Are you undecided on which CMS to use for your next website? we'll perfom a comparison between the 2 best CMS's on the market, Webflow and WordPress. Today we're talking about a topic of great importance to all those who build websites, for themselves or for their clients.
Who hasn't been faced with this question before approaching a new web project? The alternatives for creating websites online are many, some really advanced. Thanks to technology, you also no longer have to worry about being a developer or knowing how to write code.
To create websites there are website builders, which:
Let's take a step back. What are the main Website Builders? we won't hide it, there are a lot of them on the market.
The main ones are as follows:
Each has merits and demerits, of course. But we can say with reasonable certainty that Webflow and Elementor for WordPress are the best CMSs we've had the pleasure of working with. Wix gives you a pre-set layout and great ease of use. But what Wix lacks is a solid structure: basically, elements can be placed anywhere on the page. This makes Wix unreliable for precise designers who want a solid layout. Instead, it is the right tool for those who want to create a site quickly.
Squarespace is a fairly expensive tool. We consider it inflexible, it has too many rules and the user is forced somehow to follow their settings. Divi is flexible but at the same time has rules. The cost is very low: you can buy a lifetime subscription for about $200.
The last 2 tools are the ones we'd like to talk about today: Webflow and WordPress via Elementor.
Want to know what we think of them and what their strengths and weaknesses are? Come on, keep reading!
Everyone knows WordPress: it is the open source CMS par excellence. Born to do blogging, it quickly became one of the main and most used references for creating websites of all sizes. The beauty of WordPress is the ability to use thousands of plugins, which are add-on modules that allow enormous flexibility.
Examples of plugins are:
All this makes WordPress perfect for those looking for maximum freedom and maximum potential to have all the features possible. WordPress is unmatched in this regard. In particular, Elementor is the most successful Website Builder on WordPress. Elementor can be used for free with (very) limited features. The good thing is that Elementor offers respectable pricing. For those who want to build a single site, $50 is a reasonable amount, also considering that WordPress is totally free.
With Elementor you have several predefined modules available, but which are highly customizable. All this while maintaining fixed schemes so that the designer doesn't have to waste time aligning objects like on a PowerPoint (Wix effect). Elementor, however, has a major problem: the plugin is heavy from code-side, making the loading of the web page slower. On average, sites made with Elementor are slower than normal.
And this, we know well, is not well seen by Google, which penalizes the slowest sites, especially from mobile. For some time now, in fact, Big-G has given priority to the mobile version of many sites, making their speed fundamental in terms of SEO. Sites created with Elementor, in fact, struggle a bit more to index well on search engines. Nobody knows the real reason, but in our opinion it's really related to the amount of code that the plugin adds to the page.
Another critical issue, in our opinion, is related to the fact that each page and post is independent. What does it mean?
Let's assume, for example, that you have a list of blog pages. On all pages you have put social buttons on the right. If you Decide, however, that you want to put them on the left, with Elementor this is not possible: you have to enter each page and make the change. This makes managing large sites very complicated. Nevertheless, we are very pleased with Elementor. In fact most of the websites are made with elementor, this proves that even an important site with many pages can be done without problems in WordPress with Elementor. However, we suggest using it for sites that are not too big (and not for e-commerce).
Now we come to Webflow, what we consider the best CMS on the market at the moment. We have to say that we discovered it later than the others, but it is really great. Webflow is a cloud-based Website Builder that allows developers that have a basic knowledge of html and CSS, to create websites with speed. Why is it great you may ask.
The first and most important reason is that it is TOTALLY CUSTOMIZABLE.
What does it mean?
Compared to other Website Builders, which are somewhat partially pre-set, Webflow turns the designer into a developer, without having to write code, at least for the design implementation point of view. This is the purest difference between Webflow and any other Website Builder. The power of this tool is incomparable to any other. With Webflow, designers become real developers.
This has pros and cons:
With Webflow, prices vary depending on what kind of site you want. You can open a free account, which allows you to create 2 sites without a dedicated domain (so with a .webflow.io domain) and essentially 2 pages.
If you want a real site, with its own domain, the plans are as follows:
What is Webflow CMS? Webflow has a very powerful tool: the CMS. Obviously CMS stands for Content Management System, but in Webflow it has a different meaning. Webflow allows you to create Collections, which are groups of content that have the same layout. It's perfect for a blog, or for case study management.
The great thing about this feature is the following: if I need to change the position of the social buttons, as I mentioned above, here you just need to do it on the master layout. Every page tied to this layout will change accordingly, without having to go and edit every single page you've already created.
This feature really saves a lot of time by making simple changes on the fly.
We have to say this honestly: we really like Webflow, but it's not necessarily always the right choice. Depending on the project, you may choose one or the other option. In the specific case of e-commerce, WordPress can be a solution (via WooCommerce), but for real online stores we don't recommend this solution. We prefer Shopify or, even better, Magento (But of course each platform has its own pros and cons and each one is suited for a specific type of use, read our guide on how to choose an eCommerce platform).
We create pixel perfect, custom designed websites either with webflow and wordpress, contact us to get a customized offer for your needs!
