Insights, Web Development
The 12 Best WordPress Alternatives We’ve Tried and Tested
WordPress alternatives for websites, online portfolios, blogging, and eCommerce
WordPress has always been a popular open-source CMS solution due to its amazing flexibility, limitless customization options, thousands of themes and plugins, and ability to help blogs and business owners rank higher in search engines. In the right hands, WordPress is an incredibly powerful platform, but some users may seek out alternatives simply because they are not familiar with its full capabilities. That’s where we come in – as WordPress experts, we have used the platform for countless versatile projects, ranging from small websites to data-heavy and complex eCommerce stores. However, managing updates, security, backups, and maintenance can be time-consuming, which is why we have extensively tried and tested various WordPress alternatives. We have hand-picked 12 of the best WordPress alternatives on the market and categorized them based on your specific needs, so you can make an informed decision and find the perfect CMS for your website.
Title: Article Overview
- CMS Solutions for Custom Websites
- Open-Source CMS Solutions
- WordPress Alternatives for eCommerce
- WordPress Alternatives for Blogging
FAQ About WordPress and Content Management
CMS Solutions for Custom Websites
We understand that finding the right CMS platform for your website can be a daunting task. That’s why we’ve done the hard work for you and thoroughly tested a variety of options. In this section, we’ll focus on the most versatile platforms that are suitable for any web project, regardless of size or complexity. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced user, we’ve hand-picked the best WordPress alternatives that offer customizable solutions to meet your specific needs. Although these are all paid options, most of them offer a free plan that includes essential tools. For those looking for open-source CMS platforms, please refer to the next section.
1. HubSpot CMS Hub
- Type: CMS
- Best for: Complex custom websites
HubSpot is a system of services with tools and integrations for marketing, sales, content management, and customer service. Each product in the platform is powerful alone. In this section, when we talk about HubSpot, we refer to HubSpot’s CMS solution: CMS Hub.
CMS Hub is an all-in-one SaaS product that combines website creation with CRM, providing a powerful marketing solution for content creators, marketers, and eCommerce businesses alike. With its user-friendly interface and comprehensive features, CMS Hub offers amazing options for creating landing pages, websites, blogs, and even emails.
Features:
- It’s an AIO online marketing solution, that aims to help users create websites, a great user experience, optimized content, and gain insight.
- CRM serves to replace databases, spreadsheets, and other apps meant to manage client data by consolidating all communications, documents, purchases, quotes, and tasks associated with each client.
- The platform uses a language developed by HubSpot, HubL, which is an extension of the templating engine Jinjava.
- CMS Hub comes with powerful built-in SEO tools integrated with all content tools.
- SEO recommendation tool that helps you with suggestions on how to optimize your website for SEO, ranked in priority order.
- Other SEO tools: content strategy tools; performance reports; code alerts; high speed; SEO assistant.
- CMS tools: Smart Content (targeted content to specific groups); synched staging environment; building blocks.
- A/B testing: the ability to test two versions of a page with the same URL, so you can receive data on which one performs better with your visitors.
- Powerful search API to customize the search experience of your website.
- eCommerce integrations for Shopify, WooCommerce, and other options.
Pricing:
CMS Hub has a free plan, two premium plans (Starter $23 per month and Professional $360 per month), as well as an Enterprise plan for $1200 per month.
✔️ Pros:
- Smart content targeting specific groups of people amongst your audience.
- Drag-and-drop functionality
- CMS Hub is the first in the rankings in terms of speed
- SEO Coaching
- Powerful analytics
- User-friendly
- Built for marketers
❌ Cons:
- The platform uses HubL, meaning developers need to learn a new templating language.
- HubSpot uses Google search instead of a built-in search function.
- The platform utilizes its own database which means you can’t pull information from a database into your website
- Not open-source
- No FTP access
If you’re still unsure whether HubSpot CMS is the right choice for you, we recommend checking out our full HubSpot CMS vs WordPress comparison review. This will give you a better understanding of the unique features and benefits of each platform, helping you make an informed decision about which CMS is best suited for your website.
Considering HubSpot CMS for your next project? You’ll be pleased to know that we also offer expert-level HubSpot CMS development services. Our team of experienced developers has a deep understanding of the platform and can help you create a customized website that stands out and provides a seamless user experience for your users.
