multilingual support

The Bloomreach and Hippo CMS’s multi-language support is available in 33 major languages. English, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Irish, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, and more.

WordPress multilingual support

WordPress does not support a multilingual site in general. But there are Plugins in the WordPress repository which will allow you to create a multilingual blog with a few clicks.

The free WPGlobus, Polylang, or Sublanguage plugins are easily installable on standalone WordPress sites. You can try plugins like Multisite Language Switcher, Zanto, or Multilingual Press or purchase WPML for multisite WordPress- one website per language.

The point is- you can translate your WordPress site into any language you want. So, WordPress is available in almost all languages available on the planet!

Maintenance and Security

Hippo CMS Maintenance

Bloomreach platform provides secure and flexible access control and supports integration with all industry-focused security solutions. A few of them are

• Authentication
• Authorization and Workflow
• Audit Trail
• DMZ Support
• Application Security

So, be relaxed while using Hippo CMS and Bloomreach.

WordPress Security and Maintenance

Let’s check what the team behind WordPress says about their security process and the team behind working with-

“Since its inception in 2003, WordPress has undergone continual hardening so its core software can address and mitigate common security threats, including the Top 10 list identified by The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) as common security vulnerabilities, which are discussed in this document. The WordPress Security Team, in collaboration with the WordPress Core Leadership Team and backed by the WordPress global community, works to identify and resolve security issues in the core software available for distribution and installation at WordPress.org, as well as recommending and documenting security best practices for third-party plugin and theme authors.“

So, what’s your opinion about WordPress security?

Behavior/performance on mobile

Hippo CMS mobile usability

Hippo CMS and Bloomreach let you create a mobile version of your existing site. It’s a manual process and you need to have coding experience.

WordPress mobile usability

WordPress is mobile-friendly, almost from the beginning. And now offers a mobile-first experience following the top search engine Google.

You can check your posts’ Google preview right from the backend. You can check your front view as well.

Hippo CMS vs WordPress: Price

Hippo CMS price and Cost

Bloomreach and Hippo CMS team has not provided any pricing plan yet. You need to talk to the team to get your pricing plan.

WordPress Price and Cost

WordPress is free to use, you already know that. Should spend only to buy your domain name and hosting plan and if you want to use premium plans of any WordPress themes or plugins.

It could be from 25 to 200 per year for a regular site based on your needs and preferences.

Help & support

Hippo support

There’s a dedicated support system in the Bloomreach cloud commerce environment. No live chat actually, you need to mail them.

WordPress support

WordPress has a dedicated team of support. You can also get 24/7 support from most of the WordPress plugins or theme owners. There’s an official community for WordPress support and leads to free platforms and resources to get help.

Advantages of Hippo over WordPress

Hippo is owned by Bloomreach and Bloomreach is-

• A Commerce Experience Cloud
• Offers Discovery, AI-driven search and merchandising; a headless CMS, etc
• Best For Multi-channel content delivery system

Advantages of WordPress over Hippo CMS and Bloomreach

• Popularity and global acceptance
• No need to have coding knowledge
• Easier to Maintain and Update
• Have Many Choices for Support
• Awesome for eCommerce as well
• Endless Supply of Plugins and Themes
• Full Control and Customization opportunities
• SEO-friendly

Alternatives to Hippo and WordPress

Hippo CMS alternatives-

• Pimcore
• Adobe Experience Manager
• Sitefinity

WordPress alternatives in general

• Wix
• Shopify
• Drupal
• Squarespace
• Ghost

Read our post on Craft CMS vs WordPress.

Hippo CMS vs WordPress – FAQs