Did you know that every day more than 200 thousand websites are being created on the web? But, to our surprise, 1 out of every three websites is built using WordPress. This is because people who have never had exposure to the web can make their website using WordPress. That’s how easy it is!
In addition, the dazzling number of customizable options, plugins, and features is overwhelming, and WordPress is giving all of them away for free. WordPress’s effort to make every step of building websites more manageable and give the user complete freedom to tweak the features and looks of the site with hundreds of customizable options for free brought immense popularity.
But as with any other service, WordPress has its cons that affect the business goal of many website owners. That’s why website owners look for better alternatives with features that align with their business requirements.
Therefore, in this article, we will discuss the five best WordPress alternatives that will wow you with their perks and features.
Top 5 WordPress Alternatives in 2023
There are a number of alternatives available online but not all of them are the same. Confused? No worries, we’ve got your back. After deep research, we have settled down on 5 alternatives that you can use instead of WordPress. Let’s go over them.
1. Shopify
Who doesn’t know about Shopify? It is one of the most popular alternatives for WordPress for sure. Here are some features of Shopify that might be enough to illustrate its necessity and suitability.
Easy Customization
Shopify allows you to build your website without any prior coding knowledge. Using Shopify, you can develop and host your online store from one place. However, if you know HTML or CSS, Shopify gives you an advantage in making all the customization.
Ecommerce Friendly Themes
Shopify offers hundreds of built-in themes and customizable options, which will allow you to design your website reflecting your business-specific brand image and give your customer a better visual experience on your site. To do the same on WordPress, you would have to hire a UI/UX professional and purchase an excessive number of plugins and add-ons.
But with Shopify, you can do that with the built-in customizable themes and other functionality. You can also extend your creativity by using some additional Shopify app that allows you to customize our Shopify store with more bespoke requirements.
Fast Loading Time
Shopify saves you the hassle of buying hosting from another platform. It’s a hosted solution. Everything you do on Shopify remains in the Shopify server. That’s why the site never takes extra load time.
Comprehensive Analytics for Business Decision
Shopify offers built-in comprehensive Shopify analytics that allows you to access customer, marketing, and sales data that helps you to make effective strategic business decisions. Shopify analytics dashboard presents all the insightful and impactful matrices to improve your business operation and performance. You can also integrate Shopify analytics into google analytics for improved data-driven performance.
Bottom Line: If you have an e-commerce site built on WordPress, it’s time for you to migrate to Shopify. Shopify offers everything an online store requires, from content management, sales, and customer engagement to shipping and payment. It is a one-stop solution for people who want to sell physical or digital products online through a website.
There are a few disadvantages of Shopify, such as its pricing, its lock-in feature that doesn’t allow migration to any other platform, and the adversity in content marketing. But if you want to build
| Pros | Cons |
| One-stop service for e-commerce websites | High Price |
| Easy and extensive customization feature without using any plugins | Not up to the standard for content marketing |
| Shopify App for additional features and customization | Difficulty in migration |
| Built-in Analytics and Metrix dashboard |
2. Squarespace
Recently, brands and businesses are in a war to win customers’ attention. So, for an online business or even a blog site, it’s mandatory to make the site as attractive to the audience as possible. And that’s where Squarespace comes in the game.
Aesthetically Pleasing Visuals
If you are looking for a website builder that will allow you to build and manage your website with stunning visual effects, Squarespace is the ultimate tool. The attractive visual you can create by Squarespace increase the responsiveness of your site. If you are a photographer, visual artist, or blogger, Squarespace got you covered with its unique templates and graphics that you can customize to suit your personality, taste, or brand requirements.
Section-Based Editor
Editing your website content and getting an instant preview of the changes has never been so easy. The ease of editing a page element, adding graphics, publishing images, and picking from various elements to make the page more interactive made Squarespace a perfect place for creative minds. In addition, the section-based editor will allow you to customize each section for a professional-looking website.
Ample Amount of Free Templates
More than 110 Squarespace’s stylish and interactive built-in themes make it much easier to exhibit your creative work. The templates are ideally suited for blogs, portfolios, and small businesses. In addition, it has two integrated payment methods, Payoneer and Stripe. Business owners can also expect accounting support from Squarespace.