2. Wix vs WordPress
- Type: Website Builder
- Best for: Simple custom websites and smaller projects
Wix is a user-friendly, hosted all-in-one website builder that has become increasingly popular due to its stunning customizable templates and its ability to create websites without writing a single line of code. In fact, it’s one of the easiest platforms we’ve ever worked with, making it a great choice for beginners who want to create a professional-looking website quickly and easily.
Features:
- Drag-and-drop functionality
- Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence): To make things easier for beginners or users who want a website up and running as quickly as possible, Wix offers integrated ADI software. All you need to do is answer a few questions and the tool will design a website for you.
- Customizable templates: Similar to WordPress, Wix also offers a collection of customizable templates. You can resize, recolor, rotate and edit every single design element and even create custom animations.
- App integrations: The Wix App Market has over 250 extensions for users to improve their website functionality.
- eCommerce functionality: Wix offers eCommerce plans for anyone who wants to create an online store. These plans include abandoned cart recovery, secure online payments, and other essential eCommerce functionalities.
Pricing:
Wix offers a free plan that gives users 100s of templates, and unlimited pages, however, the free plan also includes a bunch of limitations such as a Wix subdomain name, ads, no free tracking, analytics, etc. The premium packages come in two categories: website plans and business plans.
Premium website plans include: Connect domain to a free plan for $6 per month; Combo for $11 per month; Unlimited for $18 per month; and VIP for $30 per month. Business plans offer Business Basic for $21 per month; Business Unlimited for $31 per month; and Business VIP for $45 per month.
✔️ Pros:
- Free web hosting
- Great for beginners (no coding skills required)
- More than 800 customizable templates
- Essential eCommerce tools for small online stores
- Built-in SEO tools
❌ Cons:
- The free plan includes a Wix subdomain, as well as Wix ads.
- You can’t change the template of your website once it’s live.
- No live chat customer support
3. Craft CMS vs WordPress
- Type: CMS
- Best for: Any kind of custom website or an app
Craft CMS has become a popular alternative to WordPress, despite being relatively young in comparison. In fact, it has established itself as one of the top 10 headless platforms by market share, and for good reason. We’ve fallen in love with Craft CMS for its ability to handle custom complex designs and provide maximum performance at the same time. As a PHP-based platform, Craft offers complete customization and control, with no limitations other than your coding skills.
Craft is a versatile CMS that can help you build any type of website you want, with a wide range of free and premium plugins at your disposal. Its selection of eCommerce tools is particularly impressive, allowing you to create and manage an online store with ease. Additionally, Craft offers advanced SEO services, as well as controls and features that help you optimize your website’s performance. Whether you’re building a small blog or a complex enterprise-level website, Craft CMS has everything you need to create a customized solution that meets your specific needs.
Features:
- Customizable dashboard: the ability to compose the admin by enabling only the features you want to use: entry types, global options, Feed (RSS), Quick Posts, Recent Entries, Updates, Craft Support, etc.
- Matrix block architecture: You can create reusable blocks of fields to construct complex page layouts.
- Sites and location: You can host multiple websites in different domains, with a different set of templates, and different versions of entry content, all in a single Craft installation.
- Live preview for different screens: The ability to switch from a full-screen preview to phone and tablet-sized viewports while editing your content live.
- Accessibility: WCAG 2.1 AA compliance
- Headless mode: You can use the Headless Mode along with GraphQL to easily query data from the database. Custom API approaches are also possible if you’re using Craft CMS modules.
- SEOmatic: Advanced SEO plugin available for both Craft 3 and Craft 4.
- Craft Commerce: Advanced eCommerce plugin for Craft that gives you the ability to create multiple stores under one control panel and also has multiple language or regional options.
Pricing:
When you’re building a website for yourself or a friend or you just wish to get crafty and test your skills, Craft CMS has a Free Forever Plan for you. This plan includes ultra-flexible content modeling; powerful front-end tools; multi-site; localization and an admin account. However, when you want to go headless or build more complex websites, opt for the Pro Plan for professional projects costs $299 per project. It includes unlimited user accounts; enhanced content previewing; GraphQL API; system branding and developer support. Craft also offers a custom Enterprise plan.
