Should You (Still) Use WordPress? 6 Alternatives to Check Out

I can’t believe I’m writing this article. I’ve been writing and building websites and companies on WordPress since 2010, so 14+ years now. It’s been a constant and consistent, though often frustrating, presence throughout my entire marketing and entrepreneurial career.

However, recent events and the larger picture of WordPress governance cannot be ignored. The founder of WordPress has finally shown himself to be lacking in restraint and full of spite, and no one is able to rein him in and protect the platform that powers 43.5%+ of the internet (according to WPzoom).

At this moment, it is fiduciarily responsible for businesses to consider other options and investigate what is available. Switching from something that you know and have invested a lot of time into is always hard to do, but it might be prudent at this point.

Here are my thoughts on when WordPress still makes sense and when it probably makes sense to investigate something else.

Before I get roasted on social media, yes, EditorNinja is built on top of WordPress. Like I said above, I’ve built on WordPress for 14 years. The companies I’ve built on top of WordPress’s open source self-hosted version (which I’ve hosted with Bluehost, Dreamhost, WPengine, and most recently, Kinsta) have made millions in revenue, affording myself and my team a nice income. Moving off of a platform that we’ve customized and that is stable-ish (at least until recently, maybe) is not a trivial decision, nor a small lift. But, I am personally heavily investigating other CMSs for simple sites and side projects. If you’re not already locked into the WordPress ecosystem, I highly recommend doing so.

Who Should Still Use WordPress?

WordPress is still a well-established tool with a long history and a ton of support from the community and developers online. If you need anything custom or more than a simple site for your business, WordPress is an excellent alternative to having a fully custom site or web application built. But if there’s an option that works for you to run your business, like like YetiSnow for snow removal companies or SimplePractice for health and wellcare providers (like therapists), there’s no reason to build out your own, and there are increasingly more reasons to look at other platforms for your marketing site.

I started my first WordPress website 14 years ago when I first got into SEO as a 26-year-old in Philadelphia. I’ve since built, or started building, at least a dozen WordPress websites for my projects and companies. At my last company, we even built a custom web app that facilitated thousands of intros between agencies and companies looking to hire an agency, and for a while, even ran a complete escrow marketplace that was on pace to transact over a million dollars through it in its first year (we killed this when the pandemic started, which in retrospect was a giant mistake).

I say all of this to show that WordPress is powerful. There is a massive plugin directory where you can find a plugin that can do almost anything you need. And there are a ton of WordPress developers out there who you can hire to do pretty much anything. There are even whole platforms like Codeable that exist just for the purpose of hiring a WordPress developer.

If you need something custom-built on top of a well-maintained base without going entirely custom from scratch, with developers building and maintaining a fully custom codebase, WordPress is still a good option.

But if that’s not what you need, there are better options now.

The Challenges of WordPress

All that said, there are a lot of challenges to using WordPress.

I think most people have finally learned that there are two versions of WordPress – wordpress.com, which is Automattic’s hosted version of WordPress that you pay them a subscription for monthly to host your website for you. WordPress.org is the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) version, which is contributed to by the broader community (at least for now).

WordPress has many challenges:

  1. Security.
  2. It’s slow and bloated.
  3. Pay them or find your own hosting (which can be more expensive than the alternatives, or you get worse performance and reliability).
  4. You often need a developer to make things work properly.
  5. Free plugins are great, but you get what you pay for. Premium plugins are better but come with their own risks and death through a thousand transactions, which means WordPress ends up being the more expensive solution.

I didn’t start understanding just how expensive a “free” platform like WordPress could be until I started writing this article.

When you add up the security challenges with plugins, the fact that many WordPress websites are unbelievably slow (which harms SEO rankings and conversions from visitors to customers), the cost of hosting, the cost of developers to fix things, and the cost of premium plugins, WordPress starts to look less like a good option and more like a liability to businesses, both online and offline.

Who Should Consider Other Platforms?

Here’s my simple take – if you’re not already tied into the WordPress ecosystem with a complex website, you should consider using other platforms for your website or websites. And even if you are tied into it with a custom build on top of WP, there are likely better solutions for you.

Most companies don’t need a “custom” website with a lot of custom development going into it. While your site should be professional, load fast, and be well-optimized for search engines, you don’t need complex workflows and features that require a developer to update anything. This is how development agencies get you – they convince you that custom is better, and then you have to keep paying them to maintain basic things for you.

Professional themes, fast-loading pages, and well-optimized search engines are now table stakes for any web platform. I’d even argue that WordPress’s built-in SEO capabilities are the worst of the bunch. You have to install Yoast (which I’ve used for a long time, and consider Joost a trusted industry colleague) or AIOSEO (owned by Syed Balkhi, who I also know and respect), and then configure it correctly. This requires either knowledge on your side gained through study or experience or hiring someone to do it for you.

And trust me, as someone who did SEO professionally for many years and generated tens of millions in business for SEO agencies and consultants, there are a lot of SEO professionals out there who aren’t worth their salt and who you shouldn’t hire. If you can avoid using an SEO professional or developers to do basic things, you should.

