Businesses around the globe with an active presence in the online medium rely on websites.
This has created a tremendous demand for developing websites for a host of businesses.
To cater to this demand, web developers rely on two major tools; WordPress or website builders.
Among these two options, WordPress is used to create more than one-third of the websites that are active online.
It is an open-source content management system (CMS) that is available for free.
A website builder is also a comprehensive tool that is being used by web developers to create dynamic websites with top-end features.
As a business owner, you may wonder what is a big deal of whether you choose WordPress or website builder to build your website.
The answer to this question will become apparent to you as your business grows and more and more traffic is channeled through your website.
To give you a broadside view, we have compared the pros and cons of these two options.
This will help you to decide about which option would be best for your requirements.
Therefore, let’s dive in!
How WordPress and website builders stack up against one another?
Both WordPress and website builders are amazing tools for creating websites.
Each one has its advantages that we would like to elaborate on for your benefit.
After reading this article, you will be in a better position to make an informed decision regarding which one is best suited for your needs.
Time
There is not a fixed timeline to develop every website. In general, you can set up your website quickly with the help of a builder.
On the other side, if you go with WordPress, it requires more time to develop a website. However, there are a lot of factors that affect the time required to build a website. To know more, you can refer to this guide on how long does it take to build a website.
Tech-savvy
If you are a tech-savvy person and love to fiddle around with innumerable features and settings to find the best option for your requirement, then you should choose WordPress.
If your technical know-how regarding website development is not that great, then WordPress may feel a bit overwhelming.
The website builder allows even a layperson with very little technical expertise to build a website from the ground up and start it running quickly.
Maintenance
If you don’t want to spend a lot of your time maintaining the website that you have created, then we suggest you should choose the website builder.
On the other hand, if you are looking for numerous features and regular updates to ensure that your website has all the latest features, then you should choose WordPress.
Scale-up
Any website that is built through WordPress offers you an inbuilt mechanism to scale it up as your business grows.
If you are quite satisfied with a small website with limited pages, then a website builder is a great choice.
Content ownership
As WordPress is self-hosted, you have complete access to the website’s underlying code and database that gives you total control over your website.
On the other hand, in website builders, the data and codes of the sites are stored on the servers of the website builder, and you don’t have access to it.
Therefore, you don’t have complete control over your content.
Plugins and themes
WordPress is a very popular CMS with many extensions available in the marketplace.
Therefore, if you want to add any extra features to your website or change the UI, then you can do it very easily by using Plugins and themes.
The website builders do have their add-ons, but they are fewer and don’t have the variety that WordPress plug-in and themes provide.
Custom content and dynamic websites
If you want to customize your dynamic website by developing content including blogs, job listing sites, event directories, and many others, you can do it with complete ease.
You can also create dynamic contents that change regarding variation in data and user behavior.
Compared to WordPress, in the website builder, it is hard to customize dynamic content.
Cost
You will find WordPress more affordable to create websites compared to the website builder.
WordPress is free and if you pair it with affordable web hosting plans, then you can have a highly functional and dynamic website for your company.
Website builders have several plans and if you go for the cheapest one, then you face problems like limited storage and bandwidth among others.
SEO
WordPress gives you more options and flexibility to implement an effective SEO strategy.
On WordPress, you can set up automatic SEO titles and dynamic data.
The website builders also come with their SEO tools, but they come with basic functionalities and do not offer the flexibility that WordPress offers.
Conclusion
We hope that the information we have provided in this article will help you decide whether to choose WordPress or the website builder.
Both have their advantages, and you have to figure out which one will be best for your needs.
For example, if you want to build a website and do not want to regularly maintain or update it then you should choose the website builder.
On the other hand, if you want a large number of options and features, then WordPress is the best option available for you.