✔️ Pros:
- Huge flexibility
- Content-centered approach
- Powerful built-in features and tools to the point you might not even need to install plugins.
- Built with developers in mind
- WCAG 2.1 AA compliance (view report)
- Great website performance and fast load times
- Well-documented
❌ Cons:
- Not suitable for beginners
- Pricy
- The free plan only gives you a single admin account.
- No themes
- Small and expensive developer community.
Deciding between WordPress and Craft is not easy. This is why we made a full WordPress vs Craft CMS review to compare the two solutions based on many different factors to help you decide.
It’s worth noting that Craft CMS is not only a great option for websites and eCommerce, but it also works exceptionally well for web apps. As an experienced development team, we offer custom Craft CMS development services for websites, eCommerce, and headless CMS projects. So, if you’re considering Craft CMS for your next project, don’t hesitate to contact us to learn more about how we can help you create a powerful and flexible solution.
4. Webflow vs WordPress
- Type: Website builder
- Best for: Any kind of custom website
Webflow is an online SaaS platform that allows anyone to create their own website, without having to write a single line of code. It has all its customization capabilities in-built into the tool. As an AIO platform, it hands you all the tools you need to build a complex professional website. Unlike WordPress, you can’t install plugins into Webflow, however, you can still expand your website’s functionality by integrating third-party tools.
Regarding code standards, each component in Webflow is focused on generating clean code, thanks to everything being built in and being built by Webflow’s team. In contrast, WordPress relies on plugins, and depending on who codes or updates them, or how compatible they are with your theme, they can result in messy code.
Features:
- Drag-and-drop visual editor
- You can work with Webflow CMS data directly
- eCommerce functionalities: built-in shopping cart, product catalogs, payment processing, order tracking, and other essentials
- Code editor: You can add your own code
- Reusable CSS classes.
- Global color swatches: You can define and update color swatches globally.
- Advanced font adjustment: You can use any font you like and customize it even further by adjusting the tracking and line height.
- Marketing tools integration.
- Zapier integrations: This allows you to integrate your web applications and automate your workflow. This means you can integrate with over 750 apps without the need to use any code.
Pricing:
Webflow offers a Free plan with 50 CMS items and 50 for submissions, which is ideal for learning the ropes. The Premium plans include Basic for $14 per month; CMS for $23 per month; Business for $39 per month; and a custom Enterprise plan.
✔️ Pros:
- Powerful visual editor.
- Essential design tools.
- Direct Customer Support: Webflow offers a fast email support service for subscribers.
- Performance optimization without you having to lift your finger.
- Clean, organized code.
- The ability to export and download code.
❌ Cons:
- Less flexible blog content editor.
- No plugin library. If you want additional functions, you need to rely on integrating code snippets.
- Doesn’t integrate with many third-party tools.
- More expensive.
If you’re currently weighing up the pros and cons of Webflow vs WordPress for your website, be sure to check out our comprehensive review. We tested and compared the two platforms based on key features, CMS tools, design tools, ease of use, extensions, integrations, eCommerce functionality, and pricing. This review will provide you with the information you need to make an informed decision about which CMS platform is right for your needs.
5. Squarespace vs WordPress
- Type: Website builder
- Best for: Portfolios, Podcasts, smaller eCommerce projects, and donation websites
WordPress and Squarespace are two popular platforms for building custom, fully-functional websites, and we have extensive experience working with both. While WordPress is known for its versatility and ability to handle complex websites and web applications, Squarespace is a beginner-friendly, all-in-one solution that is perfect for artist portfolios, bloggers, and small businesses. You can take a look at 30 excellent Squarespace websites in the wild that showcase what the platform can do.
We’ve found Squarespace to be an ideal solution for those looking to quickly build an online presence, especially those with no coding experience. The platform offers transparent pricing, so you’ll know exactly what your project will cost upfront.
Features:
- Visual Editing: WYSIWYG editor. You can modify your content without using HTML and see exactly what visitors will be seeing once your site is live.
- Menu Content Block: Restaurant menus are one of the most challenging formats to style. Here, however, you have a ready-to-go formatted menu with a handful of customization options.
