Last Updated 2 years by Emily Standley-Allard
Building a website yourself is always a fun project isn’t it? The options can seem endless and finding the right CMS platform when developing your website is one of the most important things for an online business. People often take a lot of time struggling to decide which one is best for them, and which is capable of benefiting them in the ways that they need it to. To help you gain a better understanding of which platform is right for you and your business, we’re going to look at and contrast two of the most popular platforms for website development out there; WordPress and Webflow CMS.
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If you don’t have a website my friend now is the perfect time to get yours underway!
Unless you’ve been under a rock you’ve more than likely heard of them both these power platforms and you may even have used at least one of them before.
But we’re going to go in depth and compare the things about these two highly capable website development platforms that really matter most.
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We’ve chosen some key areas that help us to contrast these two options and really see how they differ. By doing that, we can provide you with genuine insight regarding these two platforms and help you make an informed decision with regards to which one is best for you. So, read on now to find out more.
An Overview
First of all, let’s take a look at what each of these platforms is about.
Webflow CMS was designed for both beginners and the website professionals who already has some development and web design experience. However, the CMS is built with production ready code to develop websites on a visual level which eliminates the need to have any knowledge of coding.
On a personal note I was thinking of migrating my site over to Webflow because the templates are so gosh darn appealing and having the option to edit on screen without having to go to a dashboard was cool too. After some thought I’ve decided to stick with WordPress. It’s become comfy and familiar to me and as intuitive as it is, I’m not up to learning a whole new system. With that being said, it certainly offers a lot of tempting options.
WordPress CMS is well known to be the ‘holy grail’ for bloggers of all skill levels. They market themselves as the most popular open source content management tool designed to be used by anyone.
WordPress is an open-source platform where you can modify the templates you choose, find a unique style and aesthetic for any type of website you’re designing.
That extra customization is a good idea because regular templates can be err, a little uninspiring.
It’s also a platform that most people are familiar with on some level because of its ubiquity, and that may work in its favor for some.
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Ease of Use
Ease of use is one of the things that matters most when choosing a platform for designing your website.
You want to know that you’ll be able to get a handle on it fast and not have to deal with any lengthy learning curves and frustrations along the way. When designing a website yourself you don’t exactly want to have to spend a year having to learn how to use it’s interface.
Webflow CMS has an interface that’s pretty clear and intuitive and gives you a range of available tools that can help you get started very fast.
You can pick any number of templates or start from scratch. If you have a good idea first in mind of how you want your website to appear you’ll get to where you want to be eventually.
With Webflow you don’t need any knowledge of coding per say but you do need to understand how to structure the elements like you would do in coding without writing the actual code.
WordPress CMS is known for being easy to use if you want to just pick a template and stick to it.
However, if you’re going to edit, you’ll need to use PHP and HTML editing and that’s where the difficulties come in.
Webflow makes customizing and designing your site easier because everything’s done visually without having to go through a back end dashboard as in WordPress.
Features and Versatility
In terms of versatility, WordPress CMS gets a lot right.
It’s the kind of platform that can be used in a variety of ways and meet the expectations and demands of it’s users with its flexible framework, layouts and applications.
WordPress is free. Yes 100% free. It can be downloaded for self-hosted installations from WordPress.org or as a hosted service via WordPress.com
Only with WordPress.org (the self hosted site) do you have the multiple options of endless themes and plugins. With WordPress.com you can’t upload any themes, plugins or modify the PHP code behind your site. And you do not own it. Keep that in mind.
Difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org
You can make it work for you and the inbuilt capabilities such as hosting and security are really strong here. The fact that these features are so easy to access and make use of is definitely a selling point for WordPress and why it’s been so popular.
However, WordPress has always had a blogging niche, and this can present problems when you’re looking to create a website that isn’t a blog.
It can be a bit more intimidating to switch from WordPress to Webflow because you have to build it all yourself (unless you get someone to migrate your information for you) and there aren’t the same kind of inbuilt options and plugins you get with WordPress.
But that doesn’t mean Webflow should be discounted. If you know what you’re doing, it’s a very versatile platform that you can achieve a lot with. Of course, that means that the platform won’t be quite as appealing or as suitable for beginners.
