WordPress vs Website Builders

Are you looking for the platform to build your website? Are you confused about choosing among Wix, WordPress, Shopify and Squarespace? Different website builders have made survival easier for small businesses. However one thing to note is although most website builders may provide solutions that fit your requirements, there is a limitation to what you can do with website builders. If you need to create a high performing and converting websites, please contact us. We are well experienced in building websites from scratch, using WordPress or your selected website builder.

There are enormous amounts of website builders in the market i.e. WordPress.com, Domain.com, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Weebly, Zyro and many more which makes it very confusing for some people to choose the right solution for their website. In this article we will show you the difference between wordpress vs other website builders, as well as their benefits and drawbacks. Let’s dive deep!

How to choose the best website – WordPress vs Website Builders

The most important step for building the website is to choose the website which is perfect fit for your needs and for that you should know what to look for. It’s important to know what your goals are, what you want to do with the website and what features you want to see more likely. You can make a list of various features which you might need in the website like blog section, online store, SEO features, gallery, social media feature, online store, etc.

It’s very important that your website builder should be able to fulfil all your needs as your business grows. To ensure that you can look for the below mention points while choosing the website builder:

• Ease of use
• Design and features
• Data ownership & portability
• Pricing
• Customer Support

Following these criteria will help to select the best website as per your needs. Let’s look deeply into the four popular website builders i.e. WordPress, Wix, Squarespace and Shopify with their pros and cons.

WordPress

WordPress.com was generated by Matt Mullenweg as blogging as well effective website hosting service for best customer experience routed by Automattic.

WordPress is not a website builder. Instead, it’s a content management system (CMS). Website builders are easy to use but less flexible whereas to use CMS’s you need to learn about them but they are flexible.

Pros:

To look deeply into WordPress.com following are the pros of the website builder:

• WordPress.com is created mostly the same as WordPress software, as a website hosting service but it provides completely customize user experience.
• WordPress.com takes care of the software as well backup and users don’t have to concern about it.
• WordPress.com offers both free as well paid plans with various sets of features. It offers hundreds of paid and free WordPress themes for users.
• Moreover, WordPress offers really effective editing tools for the users which happens to be really helpful.

Cons:

Followings are the cons for WordPress which should keep in mind before moving to this platform:

• Being a WordPress user the upgradation to the business plan is important to install customize themes as well as plugins.
• Premium plan as well as the lower plan of word press lack e-commerce features.

Pricing:

Among these four tools WordPress have the most flexible pricing but there are two fixed cost which you incur while getting it i.e. Web hosting (approx $100 for a year) and Domain name ( approx $20 for a year). Hence, it’s summed up to $120 per year which makes WordPress the most affordable tool.

Wix

The other very popular and great website builder is the Wix.com, which is cloud based website builder software. It has great features which makes it easier for you to build the website.

Pros:

Let’s look into its pros of this website builder:

• First of all this website builder is a entirely hosted platform which means that you don’t have to worry about paying for the hosting separately.
• In this website builder hundreds of template designs are provided to users and they can choose whatever design they like for their website.
• The templates provided can be edited by the user very easily as they have a drag and drop option.
• Apart from hundreds of design templates, Wix provides its users with many paid as well free apps which can be installed very easily. These apps add more features to the user’s website, increasing its functionality.
• Wix also provides you storage and bandwidth in its free plan, however it’s limited. This plan can be used by the customer to test their drag and drop feature.
• Users are also provided with the free SSL in all the Wix plans and can used for their website once they turn it on.
  

Cons:

Following are few cons related to Wix website builder:

• One of the main drawbacks of Wix website builder is that moving the website from this platform is very complicated.
• In its free website builder plan Wix doesn’t offer Domain name which is why user needs to buy the domain name or can have premium plan if he/she wants to keep the website.
• The free website plan shows branded ads of Wix on the user website for which users have to upgrade to either Unlimited or Combo plans to get the ads removed.

Pricing:

When it comes to pricing Wix deals with a limited free plan including branded sub domain. Connecting to the domain costs the user $9.16/month. The combo plan of Wix website builder is available for users for $14.95 per month.

Squarespace

The other very popular website builder is Squarespace which offers its users best designs and is easy to use.

Pros:

It might be beneficial to choose this website due to following pros:

• Squarespace is a protected and strong platform which helps your business to establish with any worry about hosting as it provides enterprise-grade infrastructure for hosting.
• Squarespace offers hundreds of ready to use designs for its users to start their business.
• All the design templates in Squarespace are editable and users can use more than one template in the same website.
• It’s really easy to add content on Squarespace. Users can make their own layouts in a minute by simply dragging and dropping items on the page. You can point to the website and start typing as easy as that.
• The ecommerce plan of Squarespace comes with a great interface for your online store in which you can easily manage orders, products, discounts, inventory and many more

Cons:

• When it comes to cons the ecommerce plan of Squaspace have limited payment method to proceed payments including Paypal, stripe and Apple pay.
• Additional payment methods can’t be added to the platform.
• Moreover, Squarespace has specified integrations with third-party service.

Pricing:

The pricing structure of Squarespace is really simple because they don’t have any third party apps. The personal plan of Squarespace starts at $16 per month for monthly billing and $12 per month with yearly billing. The business plan for this website builder costs $26 per month which is required if you want to sell your products or receive payments.

Shopify

Another very popular website builder is Shopify which is an ecommerce website specifically designed to support ecommerce websites and online business.

It’s one of the most used websites among other website builders as it supports more than 1/2 a million businesses including one million active clients.

Until now more than $40 billion value of products have been sold until now through Shopify.

Pros:

Following are the reasons for Shopify being so popular among other website builders:

• While using Shopify you don’t have to worry about managing software, keeping the backups or installing updates as Shopify is all in one solution for your online business.
• Shopify offers a user friendly payment method as it has an integrated payment method known as Shopify Payments which allows the users to accept credit cards. As well, users can include third-party payment gateways to receive the payments from clients.
• Shopify stays strong as an ecommerce website by offering complete solutions for full inventory management, remarkable marketing solutions, strong stats, unlimited products, and everything under one builder.
• You don’t need to add any code to choose among hundreds of designs on Shopify.
• It’s really easy to create your complete online store with the efficient drag and drop interface on Shopify.
• One more plus point of using Shopify is that users can easily incorporate Shopify into WordPress which helps your business grow by using both the effective solutions at the same time.

Cons:

• When it comes to cons there is one thing about Shopify which stands out among other website builders, it’s pricing is a little higher in price than other builders.
• As well, it’s very complicated to move your website to some other platform if you decide to switch from Shopify.

Pricing:

The pricing on Shopify starts with $29 a month for the basic plan. For the upgradation the cost incurs is $79 a month and for the Advanced Shopify plan it costs $299 a month. Moreover, Shopify provides you with a lite website plan for just $9 a month, which helps to have a buy button on any website.

Conclusion

There is no such thing as a very good or very bad website builder. Instead, it’s a trade-off and depends on what kind of solution you require for your needs. As per the analysis WordPress is 37% stronger among all other website builders. It offers you a perfect balance of flexibility, affordability and ease to use. If you need any help to build your website, please contact us. We are well experienced in building websites from scratch, in WordPress or any other website builder of your choice.