- Podcast Syndication: you can create and manage podcasts and actually syndicate them, thanks to the built-in RSS feed that lets you publish directly to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other subscription services.
- Donation System: Squarespace gives you the option to add a Donation Block. The feature appears as a Donate button that redirects to a page where users can donate.
- Automatic sitemaps: Squarespace generates automatic sitemaps of the different pages on your website, making it easy for Google crawlers to understand how they’re related.
- SEO features: Customizable meta titles and descriptions; Customizable URLs; Image alt text
- Extensions: 113 templates to choose from in different categories such as gaming, magazine, education, restaurants, technology, eCommerce, and more.
Pricing:
There is no free plan, however, all plans offer a 14-day free trial to test and see if you and Squarespace are a match.
What’s great about Squarespace’s plans is that they’re really simple and transparent, allowing you to plan your expenses in advance. The plans include Personal Plan for $16 per month; Business Plan for $23 per month; Basic Commerce Plan for $27 per month; and an Advanced Commerce Plan for $49 per month.
✔️ Pros:
- Limited, top-quality templates. Most templates heavily rely on photography which makes them easier to customize.
- The platform has analytic tools built in.
- Hosted solution
- Intuitive admin panel navigation.
- WYSIWYG editor with drag&drop.
- Blogging feature with everything you could think of, from rich commenting capabilities to scheduling posts, AMP support and etc.
❌ Cons:
- Basic built-in functionalities.
- Creating multilingual websites can be challenging.
- Only one sub-navigation which makes it not suitable for bigger businesses with larger eCommerce websites.
- Squarespace templates score low ratings by Google’s Page Speed Tool.
- The platform doesn’t provide backup solutions. You can only export product and blog data.
- No free plan.
- There are no advanced marketing tools.
- No autosave.
For a more detailed comparison between the two solutions, you can check out this WordPress vs Squarespace review where we cover key features such as SEO tools, CMS tools, ease of use, extensions, integrations, eCommerce functionality, and pricing.
If this platform sounds like a better fit, we also offer custom Squarespace development services. So feel free to contact us and have a chat about your website, portfolio, or blog idea.
Open-Source CMS Solutions
In this section, we’ve compiled a list of open-source platforms that can be considered direct competitors and perfect alternatives to WordPress. These platforms offer the same flexibility and ability to customize your project by altering the code to fit your needs. Whether you’re looking to build a small blog or a complex web application, these platforms have got you covered. Best of all, because they are open-source, free to use, and can save you money in the long run.
6. Drupal vs WordPress
- Type: Open-source CMS
- Best for: Any type of website or app
Drupal is a highly popular and widely used platform among developers, and it’s considered one of the direct competitors and alternatives to WordPress. It’s often the preferred choice for building websites for government agencies, higher education institutions, and global corporations due to its scalability and robustness. With its wide selection of modules and themes, similar to WordPress plugins and themes, Drupal offers a highly flexible and customizable solution for building websites and web applications.
Features:
- Advanced Permissions: Drupal has a very flexible permissions system for management and control.
- Advanced security system: User Access Control; Database Encryption; Information sharing via security reports; Auto-update and core validation work in partnership with GitHub; Prevention of malicious data entry; Mitigation of Denial of Service (DoS) attacks; Patching of issues before they’re exploited
- Multilingual system: The ability to translate site components into various languages. Drupal also detects preferred language based on IP.
- Installation packages: Drupal offers various installation packs depending on specific websites and their needs.
- Marketing automation: The ability to integrate your website with marketing automation platforms for different tasks.
Pricing:
Free to download and use. You will only need to pay for a domain.
✔️ Pros:
- Reliable advanced security in an active state of safeguarding against attacks.
- 48K+ modules to extend the functionality of your website and over 2.9K customizable themes
- Advanced user access management.
- Built-in multilingual system.
- In-depth taxonomy system for handling content-heavy projects.
❌ Cons:
- A steep learning curve. Definitely not beginner-friendly.
- You can’t update your website from Drupal’s interface, so this will require a developer to do it manually.
