SEO

WordPress Vs. Webflow – Ultimate Pros and Cons list

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So– you want to launch your next website, but first, you need to know which is the best content management system (CMS) between WordPress and Webflow. You clicked on the right link.

In this article, we will look at both platforms in depth, their key features, benefits, disadvantages, and how they stack up against each other. We hope by the end of the article you will have all the information you need to make the best decision for your needs.

Article Outline

Background on WordPress

WordPress Key Features

Pros of WordPress

Cons of WordPress

Background on Webflow

Webflow Key Features

Pros of Webflow

Cons of Webflow

Comparison of Features: WordPress Vs. Webflow

Webflow vs. WordPress: Which should you choose?

FAQ

Background on WordPress

WordPress is the most popular way to build a website. It is an open-source content management system that was released on May 27, 2003. It started as a simple blogging platform and has gone on to become the go-to content management system for businesses of all sizes, from small personal blogs to large corporations. Today, it powers about 43% of websites on the internet.

Three things fuel WordPress’ popularity:

1. Customization: WordPress contains thousands of themes and plugins which help you control design and add new features to your site.
2. Ease of use: Both technical and non-technical users find it very easy to use WordPress because of its intuitive design. For a first-time user, figuring everything out might seem like an uphill task. However, once you get the hang of it, it becomes straightforward.
3. Numerous resources: Since WordPress is open-source software (free to download and use), it has a large community of developers and users who regularly contribute to the platform by creating tools, tutorials, and forums that enhance its functionality.

Overall, WordPress is a popular, versatile, and user-friendly platform for creating and managing websites.

WordPress Key Features

• Customizable Themes

WordPress offers the widest variety of customizable designs (themes) compared to any other CMS. It provides free and paid themes, which can be used to change the appearance of your website. The best part is you don’t need any coding knowledge to install or customize the themes; all it takes is the WordPress editor. Additionally, WordPress themes are mobile responsive, meaning they adapt to different screen sizes.

WordPress Themes

WordPress offers numerous themes to choose from.

• SEO friendly (search engines)

WordPress is designed to be SEO-friendly, which means that it makes it easy for search engines to crawl and index your website. It also includes built-in features such as meta tags, title tags, and clean permalinks that help boost your website’s search engine rankings. In case you want to take more control of your SEO efforts, you can use plugins like Yoast SEO or All in One Seo which have free and paid versions.

• Mobile responsive sites

WordPress themes are designed to be mobile responsive, meaning they automatically adjust to the size of the user’s screen, providing an optimal viewing experience across all devices.

• High-Performance

WordPress is a lightweight and fast solution, which allows it to handle high traffic and large amounts of content without slowing down. This enables websites to load quickly and run smoothly, providing a great user experience.

• Mobile apps for managing your site on the go

WordPress has mobile apps for iOS and Android devices that allow users to manage their websites from anywhere. When you download the WordPress app, you can update your website on the go without having to bring your computer. How convenient!

• High security

Getting security right is crucial for every business. WordPress is designed to be secure and is regularly updated to fix security vulnerabilities. WordPress also automatically updates its software periodically and sends out email notifications. Additionally, it has a variety of security plugins available to increase the security of a website like Jetpack and Sucuri.

• Powerful media management

WordPress includes a powerful media management system that makes it easy to upload, organize, and manage all types of media, including images, videos, and audio files. Media is an essential part of the online experience, and WordPress makes it so easy to organize and use it within your website.

• Easy and accessible

WordPress is designed to be easy to use, even for non-technical users. It has a user-friendly interface and a variety of tutorials and resources available to help users get started. This feature makes it so attractive as you can get your website up and running in minutes or hours, depending on the size of your website.

• Over 54,000 WordPress plugin options

WordPress has a vast library of over 54,000 plugins that can be used to add functionality and customize your website. These plugins make it easy to integrate with other software and payment gateways that you may need to run your website. Additionally, these plugins are easy to install and configure. You can easily set them up without any coding knowledge.

Wordpress Plugins

WordPress has more than 54,000 plugins available.