But the pricing plan may seem unreasonable to some. The customization is also limited to the degree the Squarespace ecosystem allows. You will not be able to integrate any third-party tool to make any customization or add functionality to your site.
Bottom Line: If you want to create an e-commerce site or portfolio site, prefer aesthetics over anything else, and enjoy building and managing a website, Squarespace should be the ultimate option.
| Pros | Cons |
| The aesthetically pleasing visual experience | Unreasonable pricing |
| 110+ customizable free templates | A limited degree of customization |
| Easy to edit and add elements as you desire with a section-based editor | Not compatible with third-party tools |
3. Webflow
Unlike the website builders mentioned earlier, webflow is quite different in terms of functionality. If you are looking for a website builder that will allow you to access highly customizable web features with a responsive design that fits any device, webflow can be the best choice. But for someone who wants a website builder that instantly launches a website with drag and drop, you better not use webflow for that purpose.
Customizability
Customizing webflow is not similar to any other drag-and-drop website builder. It requires a basic understanding of HTML and CSS programming languages. The design is not reliant on the template. The Webflow designer resembles the adobe photoshop interface that allows you to customize the site’s outlook with the responsive design language. The responsive design will enable websites to fit perfectly on any device, and you can customize the page outlook for all device screens.
Content Management System
Unlike other CMS, Webflow offers an easy-to-use CMS yet more robust and reliable than any other Webflow alternatives. Creating, editing, and reviewing blog posts has never been so simple. The best part of Webflow’s CMS is that it is integrated with all other software, allowing users to experience the CMS without any add-ins or page builders. In the case of most of the Webflows alternatives, you will have to connect the site with other domains and web hosts to use the content management system.
Compatible with Advanced SEO
The sites built with Webflow are all SEO friendly, and the eCommerce and the CMS plan offer advanced SEO controls. All the sites will have an autogenerated sitemap, and you can customize 301 redirects for full SEO control. The content of the sites on Webflow is all rendered and served through SSL. That means all the content will be indexed and prioritized by Google. You can customize the meta and Open graph tags to improve the SEO results by optimizing each page with the tags.
Responsive and Fast Loading
One of the reasons Webflow is popular and high-profile clients and agencies prefer it is its responsive, robust structure. It can manage any amount of traffic without appreciating the load time. Whether you are growing slowly or hit by immediate popularity, webflow has your back with consistent and fast site load time. Users can scale the site capability by changing plans and experience easy and effective scalability. It can manage 2x page views than CNN and BBC combined.
Bottom Line: Despite Having numerous intuitive features, Webflow comes with a few shortcomings too. Though the site builder allows CSS and HTML customization, it doesn’t comply with complex-level coding and customization.
In addition, the numerous features that Webflow offers make the site-building process tiring. You will have to go through a steep learning process just to build the sites. Moreover, Webflow also has a traffic limit for specific plans, which causes complexity during a sudden hit in traffic.
| Pros | Cons |
| 100+ Responsive template designs for all devices | Traffic Limit |
| Integrated CMS and Advanced SEO for better site performance | The exhausting learning process |
| Best e-commerce and CMS support. | Not compatible with complex-level coding. |
| Comes with a standard security control system with backups and versioning. |
4. WIX
Wix is one of the most preferred WordPress alternatives for e-commerce owners and bloggers. If anyone wants a fast and flashy website-building tool compromising a few advanced customization features, Wix is great to go with.
Design Flexibility
The most striking and enjoyable part of Wix is its 100% drag-and-drop feature. You can make any change in the front end of your site by simply dragging elements on the backend. Wix offers limitless customization options to make your site stand out. You get 1000+ free templates with widgets, ad ones, graphics, and icons, making any integration flexible.
Furthermore, you can create a logo for your site or business in Wix logo maker. If you want specific tools specialized only for your business, Wix gives you that service, too, with its dedicated marketing features and functionality for particular businesses. Adding animations, scroll effects, and video backgrounds to your site is a no-brainer game in Wix.