7. Joomla vs WordPress
- Type: Open-source CMS
- Best for: Any type of website or app
Joomla is a self-hosted and open-source CMS that is widely used for a variety of projects, including business websites, networking websites, and blogs. It’s another popular direct competitor to WordPress and has a large community of developers creating extensions and templates, similar to WordPress plugins and themes. This community-driven approach ensures that Joomla stays up-to-date with the latest features and functionality, making it a reliable and flexible option for any project.
Features:
- You can use multiple templates on a single website.
- Built-in multilingual support and packages: The ability to create multilingual websites with over 70 language packs.
- Extensions: The Joomla Extensions Directory has over 8K extensions for users to choose from.
- Access Control List (ACL): The ability to manage user access, log monitor user’s actions, and monitor website activities by specific IP addresses.
- Built-in Security Features: Two-factor authentification, Google reCAPTCHA, and the ability to make your website GDRP compliant.
Pricing:
Free to use. You will only need to pay for a domain.
✔️ Pros:
- A beginner-friendly WYSIWYG editor
- Built-in user management tools
- Built-in SEO tools
- Great for advanced users
❌ Cons:
- No official template library. Users will need to rely on third-party sites that offer Joomla templates.
- No customer support.
- A steeper learning curve due to a more complex interface and setting using web development terminology that might be hard for beginners to understand.
WordPress Alternatives for eCommerce
WordPress is a highly adaptable platform that provides users with the foundation to build any type of website, including online stores. However, it doesn’t come with built-in eCommerce features, and users need to rely on third-party plugins. With numerous WordPress builds for eCommerce available, it can be challenging to choose the right one. Among the various plugins, WooCommerce is the most popular, offering versatile features and usability for users of all technical backgrounds. Even users with no coding experience can easily create their website, while advanced users have full access to both the front-end and back-end of the site.
When should you use WordPress for eCommerce?
- You already have WordPress experience: If you already have experience with WordPress, adding and working with Woocommerce will be a piece of cake. It uses the exact same admin panel organization, which eliminates an additional learning curve.
- You already have a WordPress website: In case you don’t want to invest in a new platform, which will minimize your costs.
- You want to experiment with the source code: Most platforms like Shopify, for example, don’t give you access to the source code, but WordPress does.
In any other case, if you’re looking for an alternative, Shopify, BigCommerce and Magento are always great options, so let’s unpack them in more detail.
8. Shopify vs WordPress WooCommerce
- Type: eCommerce website builder
- Best for: Any type of eCommerce project
Shopify is a powerful SaaS (Software as a Service) eCommerce platform that enables users to quickly set up and run a fully operational online store. It provides a comprehensive ecosystem that allows app developers, theme designers, agencies, and merchants to make money off the platform. Since we have a dedicated Shopify development team with extensive experience working with the platform, led by a Shopify expert it would be impossible not to mention Shopify as one of your greatest options for a successful online store.
Features:
- Focuses on the quick start: It takes 3 minutes to set up an online store on Shopify.
- Hosted solution: doesn’t require the trouble of buying web hosting or installing the software.
- SEO features: the ability to edit meta tags, and place products and descriptions in a very well-optimized and user-friendly way. You can add custom titles, descriptions, and metadata, add 301 redirects, and change page URLs.
- Online Store 2.0: The new heme format lets you use it to edit template layouts that are then applied to pages.
- Theme app extensions with app block: Developers can build UI components that can be added, removed, and configured directly through the theme editor without the need to touch the code.
- Files API: Enables apps to access the admin area Settings/Files to use the content for media meta fields.
- Shopify Github integration (including in combination with Git subtrees)
- Shopify App Store: over 2400 apps available, free and premium, ranging from $15 to $50 per month.
- Unlimited amount of products: You can sell an unlimited amount of physical and digital products no matter the plan you choose to subscribe to.
- Shopify Oberlo: search and add products you want to sell, directly to your website by connecting the online store with the right suppliers.
- The Shopify POS system:fully-integrated POS system, built specifically for retail. It can work as a stand-alone product, or in synch with the platform by taking the back-end role.
- Other eCommerce features: Abandoned cart recovery; Discount codes; Multi-channel integration; Built-in marketing, shipping, inventory, and analytical tools; Free SSL certificate; Ordoro, Inventory Source, and eCommHub integration; Integrates with PayPal and over 100 other external gateways; Automatic carrier shipping rates; and many more.
