This post contains the most useful guide on choosing the right platform for building your website. The choice should be consistent with your demand. Shouldn’t it? No matter you are a web designer or a site owner, you should smartly opt for the apt platform. And to help you decide we will be discussing the best options in detail herein. You just need to learn them with patience. The basic knowledge of the trendiest platforms will save you from misguidance and wastage of time.
Non-subscription-based CMS
1. WordPress
WordPress is the most useful website building platform at present. It covers around 40% of all websites on the internet. It’s an Open Source Content Management System (CMS). This is the best option for websites of small and medium-sized businesses, online shops, community forums, membership sites, the social media network, etc. You will have access to more than 57,000 free plugins! These enrich your site with –
- Google Analytics
- Shopping Cart
- Live Chat
- Social Media Tools
- CSS customization
- Contact Forms
- Photo Gallery
The most prominent corporate houses do prefer WordPress. Unlike subscription-based platforms, WordPress is free but you need to purchase a domain and take service from a hosting service provider. WordPress provides you with-
- maximum control through the open sources
- very powerful and best SEO tools
- free plugins (the richest)
- freedom of design
- the floor to create multilingual-websites
- high-quality pre-made themes
- limitless functions
Overall, it is the cheapest and smartest website builder in the world market!
Remember, whatever platform you choose, you have to think about the user experience (UX). A poor UX can be the greatest hurdle to take your business to the next level.
2. WooCommerce for WordPress
WooCommerce is an eCommerce plugin for WordPress. So, if your site is built with WordPress you can add products and eCommerce functionalities to make it an eCommerce site. Then start selling your digital or physical goods scaling from 1 to 100,000+ orders per day!
WooCommerce Blocks allows you to display products by some following category:
- Top-rated
- Bestsellers
- Hand-picked Products
- New Products
- On-sale Products
WooCommerce offers a secure and convenient payment method that includes:
- PayPal
- Square
- Amazon Pay
- Apple Pay
Officially WooCommerce provides hundreds of free and paid extensions to your store. Likewise, you can give yourself a hand by listing products on Google Shopping. And it will be wise to use Jetpack to secure your site through ‘authenticated customer logins’ resisting spam and brute force attacks.
3. Joomla!
Want to have another free and open-source content management system? Then you may certainly go for Joomla! This is a model-view-controller web application software, okay! You can build heavy powerful amazing online applications. Just look at the major benefits of Joomla! below:
- A highly flexible, extendable and customizable website builder
- Ever-free and open-source software under the GPL license
- Able to build striking PHP applications
- Tremendously multilingual and responsive
- Organic development according to needs
- Utmost search engine optimized
Moreover, in a more advanced way you can easily develop-
- data reporting tools
- complex business directories
- reservation system
- inventory control system
- application bridges
- integrated e-commerce system
You can utilize it for corporate, small business, organizational as well as community-based websites, online newspapers, and publications, personal or family homepage, etc. The running cost of a website on Joomla! is $700-$6500 average per month.
Subscription-based CMS
1. Shopify
Shopify is an effective CMS for e-commerce websites. It has around 1 million active users for millions of businesses. Shopify provides –
- unlimited products
- integrated payment facility
- all-in-one fully hosted solution
- complete inventory management
- easy marketing solution
- powerful stats
Moreover, you will find it so easy for creating an e-commerce store. Shopify also offers in-store POS. It lets you sell your product at your location and taste its amazing facilities such as shipping, marketing, inventory, and stat management tools. And the pricing is as follows:
- $29 per month for the basic plan
- $9 per month for Shopify Lite Plan
- $299 per month for Advanced Shopify
Anyways, you can even integrate Shopify into WordPress to take your website to the next level.
2. Wix
This is a cloud-based top-rated website building software. Wix.com ensures maximum freedom. You will have over 500 designer-made templates to create your website. The better thing is, you can make ‘exactly what you want’! That means you can design, develop, and manage your site the way you wish. You can even get a free designed website by clicking only a few questions. Besides, you can
- customize or change whatever you want
- add animation, scroll effects, and video background
- start a blog, online shop, or accept online booking
- edit the mobile-optimized comfortably
- enjoy advanced features
Wix.com offers some plans that are as follows:
- a domain for $9.16 per month
- the Combo plan $14.95 per month
- the e-commerce plan $26.25 per month
3. Squarespace
Squarespace is popular for its award-winning templates as well as convenience. It consists of numerous variety of designs that cover all sorts of content. It serves you through enterprise-grade infrastructure to fertilize your business. Squarespace welcomes you to create –
- blog
- portfolio
- curriculum Vitae
- online store
- events & Wedding
- small business and
- creative services
You cannot but love its easy editing and allowance to use multiple templates at once for the same website. You can use PayPal, Apple Pay, and Stripe to adapt to its e-commerce plan. The online stores start from $26 and $40 per month. It also provides a pleasing interface to manage your products, coupon, inventory, etc. You can create your site within a moment. However, its minimal third-party service can be a bit frustrating. And Squarespace doesn’t allow adding additional payment methods.
4. Weebly
Now let us introduce you to another drag and drop website builder, Weebly. It is especially for beginners. If you are a newbie you will additionally be happy to see that it needs no coding knowledge! At the same time, it is-
- very easy to use
- good for blogging
- costs not more than $38 per month
Nonetheless, you can’t befriend this concerning search engine optimization. The sources are too limited to shine in a business.
So these were some of the best options from us to you. We can well assume that you were looking for a reliable web development company. Then how about going for one of them to practically have the result? Again, you should learn their previous deeds, pricing, and capabilities before you move forward. Wish you all the best!