Easy and Intuitive Editing Experience
People without coding can build a website on Wix because of its easy yet intuitive editing feature. For example, advanced customization of any theme in WordPress requires HTML or CSS knowledge. But, regarding WIX, reaching your desired website looks like walking in the park. You get to see all the changes you make in the backend in real time, which is absent in most site-building tools.
Enabled For Ultimate SEO Performance
Wix site is enabled with a built-in SEO foundation to help you get optimum organic reach. The homepage will be indexed immediately on google with an integration of the google business profile. You also get 301 redirects, customizing meta tag functionality, and structured data markup in one place. So don’t worry about the SEO foundation of your site.
Customer Service
Wix has a good reputation among users for its fast and responsive customer service. You may have seen abundant ads claiming the top-notch service quality you get on Wix. But that’s actually true. With its 200 articles, several videos specific to a particular functionality, and an official technical support team for instant support, Unlike WordPress, Wix has been educating and encouraging its customer to build websites on their own. On the other hand, WordPress doesn’t even have an official technical support team.
Apps and Plugins for Additional Functionality
Growing your business or scaling up your traffic with Wix is more accessible than most competitors, like WordPress, with limitless web apps and plugins. In addition, you can integrate your desired functionality using plugins or other web apps available.
Bottom Line: Go for WordPress if you expect advanced customization for your site. But for those who want an easy-to-build website tool with super flashy and eye-catchy design functionality with no technical know-how, WIX is the one to meet your expectation. From hosting to building, you get everything on WIX.
| Pros | Cons |
| 1000+ stunning template designs and enabled with scroll effects to add dimensions to your page. | Not compatible with advanced customization. |
| All the sites are mobile optimized site | You cannot transfer your site made by Wix. |
| AI can design the site for you | Free plans will forcefully integrate Wix branding. |
| Supper Efficient customer service and affordable pricing | The content isn’t transferable from one template to others |
| 300+ free web apps for additional features and functionality. |
5. Drupal
So far, we have talked about the SaaS tool that is easy and simple to use, and anyone without any coding experience can build their websites with the help of any tool, as mentioned earlier. But this time, in our last pick, we want to go beyond WordPress.
Drupal is an alternative to WordPress when you want more customization and functionality than WordPress offer, even in its paid version. Drupal comes in when you are looking for other options for some advanced-level functionality and scalability of your website. It is an open-source platform that will save your spending and increase efficiency by ensuring scalability.
Open-Source Platform
As an open-source platform, you can integrate anything and do any sort of customization beyond the limits of Drupal. You can customize it as per your own desire. The administration and customization features will enable the user to manage content of all types and in any amount with impressive security. The software updates frequently to fix system bugs, allowing the developer to explore the platform more.
Robust Platform
Looking for a solidly designed website for ultimate scalability? Drupal is the perfect solution. It doesn’t have any limitations to offer customizability and advanced functionality. You will get a robust website that can meet any requirements you have. It has limits of nothing. From security to customizability, you get everything top-notch.
Resourceful Community
Drupal requires advanced coding knowledge to build a website through this platform. But it has a large developer community who can help you with any problem regarding building a website. In addition, the community will make the process easier for you, from sharing custom code to solving a specific problem.
Bottom Line: Drupal doesn’t offer any sort of drag-and-drop feature. You should trust this platform only when you want advanced customization with high-level coding knowledge. It’s suitable for small businesses and Information and Technology companies that manage large-scale data and customize the site according to marketing requirements.
| Pros | Cons |
| Open-source platform offering limitless customization | Need advanced level coding knowledge. |
| Community support for any problem with building and managing the site | Steep the learning curve may take an exhausting amount of time. |
| Free of cost | Maintenances take a lot of time. |
Conclusion
People these days want everything simple and easy yet practical for the purpose. Therefore, they seek the tools that suit their needs, even customized for them. Unfortunately, WordPress has a lot of limitations. And new tools are being developed every now and then, making people bewildered about which one to use.
We hope this article will help you determine the suitable alternatives that suit your purpose and business need for building a website.