Pricing:
Shopify Lite $9 per month: Best for small businesses to sell on social media, in person, or on an existing website. Only one staff account.
- Basic Plan $24 per month: Best for new eCommerce businesses with occasional in-person sales.
- Shopify Plan $69 per month: Best for growing business selling online or in-store.
- Advanced Plan $299 per month: Best for scaling businesses that require advanced reporting.
- Shopify Plus $2K per month: Enterprise-grade solutions for high-volume merchants, and large businesses that need a more powerful service and extra support. This plan makes sense for businesses usually after they reach $1-2 million in annual revenue.
You should also consider credit card fees and transactional fees (0.5% – 2% per transaction). On the bright side, they decrease with the higher tiers.
✔️ Pros:
- It was built specifically for eCommerce and comes with all the sales tools you need.
- Takes care of the hosting, security, and maintenance.
- PCI Compliance Level 1 security
- All plans offer unlimited storage and an unlimited number of products.
- Shopify payments for your credit card are compatible with PayPal and over 100 other payment gateways.
- Fully integrated POS system built specifically for retail.
- Pre-installed platform Oberlo allows you to search and add products you want to sell, directly to your website.
- Fast loading speed
❌ Cons:
- You have to pay extra transaction fees (about 0.5% – 2% per transaction) unless you use Shopify’s own payment gateway.
- You have to reformat your entire content if you decide to change your theme.
- Shopify doesn’t have revision history functionality, in comparison to WordPress. As a workaround, you might need to purchase a backup tool from the Shopify App Store in order to save and access older revisions.
- Key functionalities that you could expect to be already built in often require the installation of an app.
- You can create up to 100 variants for a product, however, each product can have up to 3 options. (unless you purchase an app)
When it comes to eCommerce platforms, although the choices are unlimited, you will always end up with Shopify and WordPress on the list of selections. You can check our Shopify vs WordPress review to help you decide which platform is right for your eCommerce project based on key features, SEO tools, CMS tools, extensions, eCommerce functionality, ease of use, and pricing.
Our team of Shopify experts has extensive experience in custom Shopify development and would love to help you kickstart your next eCommerce project. Whether you’re looking to create a new online store or need help with an existing one, let’s discuss your project today!
9. BigCommerce vs WordPress WooCommerce
- Type: eCommerce Website builder
- Best for: Complex eCommerce projects
BigCommerce is a straightforward CMS with a modern visual dashboard and intuitive editor. You don’t need to install software or search for a hosting solution. BigCommerce is a very powerful tool with a huge number of built-in features.
Features:
- Payment gateways: BigCommerce has listed over 60 e PCI-compliant and mobile-optimized payment gateways that businesses can choose from to accept payments.
- Email marketing: the ability to sync your company’s data with popular email marketing platforms such as MailChimp.
- SEO tools: customizable URLs; full control over 301 redirects, ensuring that you can seamlessly move between pages and products with ease
- Built-in sales features: ratings and Reviews; Real-time shipping quotes from third-party carriers; Unlimited staff accounts and other tools that usually take installing multiple apps.
- Native eCommerce Features: Single Page Checkout; Coupons and Gift Cards; Product videos; Bulk pricing; Ratings and reviews; Customer groups; Persistent cart; B2B edition; Abandoned cart feature; Multi-currency/ automatic currency conversion based on IP; POS; Dropshipping, and many more.
- Unlimited File Storage and Products
Pricing:
There’s a 15-day free trial, and then you should select a plan. BigCommerce plans include Standard for $29 per month; Plus for $79 per month; Pro for $299.95 per month; and a custom Enterprise plan.
✔️ Pros:
- The platform doesn’t charge transaction fees no matter the plan.
- It’s an all-in-one platform that includes hosting, multiple payment gateways, blogs, and more.
- 24/7 support through email, LiveChat, and phone.
- PCI Compliance Level 1 security
- Multiple sales channels like Amazon, eBay, and in-person sales through Square POS integration.
- Quick process to set up shipping options
- The fastest performing eCommerce platform due to its implementation of Google AMP.
- Easy store and product management.
❌ Cons:
- The sheer amount of options for even simple tasks can feel overwhelming to users.
