There are millions of WordPress like sites out there. It has a great variety of themes and plugins, it is flexible, and very easy to use. Though, the free Open Source platform WordPress.org is not for everyone as it also comes with some disadvantages. In this article, I will take a look at those situations where WordPress may not be the ideal solution for creating your own website and suggest some alternative tools.
The Top 11 Alternatives
Here’s our best 11 list of website builders we found to be particularly useful WordPress alternatives:
- WordPress
- Wix
- Weebly
- Jimdo
- Squarespace
- Joomla!
- Webnode
- Site123
- Webflow
- Shopify
- BigCommerce
1. WordPress:
WordPress is the world’s most popular tool for creating websites. WordPress is capable of creating any style of website, from a simple blog to a full-featured business website. You can even use WordPress to create an online store. Word press was created as an individual project in 2003 originated with a b2/cafelog project as its base. It involves a huge community that contributes shares in its built.it is used by everyone from business individuals to any big business holders. even non-developers can easily modify the word press built websites and this website building web system includes a large set of themes and plugins with it.
Features of WordPress
- Better customization options.
- A search engine friendly system.
- An open-source and free for use project.
- Website adaptability was irrespective of its type.
- It’s exceedingly elastic and extensible. a huge set of plugins allows users to easily change the look and feel of the websites and also add additional features like mailing, image gallery etc.
- Easy to learn the environment so which avoids the need of a web designer for every smaller change applied to the websites.
- Better control over the content handled, unlike usual content limitations in other publishing platforms. It also allows the import of contents from external dynamic blogs. and also apply ease export of data.
- Speedy upload of contents and additional support over classified media platforms.
2. Wix:
The most flexible designs are made here.While WordPress offers an unbelievably wide range of designs, we had to realize that customizing these designs to match our needs meant loads of tedious work and customizing codes. Building a Wix site is very different. You move the elements around with a click of the mouse, dropping them right where you want them. All plans (even the free ones!) come with the same design options.Video backgrounds and animations are no problems in wix. This website builder gets SEO right, Portfolio pages, in particular, it turns out really good, and most importantly, not difficult to create. They have many business-focused apps (e.g. for hotels or restaurants) that can make your life easier if you are in one of these industries.
Unfortunately, there is a major draw back in wix, you can’t change your template once you have selected one, and you won’t have access to the source files.
3. Weebly:
Weebly is a very good website builder that has been used to create around 40 million sites till date. Especially if you’re looking for something free of cost, Weebly is an excellent choice. The free plan places a small, gray Weebly banner in your website footer. Individual domains can be used from the Connect plan upward ($5 per month).
The blog feature is the most flexible we’ve seen in webly. You can create all sort of layouts and use all the available elements (e.g. galleries, contact forms, video integration, etc) and have blogging features (e.g. tags, categories, comments, etc), excellent for publishing posts. It also possess an integrated video and audio player (Pro plan only).
4. Jimdo:
Building a site with Jimdo is a good choice if you’re looking for an assisted website builder.There are more than 20 million websites have been created on Jimdo, and there’s a free basic plan you can try. The paid plans include not only the web editor, but also images, content and a simple online store.Though, you have to be aware of that Jimdo is not as feature-packed as other website builders.
Though, it is a solid tool, and does well.If you’re a WordPress fan, you might be disappointed that the templates are much less flexible in Jimdo, and the blog is geared towards beginners more than experienced bloggers. The major advantage of the Jimdo blog is that it has a good module because it integrates into the website so nicely.
5. Squarespace:
Squarespace is a website builder that’s popular among the creative users. The designs are very stylish and responsive, that they can automatically adjust to the screen size of every visitor. Nevertheless, we feel that Wix is a bit better here due to the larger number of available designs.You can import your WordPress blog to Squarespace, which we like a lot.
Nevertheless, we don’t recommend using Squarespace for blogging unless you don’t particularly care about SEO because page titles and meta descriptions can’t be adjusted for individual blog posts – which is very important for ranking with search engines. However, be aware that Squarespace is more difficult to use than Wix or Weebly due to its complicated interface.
Downsides are the limited depth of navigation (only two levels). The least expensive plan costs $12 per month– not exactly the greatest deal ever. You can find our full Squarespace review here or compare them directly to WordPress in this article.
6. Joomla:
If you find WordPress too complicated, you can stop right here. The Joomla! CMS definitely has some nifty features built right in, most importantly, management for multilanguage web pages – but it’s complicated! While WordPress sometimes almost feels like a website builder for beginners, you’ll find Joomla! much more complex.
One positive note is that, Joomla! is generally a much more secure platform than WordPress. Hackers generally prefer the biggest platform, and that’s what WordPress has become. Joomla! also has 2-factor authentification built right in, which makes it much harder for unauthorized visitors to break into your website.
7. Webnode:
This website builder is particularly interesting if you are looking for a multilanguage website builder. A feature that not many providers offer.Generally, WordPress was designed as a tool to publish in one language only, though you can add plugins that will enable you to add translations to your website.
So if you already know that you’ll be publishing in more than one language, Webnode could be a great WordPress alternative for you.Webnode’s blog is not comparable to WordPress unfortunately. It’s very basic and doesn’t have features such as categories or tags. Comments can only be displayed via the Facebook comments feature.
8. Site123:
This website builder throws quite a few interesting features into the ring and plenty of them are even free! You have the option to create a One-Pager website (which are quite popular for smaller sites) or a classic multi-page site. You have full access to their SEO features and support is there to help you if get stuck.
Site123’s premium version starts at $10.80 per month and includes an ad-free website with your own domain name (which is free for the 1st year). In the Advanced (and higher) plans you are also able to build multilanguage sites, add ecommerce and send out mass emailings.
9. Webflow:
If your problem with WordPress isn’t that it’s too complicated but rather that you feel too limited, then Webflow should be on your radar. The editor feels a bit like Photoshop and offers a tonne of options. They are just a bit difficult to use for beginners (like myself).
It definitely helps to understand something about the underlying code that Webflow’s visual editor generates. Their templates are brilliant and once you do get the hang of it you can create amazing things with it. Next to the free plan, which allows two projects, there are also paid plans starting at $12 per month.
10. Shopify:
If you are looking for an easy-to-use alternative to WooCommerce, stop looking. Shopify is here. In our experience, the easiest store builder out there for big projects. On top of it, they offer neat, responsive designs that will make your store look good on any device. They also have a big community of users, partners and developers.
This ecommerce builder isn’t short of features. You will be able to create product variants, manage taxes & shipping effectively and even expand Shopify’s capabilities via their App Store. Although it is a really good solution,and it also has a couple of drawbacks. Working with multiple currencies isn’t as straightforward as it should be. Unless you use Shopify Payments as your default payment processor, Shopify will charge a transaction fee (0.5% – 2%) for each sale (online or offline) that you process.
11. BigCommerce:
This Australian store builder is also a good option to build medium to big online stores with. Especially if you are looking to create multi-currency ecommerce projects or you need all the SEO features you can get. Another cool thing is that BigCommerce won’t charge you a transaction fee for each sale that you process.
However, they do have a yearly sales threshold that will force you to upgrade your plan if exceeded. Check all their prices and plans here to make sure you understand their conditions.But if you do go with BigCommerce, you have to know that they come with some pitfalls. Easily creating (not google-translated) multilingual online stores isn’t possible, not even with external apps or premium templates. Their designs could be a bit more modern-looking and there are easier to use alternatives (e.g. Shopify or Weebly).
mR. Happer 