WordPress has turned out to be a global phenomenon since its first release in 2003. It has come a long way from what it was and has been accepted by people across the globe. It is undoubtedly the most dominant Content management system (CMS) today and is the largest self-hosted website platform. According to surveys, WordPress powers 34% of the internet. Isn’t that huge? Read more interesting statistics on WordPress in 2019 if you would like to know how huge it is. But, that doesn’t mean Wordpress is the only or the best platform to build your website. Ever wondered what are the WordPress alternatives available? Of course, there are many other good website building platforms available today with much better intuitive features that you may want to try.
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So, what are the WordPress alternatives and how good are they compared to WordPress? How is the pricing of these WordPress alternatives? Is it costly compared to WordPress? I understand you may have many questions like this. We will be answering all these questions in this blog. We have come up with a list of best WordPress alternatives in 2019, its pros and cons, and pricing details.
But, before we jump to the alternatives let me first tell you why you may want to check these alternatives. When WordPress is open source-meaning completely free and very powerful with all the features you would need to build your website - be it for blogging, a business website or eCommerce store, why would you even have to think of any alternatives? Well, that’s all true and I am a great fan of WordPress too. But it doesn’t mean it is the right option for your website. Yes, WordPress might not always be the right option for your website. There are many circumstances where you might want to see if there are better options for building your dream website. Remember, WordPress is an all in one platform for blogging, websites, and eCommerce and that’s one of the main reason why you should be checking on other alternatives which are more specific. Yeah, seriously, if you are focused on a specific purpose then WordPress with its too many features is just gonna bring in unnecessary chaos.
Here is a list of other problems users face while using WordPress.
1. Inconsistent backend: WordPress offers many customization features, and thus the backend of each WordPress website would be extremely different. This could be a problem for beginners and it can take hell a lot of time in troubleshooting any issues that pop up. The solutions that you find on the internet may not necessarily fix your issues as there may be no ‘one size fits all’ solutions for the platform. It may vary based on your theme selected, plugins installed an so on.
2. Needs Customization: Allowing a great deal of customization is the greatest advantage of WordPress as it allows endless possibilities to create a unique website from scratch. But the same feature may turn out as a pain to some people. Especially those who are not so familiar with WordPress. Basically, the core product of WordPress is minimal. To get a site running in WordPress, you need to install themes, customize the themes if needed and download several plugins. Even many basic features like SEO or improving site performance are not present in the core product. Only if you download appropriate plugins, you get those features. Plugins definitely offer a variety of options and many find this a positive aspect of WordPress as well.
Too many plugins doing the same that do virtually the same things make it difficult for the users to determine which one is the right choice. You would have to identify the right plugin which is compatible with your theme and other add-ons on your website. Thus, to newbies, this kind of setup is definitely not that easy to digest and can end up kill some precious time in identifying all the bits and pieces necessary and climbing up the learning curve.
3. Limited reporting accuracy due to limited interaction between plugins.
In WordPress, for marketing strategies like email and social media, you would have to use plugins. But these plugins don’t interact with each other as in an all in one marketing platform. This results in less accurate reports, which makes it difficult to track how your efforts are paying off and optimize your marketing efforts over time.
4. Security Issues
WordPress uses an open-source structure for many aspects of the site which allows programmers to access the page’s source code to see how it works and edit it based on their needs. This, in fact, saves developers time as they can use the already written code, modify it and use it on their website rather than starting from scratch. But this structure makes your website vulnerable to security attacks as it makes easier for hackers to find security holes in your code.
5. WordPress updates are difficult to keep up with
WordPress often rolls out many updates to avoid security issues and to keep your information safe. These updates are really helpful, but at times they do become a headache for many users. Updating the system may sometimes cause certain plugins or even your theme to become incompatible with the updated WordPress version.
6. Page speed: One another common issue with WordPress websites is the slow page load times mainly because of excess plugins or generic code that doesn’t contribute to the website functionality. There are a few workarounds for the speed issues like certain plugins to improve the website performance and enabling/disabling certain setting options. Solving the performance issues and fixing bugs in WordPress can again take some time of yours that could very well be used to improve your site.
7. No built-in backup system: WordPress does not provide any data back up feature. So it becomes your responsibility to ensure to back up your data regularly either manually or use some plugins to back up automatically. This is a reason to be concerned about while using WordPress as even the plugins for automatic backup requires a bit of configuration and storage limits may always be a concern too.