• Huge community

WordPress has a large and active community of users and developers who contribute to the platform by creating themes, plugins, and other tools. The community also provides support and resources, which makes it easy to find help and troubleshoot issues if you are stuck.

Pros of WordPress

1. It is free to use.
2. It can be completely customized for web design.
3. Offers thousands of extensions and plugins to choose from.
4. It has numerous integrations available.
5. It has numerous SEO plugins available.

Cons of WordPress

1. Sometimes, WordPress is slower than other platforms.
2. Due to its market dominance, it is prone to security threats.
3. It requires frequent updates and maintenance.
4. You need to learn code/hire a developer for customized website designs.

Background on Webflow

Webflow is like the cooler version of WordPress. It excels as a self-contained platform that allows you to build and host your website and was created in 2013 with the intention of bridging design and development. It uses a no-code, drag-and-drop visual website builder that allows users to create responsive websites without any coding knowledge. If you have coding ability, you can also build visually with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Webflow’s user interface can come across as cluttered due to the numerous customization features they have built in. However, it might be familiar to designers as it’s similar to design tools like Adobe XD or Sketch.

One of the main benefits of using Webflow is that it allows designers and developers to work together in one platform, streamlining the design and development process. This is particularly beneficial for smaller teams or agencies that want to reduce development time and costs.

Additionally, Webflow offers a variety of integrations and add-ons, such as e-commerce, forms, and analytics, that allow users to add more functionality to their websites. Webflow also has a hosting service, so you don’t have to get a separate hosting provider to host your website. Webflow also comes with built-in security, SEO, and performance features.

Webflow Key Features

• Intuitive editor

Webflow has an easy-to-use editor that allows you to edit your website without learning code. All you need to do is log into the CMS and start moving images and adding text — right on the live website.

• Responsive page designs and website design features

All Webflow sites are automatically responsive and are designed to perform well on all devices. It scales all inline images to ensure they are the right size and have the correct resolution across devices.

Responsive website design

Create responsive designs with Webflow.

• Work with Flexbox

Webflow uses CSS3’s flexible boxes, which make it easy to design and build flexible and responsive layouts without relying on the float and position properties in your CSS code.

• Define global color swatches and update them in an instant

With Webflow, you can define your key brand colors and update all instances of that color across the website in one go, taking a matter of seconds.

• Export code for download

Webflow offers clean, compliant semantic code that you can export and use however you want.

 Export code on Webflow

Export your website’s code on Webflow and host it on your preferred server.

• Agile code editor

If you want to add something to your design that Webflow doesn’t support natively, you can quickly add custom code for the entire site or a specific part of the site that you want.

• Zapier Integrations

Webflow offers integration with Zapier that allows you to connect with numerous apps like Slack, Asana, and MailChimp, among many more.

Pros of Webflow

1. You can create completely customized websites without the need for coding.
2. It uses a drag-and-drop page builder that allows you to build and customize your pages easily.
3. It has in-built SEO functionality. Therefore, there is no need for third-party plugins.
4. You can see exactly what your website will look like in the editor before you hit publish.
5. It offers powerful hosting with little downtime.
6. It offers a free SSL certificate.

Cons of Webflow

1. It has a limited selection of themes and plugins.
2. It doesn’t have many features or functionality, .e.g, memberships.
3. It is less well-known than WordPress.
4. Like every other platform, there’s a bit of a learning curve.

Comparison of Features: WordPress Vs. Webflow

• Ease of use

Both WordPress and Webflow make it easy to build a website, especially if you don’t know anything about coding. Having used both platforms, we believe Webflow is better because it uses a visual drag-and-drop builder. It also gives you control over every element on the website, though this can feel overwhelming as there are so many options.

Webflow’s design dashboard, although cluttered, is very intuitive and offers a live walkthrough once you set up your account. The drag-and-drop editor allows you to add all your website elements quickly and has an array of set-up resources like tutorials, guides, and walkthroughs that you can access for free at Webflow University.

 Webflow Dashboard

Webflow’s design dashboard allows you to customize every inch of your site with no code.

