Regardless of what platform your website might be hosted on, you’ve most likely heard of WordPress and Webflow. We often tell clients that using a service such as Webflow is a great place to get your idea off the ground as its both affordable and easy to use, however, as your online presence continues to grow, you’ll start to notice that you need more than what it can offer.
Let’s dive into these two very popular platforms and break down why you may want to consider WordPress for your next project or redesign.
What is WordPress?
First off, it’s important to distinguish the difference between a WordPress.com site and WordPress.org. WordPress.com is a paid service by the company, Automattic which owns both versions of WordPress. This article is referring to the open-source version of WordPress which can be downloaded at wordpress.org.
WordPress is a content management system (CMS) that has been around since 2003 and started out as an easy-to-use solution for anyone to create a personal blog.
Since then WordPress has grown into the largest CMS and powers over 38% of all websites on the world wide web. It has grown into a full website suite with thousands of plugins and themes that can ultimately offer a truly flexible building environment where just about anyone can find a way to accomplish what they want without having to dive into the code.
What is WebFlow?
Webflow is a SaaS (software-as-a -service) product built as a web browser drag-and-drop application for building websites. It takes just a few minutes to sign up for an account and start building your site.
Webflow tends to be faster than other SaaS services in this space like Wix and Squarespace and has been gaining in popularity since it launched in 2013. It is built more for designers and those without a front end web development background.
5 Reasons to Consider WordPress over Webflow
1. WordPress is open source
WordPress being open sourced comes with both benefits and disadvantages. Having the codebase be open to the public allows for complete control and customization of the website or application. The downside of this though is that it means everyone can have access to the core WordPress code, including hackers.
There are several ways to combat and prevent this from happening but that’s another blog for another day. The team here at SEO Succor utilizes several services on our hosting and maintenance plan that does put your site in great hands though.
2. WordPress is compatible and offers integrations to most third-party providers
This is a huge benefit to say the least and one that none of the competition can really compete with at the moment. Whether you need to integrate a payment plan service like Bread or Affirm to your online shop or push contact form submissions to your company’s Slack, WordPress is the clear winner here.
Whatever third party service you are wanting to integrate with your site, chances are that WordPress already has an integration available. Webflow also offers third-party integrations and is continuing to grow that list, however, WordPress takes the cake here.
3. There is no shortage of WordPress developers if you need one
Chances are that at some point you will need help from a PHP or WordPress developer, whether its troubleshooting a bug from a recent plugin, theme or core WP update or implementing a custom post type for a new collection of pages on your site. Due to how long WordPress has been around and how popular of a CMS it is, you can easily find a developer in your price range on just about any job posting site such as Fiverr or Upwork.
We believe that you should treat your website like an employee and be willing to invest some money to ensure its running the best that it can and work for you in as many ways as possible. It’s a worthy investment of funds to have a developer handy to take on any issues or up keep problems you have on a regular basis.
Webflow is a newer platform and does have a support channel for help and issues, but you are going to be much more limited with getting help. There are less resources overall to research when trying to troubleshoot on your own.
4. WordPress sites offer more options and features to keep your site speed up
There are countless plugins for WordPress to improve site speed and security. On top of that, third party services such as Cloudflare are fully supported, whereas Webflow is not. Services like Cloudflare not only have a suite of sitespeed features, it is also fully capable of preventing the majority of spam and hack attempts. Webflow likely has other services in place to combat this but WordPress and Cloudflare gives you full control.
In addition, it is impossible to inline CSS and JS elements within Webflow, making it an inferior solution when it comes to page speed modifications.
5. WordPress offers the most options for quick SEO work
Webflow is not as flexible as WordPress when it comes to everyday SEO work. This is largely because of the volume of 3rd party plugins that are available with WordPress, but it is also due to the user-interface.
In Other Words
WordPress offers a bit more flexibility in the end, and whether you are paying a marketing agency by the hour or running your own marketing efforts, having a flexible website just adds to your efficiencies in the end.
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