Thus, with all the above issues that you might encounter while building your website, especially if you are new to creating websites, it might take longer than you think to get things right with WordPress. No arguments on the end result if you get hang of WordPress and you ‘ll simply love it too. The possibilities with WordPress are endless and I doubt if any other alternative can beat it in flexibility. But if you are looking for something which is more intuitive and simpler you have many other alternatives.
Here, we bring to you some of the best WordPress alternatives in 2019, which provides similar features as of WordPress, but are more specific and easier to use. These WordPress alternatives are different and have their own pros and cons. So, be sure you understand the differences and limitations while choosing any alternative.
Best WordPress Alternatives in 2019
1. WIX
No doubt, WordPress offers a wide range of options to build your website, but the sad fact is customizing the designs or themes to suit our needs meant a lot of tedious work and in fact, incorporating custom code which requires you to have some amount of technical expertise. But building a website with WIX is quite different- no custom codes or no installation of plugins for features. You can do everything just with the click of a mouse or drag and drop whatever elements you need for your website. The designs turn out to be really good- be it a business website, a portfolio or anything. You can have video backgrounds and animations. Wix takes care of SEO as well.
Pros
It comes with many beautiful templates for all plans including the free plan.
Easy to use for users of all levels. The drag and drop make it super easy to create stunning websites in a few hours.
You can purchase domains as well from this platform.
There are many business-focused apps (newsletter tool, live chat software, online booking widgets, etc) that you can integrate into your Wix website.
Wix automatically creates back up points of your website that could be restored at any time.
Wix comes with ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence) where it uses the information you provide to automatically create designs for you saving your time.
Cons
Editing tools might look a little inflexible as many options are preset.
Once you have chosen your template, you cant switch to another one.
Pricing is a bit more compared to other competitors.
Pricing
Pricing model: Free, Subscription
Free Trial: Available (No Credit Card required)
Plans
Free
Connect Domain: $5/month
Combo: $13/month
Unlimited:$17/month
Business and eCommerce: $23/month
2. Weebly
Weebly is a popular freemium web design, web hosting, and online store creation software which has very simple to use user interface. It allows you to have direct control of your website design with a powerful drag and drop interface. You can select whatever elements you want and place it as needed. You can customize the Weebly website with HTML/CSS code too. Weebly platform is much simpler to many competitors and offers a friendly experience to users without any coding or web design experience as well.
With more than 70 templates, it offers you a wide range of options to build a website that suits your needs. An interesting feature from Weebly that other CMS platforms do not offer is the ability to change templates without having to upload the content again. That is one thing I love about Weebly. Weebly also offers many other features like domain name, SEO capacity, monetization, visitor statistics, etc based on the plan you choose.
Pros
Easy to use.
It has many modern templates that are simple, stylish and mobile responsive.
Price is not that bad for the features provided.
Cons
No backup option.
No Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI).
The editing platform of Weebly is slow. it is quite slow when performing tasks that demand resources such as dragging and dropping multimedia elements.
SEO capabilities are limited and are not very easy to program.
Pricing
Starting from: $4.00/month
Pricing model: Free, Subscription
Free Trial: Available (No Credit Card required)
Plans
Free: $0/month
Starter: $4/month
Pro: $8/month
Business: $25/month
3. Squarespace
Squarespace is an all in one platform to build beautiful websites, online stores or portfolios. You can customize designs to fit your personal needs. It has powerful tools like SEO tools and analytics tools to help you out.
Squarespace may not be as intuitive as platforms like Wix or Weebly. Their website builder platform might look old fashioned making it less user-friendly and even frustrating at times. But wait, don’t just come to the conclusion of choosing it just for this reason. When it comes to design and customization it beats many of its competitors in this list. Unlike the other platforms, Squarespace allows users to change elements of their website’s code directly from the website builder. Isn’t that a great thing? Sure, it opens up a whole new level of website designing to users which is not available on most of the other platforms.
Pros
Beautiful designs and templates.
Squarespace has excellent customer support which is consistently prompt in response time, friendly and helpful.
No plugins are necessary as it has many features inbuilt like SEO and many others.
Very flexible.
Cons
The website editor’s usability is not that great, it feels like a number of clicks needed to perform even simple editing tasks and no autosave of work after each change.
The eCommerce platform has minimal features compared to competitors.
SEO features not as robust as with WordPress(with plugins).
Squarespace templates score low ratings by Google’s page speed tool.