This is in stark comparison to WordPress. WordPress uses a block editor to edit pages, and in order to see your design, you have to preview your site in a different tab. WordPress also offers more limited resources to help you get started. Additionally, if you want to create a more custom site, you’ll need basic coding experience or to hire a developer.

WordPress Design Dashboard

WordPress gives limited design control unless you have coding experience.

However, WordPress excels when you have dynamic content on the website, like blog posts. The CMS functionality is available by default, and the block editor offers an amazing experience when adding blogs. We cannot say the same about Webflow. When creating blogs, Webflow offers a limited editor to add your content that isn’t as flexible as the block editor. Also, to add dynamic content on Webflow, you need to enable Webflow’s CMS functionality.

• Customization options

In order to create a beautiful website, you can use a pre-designed wireframe for your site instead of making it from scratch. These pre-made sites are designed by development professionals that you can simply install and edit to your own preferences. They are called themes in WordPress and templates in Webflow.

WordPress has a bigger theme marketplace than Webflow and therefore offers more customization options for prefab sites. Have a look below.

CMSFree ThemesPaid Themes
Webflow45+500+
WordPress4,200+10,000+

However, it is worth considering Webflow’s unique design features like flexbox and global color swatches, which make it easy to customize your website in one click. Customizing your website on WordPress is more complicated as you need basic coding skills, and you might end up incurring extra costs by hiring a developer.

• Plugins/extensions

Plugins are third-party tools that extend your site’s capabilities and add extra functionality to your website. They are also referred to as extensions and apps. Here, WordPress outperforms all other platforms, including Webflow. It offers more than 59,000 free plugins that you can use to customize your website and add extra functionality. You can also add plugins from other marketplaces and independent developers to your WordPress site.

Webflow, on the other hand, doesn’t provide any plugins. This means you cannot add extensions directly to your website and can only do so by adding code snippets from other providers. E.g. to add a membership service with Webflow, you have to integrate the code snippet from your preferred membership service.

• SEO capabilities

To optimize your website for SEO, you have to install third-party plugins like Yoast SEO or All In One Seo. This gives you the freedom to choose which provider you want to go with. For Webflow, SEO is directly built into the platform and has auto-generated sitemaps and clean code for great site crawling. It also has lightweight designs optimized for faster loading speeds. To increase your loading speeds in WordPress, you would need to install plugins like Jetpack.

• E-commerce capabilities

You can create an e-commerce store with both WordPress and Webflow. The only difference is how you do it. In WordPress, you need to add an e-commerce plugin like WookCommerce, the most popular WordPress e-commerce plugin. In Webflow, the e-commerce functionality is directly built into the service; to access it, you need to purchase the e-commerce plan.

• Customer support

If you are creating your first website, customer support is an important consideration, especially when you need urgent help. None of these platforms have dedicated support agents, but they both have forums where you can get help from the community for the issue you’re seeking to resolve.

• Integrations

In order to get the most from your website, you need to integrate with other apps and services you are already using, like payment gateways, social media tools, or even your customer relationship manager (CRM). WordPress has various plugins available, but Webflow is limited in this aspect. There are some integrations available for Webflow. However, there aren’t many. This means you need to embed code into your website to perform integrations.

Webflow vs. WordPress: Which should you choose?

There is no right or wrong between WordPress and Webflow. It comes down to your needs, preferences, and the value the platform offers. We usually recommend WordPress for businesses that want to build more than a simple site. If you need integrations to run your business properly, then WordPress is the best choice. If you are in the business of building websites for clients, then we’d recommend Webflow. It’s built with designers in mind and aims to make the design process more efficient.

Finally, if you can’t decide between the two, you can get the Webflow Pages plugin for WordPress that allows you to build your website on WordPress using Webflow. Need help setting up your business website? Reach out to us today. We’ll be happy to help!

FAQ

1. Is Webflow good for e-commerce sites?

Yes, it has e-commerce built directly into the platform, so you don’t have to worry about integrating e-commerce plugins. All you need to do is purchase Webflow’s e-commerce plan.

2. Which is better: WordPress or Webflow?

It depends on your needs and the value you want out of a content management system. Read our feature comparison to see how they stack up against each other.

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