The most popular and widely used platforms to create and design a website even if you are not a professional.
They are both worth checking out since the features that they offer will benefit everyone that is thinking of making a fully-featured website, whether for personal use or for their business.
Nowadays, you don’t need an agency or professional to build your website since you can use these platforms that make the job really easy for you. They both have some things in common when it comes to content management and website building but with some key differences.
Those are what make the platforms stand out from each other, and I will talk about the differences more in-depth later in this article. WordPress is huge in comparison to Webflow since it has a 37% market share of all websites built on the internet, contrary to only 0.4% that Webflow has.
If you haven’t used either of these platforms then I suggest you take a good look at the sections below on this article. You will find information that will help you choose the right one, depending on what you need to create online. Without dallying any longer, let’s start with an introduction and review of both platforms.
WebFlow Introduction and Review
Webflow is a newer cms platform founded in 2012 that focuses on the design and style part of website creation. It has a fantastic drag and drop visual editor that’s very powerful and an interface that can control the design elements easily.
It can get a bit overwhelming if you are using it for the first time and also has a steep learning curve, but it’s worth it. With WebFlow, you can create beautifully designed and modern looking websites such as online portfolios, blogs, business landing pages, and many more.
It doesn’t matter if you are a beginner or not, and if you know how to code since with WebFlow, you can easily build your website. This platform is suited for designers, freelancers, entrepreneurs, and bloggers, so it’s straightforward and intuitive to use.
Even though there is no support for third-party applications within the platform, you can add them as code pieces. This is really simple to do as well since most times you are going to need to copy and paste a code in order to use those applications.
In terms of SEO, Webflow has built-in spaces where you can edit the meta tags, keywords tag, and everything needed to help your content rank higher. This is really important since your site wouldn’t get ranked better by the search engines index without these options.
The key features that make Webflow stand out are these:
- The Simplicity of its Interface
- Visual Editor for Designers
- You can export code
- Google and Adobe TypeKit fonts
- Assigning a Class to Mutable Elements
- And many more…
WordPress Introduction and Review
WordPress is the most popular CMS platform in the world and is really powerful as well. It was founded in 2003, and since then, it has continued to grow and expand its operations. Like I mentioned in the beginning, a large number of all the sites on the internet are built and managed with WordPress which says a lot about the capabilities and features of the platform.
Because of the huge list of features available, you can create any website type that you desire, such as a blog like travel blog, a business website, an e-commerce store, an online portfolio, a news website, and whatever you want to do honestly.
The functionality of the webpage with WordPress gets determined by the plugins that you use, which give it the necessary tools to operate. The vast community that is behind this platform has made resources such as plugins and information online about any problem be really easily accessible.
Sites built on WordPress operate with themes that are specifically made for this platform, and they allow you to change predetermined things like the color or font of the text, some design elements, WordPress widgets, etc. However, not all of them come with SEO fixed and ready to go.
You need to install plugins so that you can edit the meta tags easily and help to index your site higher in the search engines.
The key features that make WordPress stand out are these:
- Easy to use admin panel
- Intuitive text editor, Gutenberg
- Huge library in the built-in WordPress plugin marketplace
- Very active community
- Built-in file manager
- And many more…
Webflow Vs WordPress, Which One Is Easier To Use?
Both of these platforms have strong points that make them attract different types of customers. Webflow vs WordPress offer tools and have features that will make your life designing a website really simple and fun.
It’s important that you choose the best platform that meets your needs so that you don’t learn the wrong one and regret it later. Now let’s look at which one of them is easier to use.
Webflow’s Ease Of Use
Webflow is a really great platform that helps you build unique websites that are fast loaded, responsive, and on top of all, they are functional. You don’t need to have knowledge of programming languages or learn them to start working on your website’s design, which is a major benefit that makes it really simple to use for new users.
Even though Webflow has a strong point: their simplicity, the interface tool if you are looking at it for the first time, can seem complicated. This’ll happen unless you have used other tools like Photoshop or others before.
After you overcome it and get to know the ins and outs of the visual designer, you will thank yourself since it will benefit you a lot more. The learning curve might be a bit steep but what you get in return is so much worth it.
WordPress’ Ease Of Use
WordPress is a great content management system that offers a lot of tools and features to help you maintain and set up a website. You can build anything from blogs, e-commerce, business pages, and whatever you desire most. It has a simple page builder and excellent administrator tools.
WordPress has a fantastic community, and this has created an extensive library of plugins that will help you with anything that you want. A WordPress website is mainly built and shaped by the plugins that it uses.
Ease of use can be seen in the platform from the very beginning where you install it on your domain, how you can install themes and third-party applications like plugins
Hosting Options
Here you start to see the first difference between these two platforms since WordPress usually is installed on other hosting platforms, and Webflow has its own hosting platform. Let’s see where the differences reside, so hopefully, you make the best choice.
Webflow Hosting
The primary benefit of having its own hosting platform is the super-fast page load speed, the 99.9% guaranteed uptime, and the ability to scale almost infinitely. The technologies that are implemented in the Webflow hosting make it a high-class solution. Webflow uses the Amazon Cloudfront and Fastly content distribution networks or CDNs, and this is what brings it the fast speed.
All of the plans include a free SSL certificate, automatic backups, SEO sitemap generation, and many more. The plans for a website are these:
- Basic, this plan is best for a website that doesn’t need a CMS and costs $144 in a year or $12 each month.
- CMS, this plan is best for a blog or site that has content in it. It costs $192 in a year or $16 each month.
