Website platforms are the perfect partners for individuals and small business owners when it comes to creating a website. With website platforms like WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace eliminate the need for developers and cut the costs of website development in half! The hardest part about website platforms is choosing the best one for your needs. So, we want to share our thoughts on some of the most popular website platforms out there:
WordPress
The first website builder that comes to mind when thinking of affordable website platforms is WordPress. This is an open source site builder, allowing you to enjoy maximum control over your website. With WordPress you can create landing pages, membership sites, ecommerce sites, etc. With numerous themes from WordPress, and easy to create drag and drop page layouts, this site builder lets you play around with your web design with ease. With over 50,000 plugins, and plethora of additional features, WordPress is typically the most popular choice. You can also try this in dozens of other languages.
However, the learning curve for WordPress is a bit steep. Although it is a drag and drop platform and has plugins for just about anything you can think of, it isn’t very straightforward to use. Additionally, the plugins are not always reliable so things on your site may break without you knowing.
Wix
This is an extremely easy to use website builder. Wix offers free hosting for your site as long as you don’t mind having wix.com as the main part of your URL. Meaning your site would be yourbusinessnamehere.wix.com or wix.com/yourbusinessname. Wix offers hundreds of website templates. Like WordPress, Wix is a drag and drop site builder, and you can keep adding functionality and features with the paid and free apps that Wix has available. If you want your own custom domain, you will need to pay for your Wix site.
Our only complaints about Wix are that it is inconsistent with it’s performance on mobile devices, which is becoming more and more important! Additionally, if you are taking advantage of a free Wix site it will have ads on it which you cannot remove without upgrading.
SquareSpace
Squarespace is a fully hosted site builder. Like WordPress and Wix, this site builder is also known for being quite easy to use, and offers a plethora of templates. While WordPress offers more templates, widgets, and third party integrations, Squarespace consistently out performs when it comes to mobile and tablet-friendly sites. When you make changes to your template they are also reflected on your mobile and table sites without any additional effort on your end. You can also create an ecommerce store too with this site builder, and can even manage inventory, and sales.
However, if you want to integrate the site to a third party, SquareSpace has limited capability without the ability to code. They do, however offer access to Squarespace specialists who can be of help for an affordable price.
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