You are looking to create a website, and you know that WordPress is one of the most popular tools on the market. Indeed, 40% of the content on the web is powered by WordPress, making it the best known CMS available today.
However, the most popular does not always mean “the best”, and choosing WordPress comes with inconveniences: it is logically the favorite target of hackers for example.
Additionally, while WordPress offers many great features, not every business in need of an online presence is affected by its options. If you’ve tried WordPress, and need something different, you’ve come to the right place.
We’ve rounded up some of the best performing WordPress alternatives on the market for you today.
1. Wix : the most popular alternative Membership
While WordPress impresses when it comes to providing a wide range of themes, not all of them will meet your needs. The main problem with WordPress’ approach to themes is that you need to know how to code and know how the platform works whenever you want to customize them.
Building a site with Wix is different: with Wixyou can drag items and with a click of the mouse, drop them wherever you want.
On Wix, creating animations or publishing videos is very simple, and the builder also offers a feature to optimize the SEO of your content. All Wix plans come with the same drag-and-drop builder feature.
The free plan, as well as the one allowing you to add your own domain, displays advertisements on the site. It is therefore strongly advised to start with the €10 package. Two other packages complete the offer, at €17 and €30 per month.
With Wix, you can also create and manage your online store ! The manufacturer offers many efficient and secure payment solutions, as well as integrations with the largest marketplaces.
2. Squarespace: Best Overall Alternative
Squarespace is one of the most popular WordPress alternatives among users. The reason ? This platform offers many templates when creating your pages. These templates are modern, sleek, and responsive. They are also designed to effectively make your content stand out in search engines.
Squarespace has made a name for itself thanks to the ease with which you can import existing content on your site into the Squarespace environment. A few clicks are enough to import your WordPress blog, for example.
On the downside, meta descriptions and page titles are quite difficult to adjust on this platform. The “Squarespace” experience is not as easy as with other competitors.
Another negative of Squarespace: if you are considering an online store, know that Squarespace will not be the best choice on this list.
On the price side, it will be necessary to count a “rent” of 11€/month for the personal plan, up to 36€/month for the business plan.
Check out our SquareSpace vs WordPress comparison to learn more!
3. Shopify: Best alternative for e-commerce
While Squarespace is a great alternative to WordPress, it’s not the best for building your online store unless you can get expert help or have time to train yourself.
That’s where Shopify comes in, providing one of the most intuitive and easy-to-use online store builders out there.
With over 800,000 users worldwide, Shopify can only be a good alternative, can’t it? The company provides a great selection of state-of-the-art responsive templates to give your store a professional look on any platform or device.
You have a problem ? Shopify is very popular: if needed, you can post a free ad and receive responses from many Shopify developers.
Shopify is full of useful features, such as the ability to manage product variants, calculate different taxes automatically… You can even, like WordPress, extend Shopify’s capabilities with plugins.
Although it’s a great solution for creating an online store, Shopify also has some flaws to consider such as, for example, a rather cumbersome management of multiple currencies, or having to pay transaction fees if you use “Shopify Payments as a payment solution.
The rates range from €29/month to €299/month depending on the options chosen.
4. Ghost – Best Alternative for Blogging
If you plan to build a website specifically for content purposes, such as a blog or ezine, Ghost is an excellent choice. Because despite the fact that it does not enjoy great popularity at the moment, Ghost is a very interesting tool, which allows you to easily customize your site according to your needs.
To gain in terms of flexibility and stand out from its competitors, Ghost allows you to self-host your site or to host it on its own servers, as other solutions offer (or impose…). The subscription solution, comparable to others, is therefore managed and secured by the Ghost teams, and includes a range of powerful and efficient publishing tools.
Its editor is extensible and lets you move and edit dynamic content blocks, such as videos, images, and even text.
We will appreciate its routing and tagging function allowing you to create personalized URL structures and facilitating the insertion of multilingual content.
In addition, you will benefit from a relatively well-optimized website for SEO: Ghost is equipped with AMP support and allows the insertion of structured data.
The price of Ghost varies: you can host your own website for free, just like WordPress (but you may need PHP and coding knowledge).
If you want Ghost to host your site for you, you can access the service for free for 14 days, then the prices are 29€ per month, 79€ per month and 199€ per month, depending on your needs.
5. Weebly: the easiest alternative
If you’re new to the world of internet marketing and e-commerce, you should consider looking for an easy-to-use solution.
Weebly is here for that: it’s one of the most intuitive website builders out there. No wonder Weebly boasts over 40 million websites worldwide. So yeah, that number might not be as high as WordPress, but it’s still very impressive!
When choosing a theme for your Weebly site, you’ll find that the options aren’t as plentiful as they are with WordPress. But there is still a reasonable choice of themes in which you will certainly find your happiness.
The strong point of Weebly is the tools available to edit and update your themes. Very easy to use, they make Weebly an excellent WordPress replacement, especially for those who need to create simple websites.
If you want to use the free plan offered by Weebly, you will have to put up with a (subtle) Watermark. However, you can use your own domain name and remove this Watermark, for €5/month. Other solutions are available, such as the e-commerce solution, at €20/month.
6. Drupal: the best alternative for developers
Created “by developers, for developers”, Drupal is therefore necessarily a little more complicated to handle than a solution like Wix, Weebly or even WordPress.
Drupal is a content management solution that stands out in that it is intended for an audience with technical skills. This is probably why its popularity is less.
Except that this disadvantage can turn out to be an advantage: in fact, thanks to its great flexibility, it is possible to obtain more advanced customization thanks to more advanced functionalities. Of course, this will largely depend on the skills of its user: if he is up to it, he will obtain much more convincing results than on any other CMS.
Its “developer friendly” orientation is also the reason why Drupal has a management space that is less aesthetically successful than that of the other alternatives to WordPress proposed in this article.
However, you can take advantage of many existing Drupal templates to create your site.
Like WordPress, Drupal is free and open-source!
Want to know more ? Check out our WordPress vs Drupal comparison!
Why turn to an alternative to WordPress?
WordPress popularity is at an all time high, but no content management system is perfect, and that applies to the market leader as well.
You are responsible for the security of your website
You are responsible for creating backups, installing updates, and keeping your site running smoothly. This can be cumbersome for some businesses to manage.
What’s more, WordPress is the favorite CMS for hackers, who regularly target it during their cyberattacks.
WordPress does not have a drag and drop site builder
It takes some time for beginners to become familiar with WordPress tools.
Customizable drag-and-drop software may suit your skills more easily.
You don’t have CSS skills
If it is not necessary to know how to code to use WordPress, it is useful to have at least a basic knowledge of CSS, to be able to properly customize your site.
Our tip for choosing your alternative to WordPress
Carefully assess your needs and the advantages and disadvantages of each CMS to choose your alternative to WordPress.
Whatever your CMS, experts are available on Codeur.com to support you in the development of your tailor-made functionalities or the customization of your theme.
Post an ad for free and receive quotes from competent freelancers available.
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