WordPress vs. Other CMS Platforms: How Does WordPress Stack Up Against the Rest?
WordPress is a proverbial giant when it comes to Content Management Systems (CMS). The others just don’t come close.
On one side, you have the likes of Drupal and Joomla, who have been around for so long, and on the other, you have WordPress – WordPress powers 43.2% of websites worldwide (2022).
Drupal and Joomla are old-fashioned and pretty much obsolete by today’s standards by their very design. But what about CMS like Wix or Squarespace? If we were to compare the CMS’s with one another, how would they stack against WordPress?
Well, in this short article, we aim to do just that. But before we begin, let’s lay some groundwork related to what a CMS is.
What are Content Management Systems (CMS)?
Let’s start with the basics; What exactly is a Content Management System (CMS)?
It’s a website management platform that helps you organize and publish your website into pages and posts. At its core, it’s a clean and organized dashboard that enables you to manage all your website activity.
A CMS is hosted on different web servers. For example, Bluehost, SiteGround, and almost all the other popular hosting services provide you with an option to install a CMS. On your cPanel, you will find them neatly stacked beside each other in the Website Builders section. To illustrate:
Bluehost’s cPanel showing website builders.
SiteGround’s Auto-install website builders.
A CMS and a website builder are two different things – though they may seem the same at the surface. A website builder is a WYSIWYG solution that lets you build a website and, later on, add content as well. On the other hand, a CMS is miles apart since it has multiple other features such as security controls, taxonomies, appearance, and other powerful functionalities.
In this article, we’ve gone away from the old and compared WordPress with the following CMS:
- WordPress
- Wix
- Squarespace
Let’s see how they rank up against one another.
1. WordPress
An open-source project began as a fork of another blogging tool named B2-Catalog. Over time, it’s gone miles above its humble beginnings to become a CMS with a 33% market share and the go-to CMS for people looking to build a website from all walks of life.
WordPress is extremely user-friendly and intuitive based on PHP and the MySQL database. You can create a functional and responsive website with just a basic understanding. Its small learning curve is the reason why it’s loved and adored by so many.
With WordPress, you can create catching content, powerful posts, projects, navigation menus, sidebars, etc. When it comes to customization, there are so many plugins and themes that add both an aesthetic touch as well as superb functionality to your website.
The performance of your WordPress website is based on the hosting you’re using and the number of plugins and themes activated on your site. While some hosts disallow plugins on their services, overall, you won’t face such issues with WordPress.
It’s entirely open-source and powered by a community of developers working eagerly to make WordPress better and more secure. Community support, Facebook groups, WordPress forums, and YouTube tutorials are some of the many ways you can learn and get acquainted with the WordPress platform.
WordPress also has a significant stake in the eCommerce industry with WooCommerce. A powerful plugin, WooCommerce allows you to create and manage an eCommerce store on WordPress.
If you want to test the platform, you can download a web server emulation software like XAMPP. An open-source tool, the software allows you to download WordPress on your PC, without ever having to pay for domain names or hosting.
2. SquareSpace
Founded in 2003 in the United States, SquareSpace is a powerful closed source CMS that allows you tons of powerful functionalities for building a website, managing content, and publishing posts.
While the platform is easy to use, it’s not as intuitive when building a website. Compared to the website building functionalities of WordPress, Squarespace falls behind by a significant measure. The platform is also not as customizable as its competitor. The reason for this lies in the closed-source nature of SquareSpace in general. Users can edit the HTML or CSS of the Squarespace to an extent and nothing beyond that.
But the bright side is that SquareSpace is pretty nifty in performance. Since the company manages everything, and you’re only paying for the subscription, you won’t have to worry about performance or security problems at all. In our opinion, we would rank SquareSpace better in terms of security and performance than WordPress.
Its closed-source nature saves SquareSpace in terms of community support. With WordPress, you get a lot of help, but it’s all external at the end of the day. There is no internal team present to give customer service. With Squarespace, you don’t have that. It’s a company selling a service, and thus, you receive 24/7 customer service for any problems you might face with a platform.
If you’re a beginner looking to create a site and don’t want to go into managerial complications, then choose SquareSpace.
3. Wix
A recent competitor in the market, Wix, has slowly grown into a powerful CMS. The platform holds to its advertising by allowing you to create aesthetically designed websites with just a drag-and-drop builder.
Founded in 2006, it has gained a tremendous following over time as a closed-source platform. It’s easy to use and set up. You can easily create a Wix site that stands out and ranks in search engine results with just a simple subscription.
Being a closed-source platform, it’s limited in its customizability. Similar to Squarespace, it’s limited to editing HTML and CSS code. However, if you’re not inclined towards customizations, you can use Wix to develop an easily made website that performs well.
Similar to SquareSpace, its performance and security provisions are all managed by Wix itself. This means that you won’t have to worry much about performance issues down the road. Wix takes care of everything.
For anyone looking to build a website with the latest best practices, then you can select Wix. Additionally, if you’re not too concerned about functionality and are looking for a quick, creative website, then choose Wix.
Conclusion
So, which one is best for you? Wix or WordPress or SquareSpace?
In this article, we’ve described how Wix, SquareSpace, and WordPress work. Now, you might be wondering which one is best for your site. That question is simple: it depends on what you want to achieve.
If you’re a blogger and want to create a standard blogging website, you can choose between all three of these platforms. However, if you’re looking for advanced functionalities, you can select WordPress since both Wix and SquareSpace don’t provide additional functionalities.
As a best practice, we recommend you go in-depth and try out all three platforms to decide which one works best for your business.