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Designs
In terms of creating great designs, it’s hard to look past Webflow’s CMS.
It has an advanced site designer and interactions feature that allows you to go really in-depth and achieve the design you had in mind.
In order to achieve that same level of success on WordPress, you have to be able to edit HTML and PHP, and if you’re not an expert at that, you’re going to struggle a lot to achieve what you can achieve much more easily on Webflow.
Or, you can just hire a freelance web developer from Fiverr to take care of it for you.
In terms of the number of themes it offers, WordPress takes an easy win.
It offers more than 10,000 themes whereas Webflow has 200. Sometimes less is more – just saying…
Another item is price, the most you’ll pay for a theme on Webflow is $79 and you can pay anywhere from $10 to $299 for one on WordPress.
However, what you can do with those themes in terms of making them specific to you and what you want to achieve, Webflow definitely wins the contest.
I find that WordPress offers lots of themes and templates that tend to look very similar, so that 10,000 figure isn’t as impressive once you delve into it.
User Support
You can find a lot of really helpful information on the Webflow digital university when you’re looking for details on things you don’t understand, whether that’s security or integration or something else entirely.
This level of support is great and you can also contact someone directly with the phone or live chat options.
It’s good to know that you can turn to the company and they’ll be there to help you with whatever you’re experiencing.
WordPress is very different because it’s entirely open-source, meaning there isn’t a central customer support team that you can turn to.
You can talk to other developers and designers and the occasional FB group, who have experience on the platform as well as WPbeginner.com that is a very useful resource for beginners or anyone really.
There also plenty of forums, online communities and tutorials out there you can gain insight from as well.
You won’t have any trouble eventually finding the help and information you need, but you won’t get it directly from WordPress because they simply don’t offer that kind of support.
Pricing
Each platform has a range of pricing options and these allow you to pay more for more features. With WordPress, this means paying more for extra plugins.
With Webflow, there are three different payment tiers: Starter, Lite and Pro. The Pro package is suited to sites with multiple users. You can start building a website for free with no credit card and no trial plan for as long as you like
Of course, WordPress CMS is completely free to get started with and that’s one of the things that’s most appealing about it.
You don’t have to pay a penny to start using the platform but the same is true of Webflow.
Of course, if you want to get the most out of WordPress, you will have to pay for hosting – minimal if you go through Bluehost @ $3.95 monthly. Most popular plugins are free.
So, which of these platforms offer you the best value for money?
WordPress is cost effective and has a lower price to get started and to pay for the basics such as hosting.
It costs $3.95 per month for hosting with a company like Bluehost, whereas the Lite package from Webflow costs $16 per month.
Of course, value for money also depends on what you’re getting from the platform and whether it works for you, but WordPress is overall the cheaper option.
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Conclusions
So, where does all of this leave us with regards to choosing between WordPress and Webflow?
Well, it’s clear that both of these platforms each have a lot to offer and bring their own benefits to the table.
Webflow CMS is a canvas on which you can bring your own ideas forward and expand on them in an intuitive way.
It’s about being able to view your content and changes visually without having to be a coding expert and that’s a pretty unique thing. It could even change the way websites are designed in the future.
WordPress is the most famous and respected CMS out there used by approximately 75 million websites.
It provides more templates and plugins than you’ll ever know what to do with. It’s all very easy to use and is very well-suited to complete beginners who haven’t done any of this before.
But it also has the capability to be used in a more in-depth way by people who are genuine professionals and really know what they’re doing from a web design and development perspective.
What this means in terms of which is right for you is that you need to choose the platform that best aligns with your own skills and capabilities, as well as with what you’re trying to achieve.
If you’re somewhat experienced and you want more functional options and flexibility, Webflow is probably the best option right now.
According to a survey by Netcraft around 455,000,000 sites are built on WordPress so it is still the choice for many newcomers to get started with.
It’s up to you to decide which of these two platforms you feel will be most suitable and appropriate for you and the website you’re looking to create, and hopefully the information above should help you do that.
If you’re seeking professional guidance to create your website don’t hesitate to contact us for help!
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