Pricing
Starting from: $12.00/month
Pricing model: Subscription
Free Trial: Available (No Credit Card required)
Plans
Websites:
Personal: $12/month (billed annually) or $16/month (billed monthly).
Business: $18/month (billed annually) or $26/month (billed monthly).
Online Stores:
Commerce Basic: $26/month (billed annually) or $30/month (billed monthly).
Commerce Advanced: $40/month (billed annually) or $46/month (billed monthly).
4. Site123
Site 123 is another wonderful tool to create a website easily with readymade styles and layouts. You can come up with search engine optimized websites that are fully adapted to all kinds of devices and screen resolutions.
Site 123 is ideal for both beginners who can create a website with just clicks and drag and drop as well as experts who appreciate little more customization than just playing with the elements.
Site 123 has a huge collection of templates to choose from spanning themes for different business types like portfolio sites or restaurants to fully-fledged online stores. You can use it for free for simple websites or upgrade to paid plans for more functionality, hosting space, bandwidth and custom domain.
Pros
Very easy to use with many pre-designed templates that adapt to different most of the small businesses’ needs.
Websites are responsive and compatible across devices.
It has basic SEO options built-in and allows you to customize the language and regional settings.
Cons
The customization options are way limited that many other platforms of the same type as it does not offer much creative freedom and flexibility.
It does not have templates for educational websites.
You cannot change templates once you select a template and it goes live.
Pricing
Free Plan:$0.00/mo. This plan comes with unlimited storage and bandwidth; online Store is included in the free plan; 3 maximum products; 24/7 chat and email support.
Starter Plan: Starting from $8 with unlimited storage capacity, advanced analytics option, a free domain for 1 year if purchasing 1 or 2-year plan,10 maximum products, and customers have the option of phone support along with 24/7 chat and email support.
Business Plus Plan: Starting from $16/mo may avail all the features in the starter plan along with unlimited maximum product option, no transaction fee, advanced shipping management integration feature and additional priority customer support.
5. Shopify
Shopify is the alternative for the WooCommerce in WordPress. It is one of the easiest shop builders out there. It offers stunning, responsive templates that will surely make your store look attractive to the customers. You can create product variants, manage your products, manage taxes and shipping effectively quite easily with Shopify.
With an intuitive drag and drop features, setting up a full-fledged eComm store is a matter of a few hours. Shopify also allows integration with WordPress, allowing you to use both together and enjoy the benefits of both great tools.
Pros
It is an all in one solution for eCommerce sites with full inventory management, unlimited products, powerful statistics, and easy marketing solutions.
Hundreds of designs to choose from.
Offers integrated payment solution called Shopify Payments as well as third party payment gateways to accept payments.
Cons
Beginners might find Shopify pricing to be a bit expensive compared to other platforms.
Migrating your website from Shopify to other platforms later might be challenging.
Working with multiple currencies is not straightforward.
If you are not using the Shopify payments as your default payment processor, Shopify will charge a transaction fee (0.5% - 2%) for each sale that you process.
Pricing
Starting from: $29.00/month
Pricing model: Subscription
Free Trial: Available (No Credit Card required)
Plans
BASIC SHOPIFY: $29 per month
SHOPIFY: $79 per month
ADVANCED SHOPIFY: $299 per month
6. GoDaddy
GoDaddy is, in fact, an internet domain registrar and website hosting company. But it also offers website building, SSL security, professional email, etc. GoDaddy’s GoCentral website builder allows users to create websites through an easy to use codeless interface using different components. Any type of website- ranging from simple blogs to eCommerce stores can be build using the GoCentral website builder.
It offers additional features like creating a business Facebook page automatically from Website content and managing email marketing through the GoCentral dashboard, with automatic emails matching the website design.
Pros
Straightforward and easy to use website builder for non-techie users.
A number of themes available which are smartphone-optimized.
Excellent customer support.
Cons
Though you can arrange elements as you wish, you don’t get a huge choice of layouts.
The blog is too basic.
Sometimes moving elements or sections around in the editor can be difficult.
Pricing
Starting from: $5.99/month
Pricing model: Subscription
Free Trial: Available (No Credit Card required)
Plans
Personal: $5.99/month or $71.88/year.
Business: $9.99/month or $119.88/year.
Business Plus: $14.99/month or $179.88/year.
Online Store: $19.99/month or $239.88/year.
7. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is an all in one eCommerce platform for building your online business. You can build an online store from scratch or migrate from an existing platform to BigCommerce with an easy to use store builder interface. It offers stunning and responsive templates to covet your customer’s interest. BigCommerce is loaded with features and integrations that help you manage your entire business without any hassle and allow for advanced customizations through the simple interface.
Pros
Easy to use with loads of great functionalities.
Reliable and consistent website speed.
Good pricing for the features provided.
Strong SEO features.
No transaction fees even if you use third-party gateways.
A good set of reporting tools.
Cons
BigCommerce email hosting is not that great. Even BigCommerce recommends using email elsewhere.
Editing some of the templates may be tricky for non-developers.
Limits are placed on annual online sales based on the plans. You need to upgrade to expensive plans if you cross the limits.
Pricing
Starting from: $29.95/month
Pricing model: Subscription
Free Trial: Available (No Credit Card required)
Plans
Standard: $29.95
Plus: $79.95/month
Pro: $249.95/month
Enterprise: Pricing varies depending on your business needs. Contact BigCommerce for pricing information.
8. B12
I know this name sounds a bit weird! The B12 we are discussing here is not a vitamin. B12 also happens to be an AI-powered website builder. Isn’t that interesting? Yeah, B12 offers its customers websites built by AI in just a couple of minutes and they promise agency-quality websites as the end result. B12 calls it the DIFY (Do It For You)- DIY(Do It Yourself) approach.
The approach goes like this- the clients first answer a few questions and the AI technology generates a prototype website in 60 seconds. Then the B12 expert designers transform the prototype to a fully functional website incorporating the client feedback as well in less than a week. Not just that, it further delivers personal recommendations to users each month to ensure the websites remain up to date and ways to improve your website with the latest trends.
So, B12 utilizes AI to automate and process the data, and human designers who think creatively and can deal with ambiguity to come up with tailored websites for clients. The businesses can then use the design suite to modify their websites (DIY- Do It Yourself editing), with tools including drag and drop editor, pre-built themes, content editor, link embedding, and many more. It has a design suite that allows users to edit colors, themes, layouts, images, videos, text, etc to customize your website the way you want.
Pros
Easy to use and good design quality.
Excellent support whenever required.
The monthly critiques are great reminders to keep the website updated.
Huge collection in the gallery that could be used on your websites.
Cons
Limits links to certain social media platforms.
Though everything is straight forward, some of the fields are a bit cumbersome to use.
Hidden costs may pop up when trying to add something new.
Pricing
Get Started Fee: For businesses looking to launch on their own.
Get Online: $29/month with custom domain, unlimited traffic and bandwidth, secure hosting, unlimited file storage, priority design customization, 2 hours of free design time from B12 Design Experts, monthly website recommendations, and chat & priority email support.
Get Integrated: $59/month. Includes all the features of Get Online plus phone support and third-party integrations.
Get Found: $99/month Includes all the features of Get Integrated plus search engine optimization tools (SEO).
Get Found Pro: $249/month Includes all the features of Get Found plus a monthly blog post (for SEO) and monthly social media posts.
9. WebFlow
WebFlow is another great website builder for designing a professional, responsive website without any coding. It allows you to design your website from scratch or go ahead with any of their gorgeous templates. WebFlow has some of the most modern templates.
The WebFlow editor is just apt and to the point for designing websites. It is neither too simplistic with all limitations nor too complicated with all unnecessary flexibility making things messier. The editor is easy to use, clear and powerful. WebFlow also offers powerful and fast hosting and you need not worry about site speed or security.
Pros
Amazingly easy to use as well as a flexible tool for designers.
It offers great levels of design customization.
Excellent range of templates to choose from.
Cons
No live chat or phone support.
Relatively difficult to use compared to platforms like Wix or GoDaddy.
The eCommerce part is not that great and still needs some improvement.
Hosting options are kind of confusing.
Expensive plans compared to other platforms.
Pricing
Starting from: $16.00/month
Pricing model: Free, Subscription
Webflow's paid plans start at $16/mo for everything you need, including an optional custom domain name.
Subscription packages include Personal, Professional and Team levels, all billed annually.
Enterprise plans are available on enquiry.
Wrap Up
To wind up, if you are looking for intuitive options to build a website, all the above WordPress websites are worth considering depending on your needs. or you can use our free tool to find a CMS for your organization, these could save a lot of time and energy you spend on creating a website using WordPress. Leave a comment if you know of or have been using any other great WordPress alternative!
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