- Business, this plan is best for a site or blog that has higher traffic and supports up to one million monthly visitors. It costs $432 a year or $36 each month.
Here are the plans for e-commerce that enables the checkout on your domain:
- Standard, this plan is best for new businesses getting off the ground. It costs $348 a year or $29 each month.
- Plus, this plan is best for higher volume businesses that need additional features. It costs $888 a year or $74 each month.
- Advanced, this plan is best for scaling your online business and helping it reach the limits. It costs $2544 a year or $212 each month.
WordPress Hosting
WordPress is really compatible and has built-in tools in most hosting companies to install its software with one click. This makes the installation super easy and offers a lot of control. WordPress still uses PHP and MySQL as its main technologies, and that’s why with some special hosting options, you can get better speed, performance, and reliability.
These are the plans for WordPress hosting:
- Free, this plan is best if you want to figure out how this platform works initially, and it’s completely free. It also gives you a free domain that has the .wordpress.com extension.
- Blogger, this plan is best if you are a beginner blogger and want to get to know how things work. It costs $36 a year or $3 each month.
- Personal, this plan is best if you are using it for personal projects, it’s a great way to learn more about the platform. It costs $60 a year or $5 each month.
- Premium, this plan is best for freelancers and web developers who work on client sites. It costs $96 a year or $8 each month.
- Business, this plan is best for small businesses that want to expand their online presence. It costs $300 a year or $25 each month.
- eCommerce, this plan is best if you have an online store and want to scale it a lot more. It costs $540 a year or $45 each month.
Page Builders, Design and Themes
Webflow’s page builder is one of the best since it offers such an intuitive and simple design that resembles that of Adobe Photoshop. That’s why most people think that webflow’s visual editor is made for experienced graphic designers.
You can click and drag elements, set CSS parameters, edit the content, and much more very quickly. You can do all of these directly from your page, and you can see the changes take place live.
With Webflow, you don’t have to worry about the design of your website. You can either choose to modify a theme or create a new look from scratch very easily. There are only about 30 free themes, however, and the 170+ others are available on the premium plan.
This shouldn’t discourage you as creating a theme from scratch is as simple as modifying an already made one because of the features and tools the visual editor offers. WordPress’s visual editor is Gutenberg.
And it has a lot to offer since it’s relatively new and packs a lot of great features. This editor has perfected the blocks of content, and you can use that as the primary tool for designing your site. You can do almost anything with it, you can add text content like titles, quotes, lists, paragraphs, etc.
Also, media files, like pictures, galleries, and videos, also you can add widgets. These block combinations can be saved as templates which you can use later on.
Styling your website with WordPress is a simple process since there are so many themes available for you to choose from that it can honestly get overwhelming sometimes. You just have to pick the right one and make the changes that you feel work best.
The marketplace for themes inside the platform easily has over 1000 themes for you to choose from. The best part about it is that most of them are also free but come with a paid version as well for additional features.
Unique Features of Webflow VS WordPress
Webflow is a great page builder with some unique features and tools that help it stand out from the rest. You can create complex websites with responsive designs that will look really great and impress viewers. Let’s look at some of the most important features of Webflow:
- Dynamic SEO
- The ability to control the code of the page
- Guaranteed 99.99% Uptime using their hosting services
- Fully customizable design
- Animations and 3D transformations
WordPress is the most powerful CMS platform in the world and has a lot of features to offer. It’s with no doubt really powerful and can fulfill the needs of every website from a simple blog to e-commerce. This content management system is used by a large number of internet websites also found great success from it.
Here are some of the most important features of WordPress:
- Simple installation and interface a great choice for beginners
- Engaging and interactive community
- Regular updates with features and improvements added constantly
- Huge marketplace for themes like video theme , parallax theme and plugins like directory plugin, schedule plugins etc are various
- Powerful CMS
Getting the best WordPress hosting can be the key to your website’s success and it can help you drive sales and improve SEO, you can check here the best WordPress hosting for you WordPress website.
Each of these platforms is great at what they offer and will definitely fulfill the needs that you might have to create a website. The first difference between the two is the learning curve. Webflow is a lot harder to master than WordPress and both of them look really intimidating and overwhelming.
One other significant difference is the pricing, and WordPress takes the lead here. Webflow has a free version as well but has a lot of restrictions. It’s not the full experience, the lowest-paid subscription plan you can get is $12 a month.
WordPress is entirely free but be ready to spend some money on website hosting, plugins or themes. Customer support is completely non-existent for WordPress, but this is not a problem. There is a large community that will help you solve any question that you might have.
Also, there are a lot of websites offering information about WordPress. Webflow has dedicated customer support. Which has a knowledge base for almost anything that you could imagine. There is a live chat for users who have paid for a specific plan.
There are blogs that post information frequently, video tutorials, and forums. Themes are a key difference maker here since for Webflow. Only 200 themes, and 70% of them require you to have a premium plan.
Contrary to WordPress, where you can find plenty more free themes in the marketplace than Webflow has in total. Themes that are well optimized & organized for WordPress on the web just search for them.
Closing Thoughts
Both of these platforms, Webflow and WordPress, have a lot to offer and are great competitors. However, which one of them you choose is entirely on your hand and what your needs for the website are. You can make a blog by designing it with WordPress without needing to write a single piece of code.
Yes, your website will be fully functional and allow you to integrate as many plugins as you want. Also you will be limited in the designing process. Webflow offers you full creative control, and if this is what you want then you know which platform to choose.