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Which should you use: Webflow or Wordpress? You may have heard good things about both of these and may be wondering which one to use.
In this blog post, we will explore the ups and downs of both Wordpress and Webflow!
Wordpress is an open source CMS (content managing system) that is repsonsible for housing a little less than half of the websites on the Internet, and Webflow is a newer CMS and builder that joined the battle of the W-web builders (Wordpress, Webflow, Wix, Webstudio Weebly—and these are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head) and seems to be doing very well indeed.
So the question is: is Webflow or Wordpress the better builder and which should YOU use?
The answer? Depends!
When I first started learning web design, my first website was for a project my mom had wanted to do, but hadn’t gotten to yet. I volunteered for the task, wanting to get started with making websites somehow and that’s how it began… The website was originally made in Wordpress because it was the most popular website builder by far and well. It’s pretty much free. Can’t argue with that.
I spent months on that website. It was definitely a learning experience and was an interesting start to this whole website building thing.
Long story short, free things aren't really free. The free thing in question is Wordpress.
We ended up having to pay for quite a few extra plugins to make the site work properly, and it didn't even look good—unless you hand-code the entire site, get a theme, or a paid builder on top of Wordpress, the default editor isn't particularly good.
A few months or so later, I started exploring other web builders and better ways to build a website. Weflow was one builder that frequently kept popping up as a potential good choice, and I decided to go with it and learn its ins and outs. We moved to Webflow; building the site in Webflow was a different experience entirely, and though not entirely smooth, went along much better than building it in Wordpress. Since then, I've gone on to build a few other sites on both Webflow and Wordpress and have my fair share of experience with both.
Sure, this post may be a little biased but look at it this way: I've worked with both builders and can give you my full, unfiltered thoughts and reviews. So let's get going!
To get everything started, let's look at Wordpress first—our lovely, enourmously popular CMS that has been here since 2003. then afterwards, we will look at Webflow, built ten years later in 2013, and with a more visual approach to the whole web design building game.
A little intro: Wordpress was first released on May 27, 2003 (making it older than both Twitter and Facebook). It is an open source software, meaning it's free for anyone to use and modify the source code. Nowadays, although it's still technically free, Wordpress is the focal point of a whole multi-billion dollar industry that sells products, services and all sorts of stuff related to Wordpress. The software for Wordpress itself is completely free, but unless you're a complete whizz at coding, it won't end up with an empty bill. Since it is not a company, Wordpress doesn't have a CEO or (presumably) the usual money-seeking tendencies of a service this large (43.5% of websites use Wordpress), that has been under question lately, with the co-founder acting exactly like the CEO of a very large service with money-seeking tendencies. [link to explainer]
But let's throw all that away and just focus on the basics. What things does Wordpress do well? And what things aren't doing as good?
Time for a pros and cons list!
To start off on a more postive note, let's do the pro list.
Wordpress really can be used for many, many things. Thing of any idea for a website and yeah, you could probably build it there. Shops, portfolios, courses, directories, it's all possible, baby.
And why is that in the pro list, you may ask—because Wordpress is very popular. And that means all the ground has been tread on, all the roads have been built. There are countless tutorials on Wordpress online, innumurable plugins to aid you in your highly specific website endevours, many developers to handle all of that for you.
And now for the con list! Let's see some things that Webflow doesn't do well.
The truth is, Wordpress by itself isn't very intuitive and easy to navigate around and has a pretty steep learning curve. Some degree of coding knowledge would come in useful here, and you'll probably spend as much time, if not more, on learning how to actually make your website compared to actually running your business.
Good Wordpress developers aren't particularly cheap and even if you do find a good developer with a decent pricing range, there are still the plugins and possibly the themes to reckon with. It is very hard to build a halfway functional site without bringing plugins into it. Want to put a button that can share your posts around social media? Plugin. Or code the whole damn thing. Want people to be able to buy a course then login and view it? Several plugins. Want to gain more control over your SEO settings? Plugin (though there are often free versions, the paid version is better in what you recieve). Ideally, you would get a plugin for handling some of the site security too for the occassional hacking attempt. A good theme would be a good idea to find as well, and a web builder if you want to continue to attempt to do this yourself and are not a coder.
The versatility and popularity show their winning cards but the usability heavily drag it back down, with the ultimate cost of the site building getting in a couple of punches as well.
Webflow was first launched in 2013, and in recent years has seen a big uptick in popularity—for good reason.
And now for the pros and cons list:
Here are some of the benefits you can expect from working with Webflow.
Compared to Wordpress, Webflow has a far better user experience and ease of use—it's generally a lot more intuitive. It's designed to be a no-code editor and is far more centralized than Wordpress which makes the whole learning and building experience easier. It also makes upkeep of your website easier in the long run as you don't have to juggle several different plugins and weird Wordpress updates (oh God, Wordpress updates).
Changing parts of your website such as changing an image, or adding a blog post is a lot easier to do in Webflow as well if you are thinking about hiring someone to make your website, and your main worry is how you will manage it afterwards instead. Don't worry; it really is pretty easy.
Design wise, you are spoilt for choice on Webflow. You can make signs with great designs on Wordpres but, again, it will probably take you years to get to that point and the native editor there isn't that great. Webflow is built with a focus on the visual outcome and really offers you a lot of control over how your website looks.
Though it hasn't got the long known aura of Wordpress and all of its countless tutorials and supports, Webflow can still compete with that pretty well due to its large resource library and active forum. There are several [free courses] and a [large library of videos] to look through when starting to build your website and searching for solutions to specific problems.
The support for Webflow is also pretty good, with a very well built system to offer you help with anything that you cannot solve yourself. I was pretty impressed when I first got started there and very grateful that everything was contained in one editor and cobbling together dozens of plugins for every website (like on Wordpress) wasn't necessary.
Check out the resources on Webflow University
And now for some cons as well.
Webflow may be good for all sorts of websites from protfolios to shops to blogs, good for large-scale online shops 'tis not. You will start having trouble when you want to build an ecommerce shop on Webflow with truly impressive stocks and top-notch functionality. It's more than fine for smaller and medium shops, but it's definitely not as efficient for large-scale operations in which you have hundreds of different products coming in and out every day.
It's also, as mentioned previously, more centralized than Wordpress and doesn't have the same economy of plugins. That means you are largely contained to what Webflow itself can do, and although it can do quite a lot, you might still have to make third party integrations, even for things like comments and upvoting systems.
Wordpress is good at doing this:
Webflow is good at doing this:
As you can see, each platform has its ups and downs as all things do. Wordpress is a titan in this industry and there is a reason for that—it truly is a very powerful CMS. Webflow on the other hand, offers a much simpler experience and for a very good result.
It may be apparent that I am more or less just waving my little Webflow flag here, but I believe it really is the better tool for the average business owner
Personally, I'd say Webflow is the better website building tool overall. You get a result that's a whole lot better than you'd get out of Wordpress without some good money or significant knowledge, and with a comparatively shorter learning curve as well. Both building, maintenance and support is generally easier in Webflow. Though that is an overgeneralization and it depends a lot on exactly what website you want, but for smaller and more visually focused sites like portfolios, blogs, and small business websites or shops, Webflow would be the better choice to pick.
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