With website builders and WordPress at your disposal, you don ’t need to expend your energy or savings to build a website that suits your brand.
But, what's the word on website builders vs. WordPress?
While both are effective tools for website development, we're going to give you a more in-depth look at how they fare against each other. That way, you can choose the tool that works best for you.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
- What a Website Builder Is
- What Is WordPress Used For?
- Website Builders vs. WordPress: The Key Differences
- Final Thoughts: Website Builders vs. WordPress: Which Is Best for You?
What a Website Builder Is
A website builder is a drag-and-drop editor that lets you build a website from scratch without writing a single line of code. You don’t need any programming skills to set up your website. All you have to do is drag and drop several available website elements until your website is done.
Most website builders provide hosting and maintenance functions for your website while offering numerous pre-made design templates from which you can select and customize.
In a nutshell, the website builder is an all-in-one DIY solution for site-building.
What Is WordPress Used For?
What is WordPress and what is it used for exactly?
WordPress is open source software that empowers users to build websites. This content management system (CMS) started as a blogging platform before becoming the most popular CMS powering over one-third of the web.
Is WordPress a Website Builder?
WordPress has website building capacity with several different themes available for customization.
WordPress is a particular class of website builder with two versions:
- WordPress.org — The open-source self-hosted version of WordPress
- WordPress.com — The WordPress-hosted version.
Related reading: WordPress.com vs WordPress.org: Understand the Key Differences
WordPress.org is the most used version of WordPress. Several small business owners and bloggers use it for their websites.
WordPress receives immense support from several developers, web hosting companies, and third-party WordPress plugins and themes.
Website Builders vs. WordPress: The Key Differences
When comparing website builders vs. WordPress, you can spot numerous differences.
While this might not seem necessary since you'll have a website at the end of the day, what you choose could either have a positive or adverse effect on your business long term.
To help you learn what each entails and choose the best option, let's go over and compare the advantages and disadvantages of website builders and WordPress.
1. Ease of Use
With its drag and drop interface, a website builder provides a more straightforward approach to site-building. It’s a simple solution for novices and those who don’t know how to handle technical processes.
Beginners may find it overwhelming to use WordPress vs. website builders at first since it has a steep learning curve. However, after some tutorials and practice you'll learn how to launch a WordPress website in no time. There are many resources on how to create a WordPress site for beginners that can walk you through the steps. And, the WordPress community is very active and helpful for beginners.
You need basic to advanced programming knowledge to use WordPress depending on the kind of website you want. Or, you can always get the added help of a developer.
But, WordPress can still be simple. How?
By installing a drag-and-drop website builder tool like StoreBuilder, an excellent tool for building an ecommerce website. It makes getting started with your website really simple. And if you decide you want more assistance, developers can help you too.
2. Cost
Several sitebuilders are great low-cost solutions from the get-go. However, they may limit your website bandwidth, support, and some other essential features. More importantly, your website package pricing may start to rise as your business expands.
Since WordPress is free, you can choose your preferred web hosting provider. You’re free to consider your business needs before selecting a web host package — which has more price stability — for your WordPress website.
3. Website Control
You don’t have absolute control over your website with website builders because they give you limited accessibility. For instance, you can’t access your website’s database or website code since you didn’t set it up.
However, self-hosted WordPress gives complete access to your website’s code and database. You have the permissions to adjust any WordPress site element till it looks the way you want.
4. Content Rights
Website builders usually get to retain the rights to your content. After all, your content would live on the site builder's hosting server, which you can't access. Website builders own content rights not just the moment you build your site — it’s forever. This is a huge disadvantage for users of website builders.
In contrast, you fully own the content you publish on self-hosted WordPress.
5. Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a downside of website builders compared to WordPress. While a website builder empowers you to quickly create an attractive website for your business, its SEO tools are only relevant for beginners.
A website builder’s SEO capacity is not as adequate as WordPress-supported SEO plugins. The code for most sitebuilder-developed websites is not usually structured for enhanced SEO ranking.
WordPress gives you efficient ranking optimization, Google Analytics integration, and other advanced features and SEO plugin options — like Yoast SEO, so your website can rank better on search engines and drive more traffic.
6. Overall Flexibility
While you can create stunning websites with WordPress and website builders, WordPress gives you more flexibility and customization options.
Website builders contain several easy-to-adjust templates. However, there’s a limit to customization for other areas. You may be limited to using the add-ons provided by your website builder.
On the other hand, WordPress offers advanced CSS and HTML code customization, plugin installations, several integration options, and functionality. You can customize a WordPress theme and even customize your WordPress dashboard to your liking. That is in addition to the thousands of WP themes — both free and premium.
Final Thoughts: Website Builders vs. WordPress: Which is Best for You?
Why use WordPress? What about website builders?
Whether you decide to choose website builders or WordPress will depend on what you want. While each of these website building solutions has its drawbacks, they are helpful for different business owners.
If you dread technical processes but want your website to be live in a matter of hours, find the best website builder for the job.
However, you could go for the WordPress solution instead if you want to take your time to create a scalable website that has lots of features and flexibility.
Power Your Site With Fully Managed Hosting
If you’re looking to back up your scalable WordPress website with reliable hosting solutions, check out the Fully Managed WordPress hosting plans from Nexcess today.
With managed hosting, your hosting provider takes care of the administration and security of your website, and keeps it up and running smoothly.
Some features that make Nexcess fully managed WordPress so convenient include:
- Security monitoring that is always on.
- Automatic updates and backups.
- Support from WordPress experts 24/7 every day of the year.
- A built-in Edge CDN powered by Cloudflare with over 280 locations.
- And advanced caching for ultrafast loading.
See how easy it can be when you leave it to the experts. Check out our fully managed WordPress hosting plans today.