- Plans come with annual sales limits, the platform will automatically upgrade your plan to a higher one had this limit been exceeded
- No built-in multi-lingual feature
- More complex to learn due to its terminology. This makes it not suitable for beginners.
- Free themes can be very similar while the premium ones can cost around $200.
- The page builder widgets don’t support custom typefaces.
- No shipping discounts are available on any plan.
- No smart product rules to automatically categorize your inventory.
- The built-in blog doesn’t facilitate RSS feeds.
If you still aren’t sure which platform is right for you, you can check out our detailed Shopify vs BigCommerce comparison review for a more detailed comparison of key features.
Whether you’re looking to build a new online store from scratch or migrate an existing store to BigCommerce, we’ve got you covered. Contact us to discuss how we can help you design and develop your next eCommerce project.
10. Adobe Commerce/ Magento Open Source vs WordPress
- Type: eCommerce website builder
- Best for: eCommerce projects
Adobe is known for creating some of the best editing tools for graphic designers, photographers, and illustrators, however, they’ve also built an eCommerce-focused CMS: Adobe Commerce. It offers two solutions: the free Magento Open Source and the more advanced premium Adobe Commerce.
Features (for both solutions):
- Visual editor: a WYSIWYG editor, ideal for beginners.
- Extensions: the App Marketplace offers free and premium themes and plugins
- eCommerce functionality: Built-in eCommerce features for shipping, payments, catalog management, and more.
- PWAs: Progressive web apps so you can offer your audience a mobile app-like experience on a desktop.
- AI-based customer segmentation: It can analyze customer behavior and provide users with a personalized experience, such as product recommendations.
- Support for more than 300 payment gateways.
Pricing:
The main difference between Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce is that Magento is distributed for free. Adobe Commerce, on the other hand, is a premium service. The price for Adobe Commerce is based on a business’s average gross sales revenue. It may cost anything from $22,000 per year to $100,000 per year depending on the specific features or if your business has an extremely large amount of sales.
✔️ Pros:
- Magento Open source is highly flexible and customizable for developers and everyone who wishes to write some code.
- Both solutions are scalable, flexible, and suitable for larger businesses.
- Staging environment, allowing you t safely update your website without losing precious content.
- Headless solution: Adobe Commerce has a decoupled architecture, providing all commerce services and data through a GraphQL API layer.
❌ Cons:
- Not suitable for beginners, except for the editor.
- Customer support is only available for Adobe Commerce users via a ticket system.
- No built-in features for blogging.
WordPress Alternatives for Blogging
One of the strongest aspects of WordPress is its blogging and SEO capabilities. Originally created to be a blogging platform, WordPress hardly gets any competition in that department. However, if you’re looking for alternatives, there are some great options on the market.
11. Blogger vs WordPress
- Type: Website builder
- Best for: Blogs
Blogger by Google is a free CMS solution for simple blogging that integrates with Google apps and services. It’s ideal for personal blogs that don’t require much customization outside of some basic HTML and CSS tweaking.
Features:
- Easy to set up and use: All you need is your google account to start building a blog on blogger.
- Free hosting: When you create a personal blog with Bogger you will get free hosting, as well as a free Blogpost subdomain.
- Google integration: Integrates seamlessly with Google services such as Google Adwords, Google Analytics, and Google Photos.
- Templates: You can start creating your personal blog by choosing a template and start making some basic customizations by tweaking the HTML/CSS or using the visual editor directly.
- Spam filter for comments: Blogger has an integrated automatic spam filter that keeps your comment section spam-free.
Pricing:
Free to use.
✔️ Pros:
- Free hosting and SSL certificate.
- Ideal for blogging, it’s easy to use and has no unnecessary features.
- WYSIWYG editor.
- Themes and gadgets to tweak your blog.
- Managed by Google, which means constant updates and reliable security.
❌ Cons:
- Minimal customization options
- Uses a Blogpost subdomain by default
Verdict: Blogger is a great option for users with little to no technical knowledge who want to create a simple blog, completely for free. Thanks to the tool’s integration with Google Adwords, and Google Analytics, you can use it to write content professionally and climb the ranks. However, since Blogger offers minimum customization options, we don’t recommend it for businesses who wish to build a brand or aim to create a custom website. In comparison, WordPress is a full CMS that allows users to create powerful, fully-customizable websites of all types.