6 Alternatives to WordPress

When I started blogging as a marketing professional in 2010, WordPress was the best choice. It was still nascent and early days, but it was the best choice. That may no longer be the case, and I would say that is the case for the vast majority of companies.

There are better alternatives 14 years later, as one might expect.

Note: All prices and information provided below, as well as screenshots of homepages, are current as of October 2024. We have provided links to each provider and their pricing pages so you can double-check their sites for current pricing. If ours is not up to date, please use our Contact form to let us know so we can update it.

Webflow

Webflow is one of the most trusted website builders on the Internet. It’s an amazingly powerful platform with a wide range of options, built-in features for things like SEO and publishing, and world-class infrastructure and reliability. Their ideas of Collections (page types in WordPress), tools like building a Webflow site from a Figma (design) file, and the ability to hire Webflow experts if you get stuck are all bonuses. They also have a robust Resources section and Webflow University to help you learn pretty much anything you need to know about doing something in Webflow.

Their pricing makes sense for smaller companies and websites without a lot of pages. Even enterprise sites, which must be robust and reliable but don’t necessarily have a lot of pages, benefit from using a trusted platform like Webflow.

Their current pricing ranges from free (for a 2-page website with a Webflow domain) to $39 per year billed annually for larger sites. There is also an enterprise option where you get a custom quote.

Check out Webflow →

Wix

I would’ve laughed at you if you had told me a few years ago that I’d be including Wix as a viable alternative. But to give credit where it’s due, Wix has made huge strides in the last few years, hiring some great people who have influenced the direction of the platform to make it more useful and powerful for creating websites and getting traffic to and, therefore, business from a website. Like any CMS or website builder these days, they have a lot of themes and templates to choose from, ecommerce capabilities, and a lot more.

Their current pricing is $17-$159/mo, depending on the features and number of collaborators needed. Wix is a great solution for small sites, though probably not as much for publications with many contributors.

Check out Wix →

Duda

Duda is a relative newcomer to the CMS/website builder market. Focusing on performance and beautiful design, their offering includes a drag-and-drop website builder, ecommerce functionality, the ability to sell products and services, and the ability to white label the product to offer it to your customers.

Duda is a good option for individual companies, but they’re primarily focused on agencies and SaaS companies who want to build website hosting into their platforms.

Their pricing starts at $19/mo billed annually and goes up to $149/mo, with a custom enterprise option as well. They offer a 14-day, no-credit-card-required free trial to get started.

Check out Duda →

Squarespace

Squarespace is one of the original website builders, launching in 2004 in New York City. Their solution focuses on simple, beautiful websites that you can easily launch, get visibility for, and even sell products and services via their checkout features. Their sites and templates are focused on beautiful imagery and great typography, making your business, whether it’s a restaurant or a membership, stand out.

Their pricing ranges from $16/mo paid annually to $99/mo paid annually, with an enterprise/custom option as well.

Check out Squarespace →

Shopify

Shopify has become the default ecommerce platform for the Internet, and as such, they are a great alternative to WooCommerce, which is WordPress’s ecommerce platform.

Shopify makes it easy to run an ecommerce business, and they have a ton of integrations that mean you can manage inventory across multiple shipment centers, sell in person with a Point of Sale (POS) system, market your business across search engines/social media/email, and much more.

Their pricing starts at $29/mo, paid annually, and goes up to $2,300+ per year for more complex sites.

Check out Shopify →

Static Site Generators & Other CMSes

Another option that should be mentioned is static sites and other CMSes like Statamic, Craft, and Ghost. These options are much more akin to moving from WordPress.org (self-hosted open source) and are primarily meant for publications and blogging, though they can also be used for business sites.

They all have the same challenge as WordPress, though, in that you need hosting (or servers and the knowledge to install files on servers or money to pay developers to do it), coding knowledge, and design. Some of them have plugins, both free and paid, and their pricing ranges from free for small sites up to license fees for Statamic ($275 at time of writing), $9-$199/mo billed annually for Ghost Pro, and free to $399 for a license on CraftCMS. Craft also has a hosted version that is newly available.

I think static sites and CMSs like these are really cool, but unfortunately, they’re way overpowered and complicated for non-developers needing a simple site. But if you’re currently on a custom site built on top of WordPress and you’re looking for a new solution, these are worth checking out.

Why Not Use WordPress.com for Simple Sites?

Simply put – I don’t trust Automattic to do what’s right for the web. A few weeks ago, I trusted them to host simple sites, but I quite simply don’t anymore.

There are other companies out there that have proven to be much more friendly to innovation and supporting their customers. WordPress.com is also known for nickel-and-diming its customers with pricing, charging add-ons for various plugins, and not allowing a wide variety of plugins that are available on self-hosted open-source WordPress or other platforms. You end up paying more than other website builders.

I was willing/able to overlook all of that in the past, but with the recent developments around WordPress and Automattic, I can no longer recommend using them in good conscience.

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