12. Ghost vs WordPress
- Type: CMS
- Best for: Blogging and SEO
Moving to a more complex solution for content creators, Ghost is CMS and a publishing platform with built-in tools for creating membership websites. It’s built in NodeJS which means faster load time. You can choose between the self-hosted solution and the fully-managed PaaS (Platform as a Service) Ghost Pro solution. Whatever you choose, you can start building websites that offer paid subscriptions.
Features:
- Memberships and subscriptions: You can manage members and subscribers with a native signup system, as well as other tools such as email newsletters, and engagement analytics.
- Full-screen editor without distractions
- Content organization: You can categorize your content privately with hashtags and structure it using dynamic routing.
- Permissions: Just like in WordPress, you can give different roles and permissions to team members.
Pricing:
Ghost CMS provides 14 days free trial plan for beginners, however, it doesn’t offer a free plan. Once you test the platform, you can opt for any of the following premium plans.
The Starter Plan goes for $9 per month 1 staff user; free and official Ghost themes; standard built-in integrations. Moving on to the Creator Plan $25 per month, it includes 2 staff users, unlimited custom themes, 1K + Zapier integrations, and the ability to build custom integrations.
The Team Plan $50 per month includes everything from Creator plus 5 staff users, priority support, and higher usage limits; while the Business Plan $199 per month, adds unlimited staff users, advanced domain configs, and 99.9% uptime SLA.
✔️ Pros:
- There is no payment fee for premium content sales.
- Integration for social sharing, payment gateways, referral programs, and other tools.
- Advanced analytics tools.
- Faster load times.
- The ability to import and export members from/to external platforms.
❌ Cons:
- No customer support for the self-hosted solution.
- A small collection of themes to choose from.
Still can’t decide?
You have a project in mind but you still aren’t sure which CMS will fit right? Schedule a meeting with our tech-savvy managers to discuss your project and we’ll find the best solution based on your specific needs and requirements.
FAQ about WordPress
👉 WordPress.com vs WordPress.org: What’s the Difference?
WordPress has two available versions: hosted WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress.org. You can find the core WordPress software package free to download at WordPress.org and use it for an unlimited number of projects. The software is self-hosted, meaning you will need to secure a domain name and hosting.WordPress.com, on the other hand, is a hosting platform that supports the core WordPress software. It comes in two variants: a free hosted solution and WordPress Pro.
The free plan comes with limitations such as WordPress.com subdomain (for example yourwebsite.wordpress.com), the displaying of ads, and you also won’t be allowed to monetize your content through advertisement. Naturally, the Pro version costs $15 per month removes these limitations, and gives you 50GB of storage space.
👉 CMS vs Website Builder: What’s the Difference?
CMS and website builders serve the same purpose, however, they are different in terms of customizable options, ease of use, and how users pay for them. Let’s unpack: Content management systems (CMSs) provide much greater flexibility and customization in the design process, as well as more control in the building process. This makes CMS a better solution for tech-savvy users and developers who wish to create fully custom websites with specific functionality. Usually, CMS solutions are free and self-hosted, meaning users will need to secure hosting, and a domain name and take care of updates and maintenance. Think of WordPress as a CMS solution that checks all of these boxes.
Website builders on the other hand, also have a CMS as a means for users to create and manage content, however, they usually have more limited customization options. Some website builders, however, do offer access to the source code, but it takes greater development skills to alter them. Website builders are a better option for beginners as they allow any user no matter the technical background to build and launch a website in minutes. Most website builders have hosted solutions, meaning the platform takes care of hosting, domain name, updates, and maintenance. However, users need to pay monthly subscriptions to be able to use it.
👉 Headless WordPress vs WordPress: What’s the Difference?
That’s it!
Although WordPress will always be among the most popular CMS choices, there are other modern and powerful solutions on the market that can handle your projects just as well. Depending on how complex your website will be, what specific functionalities it will have, and how further you wish to customize the design, each of these 12 WordPress alternatives has what it takes to get the job done.
In the meantime, you may also be interested in some of these related articles: