Embarking on building a new website involves careful pre-planning and analysis. It’s crucial to answer key questions to determine the optimal platform for your website. This article explores these essential considerations and compares three major platforms: React, WordPress, and Webflow.
Considerations Before Choosing a Web Building Platform
1. Who’s in Charge of Development and Maintenance? Is there Programming Expertise?
For constructing a feature-rich, customized website, programming knowledge within the team is beneficial. While numerous no-code platforms exist for creating visually appealing websites, they often have limitations. Familiarity with programming languages such as HTML, CSS, and Javascript can help bypass these restrictions, especially when aiming for a complex website.
2. Is SEO a Priority?
Certain platforms are more SEO-friendly than others. It’s vital to examine factors like the platform’s speed, the amount of extraneous code it includes, and how easily Google (or other search engines) can read and interpret its code.
3. Does the Platform Provide Support or Have a Large User Community?
Issues and questions are inevitable during website development. A platform with robust community support or comprehensive customer service can be invaluable in resolving these challenges. A larger user base increases the likelihood of finding someone who has already encountered and solved similar problems.
4. What are the Costs and Budget?
Certain platforms come with recurring costs that must be factored into the decision-making process. Future platform migrations can be expensive, making a well-informed initial choice advantageous.
5. What’s the Website’s Purpose? Is it an E-commerce Store?
The website’s intended function—an e-commerce store, an acquisition channel, or an informational page—influences the platform choice. If e-commerce is a potential future pivot, it requires additional consideration due to its unique challenges.
Choosing Between ReactJS, WordPress, and Webflow: Which Platform Suits Your Project?
After addressing the aforementioned considerations, it’s time to delve into the specifics of available platforms and their suitability for your requirements. We will be comparing ReactJS, WordPress, and Webflow.
ReactJS
ReactJS is an open-source JavaScript library used predominantly for building user interfaces for single-page applications. It’s ideal for creating administrative pages or control panels. Here’s what you need to know:
💻 Programming: Built with JavaScript and requires knowledge of HTML and CSS. It can interface with any backend using various languages or frameworks, offering significant flexibility. This is an excellent choice if you’re looking to build a control panel or similar applications. Facebook, for example, is built using ReactJS.
🕷️ SEO-friendly: Tools exist to make React web pages more SEO-friendly, but these often come at a high cost and are not straightforward to configure. ReactJS may not be the most suitable choice if your project heavily relies on SEO.
🙋♀️ Community: React has a large user community, with numerous libraries available for easy integration with third-party libraries.
💰 Cost: React is free, although domain name and hosting costs apply (approximately 10 €/year and starting from 7 €/month respectively). SEO enhancement tools may also incur additional costs.
🛒 Ecommerce: Building an e-commerce site with React is feasible, with many libraries available. However, caution is advised as e-commerce sites often rely heavily on SEO.
WordPress
Launched in 2003, WordPress started as a platform primarily for blogging but has evolved into a versatile content management system (CMS) capable of creating nearly any type of website.
💻 Programming: WordPress uses PHP, Javascript, HTML, and CSS. You can construct a new webpage using these languages or utilize numerous plugins (such as Elementor, Divi, etc.) to create a website by simply dragging and dropping elements. This flexibility allows for a mix of coded and visually-designed elements in your website.
🕷️ SEO-friendly: WordPress websites have historically performed well in Google rankings, but achieving this requires clean code and a well-structured site. Fortunately, numerous plugins are available to enhance on-page SEO for these projects.
🙋♀️ Community: WordPress likely boasts the largest community in web development. This means a wealth of plugins for easy third-party integrations and a host of forums where most existing problems have already been solved.
💰 Cost: Like ReactJS, WordPress is free, but domain name and hosting fees apply. Hosting costs for WordPress can be slightly lower than those for ReactJS.
🛒 Ecommerce: While WordPress does not function as an ecommerce platform, the WooCommerce plugin can transform any WordPress site into an e-commerce store with support for almost any payment type.
Webflow
Webflow offers a software as a service solution for website creation and hosting. Their online visual editor allows users to design, build, and launch websites.
💻 Programming: Webflow features a visual interface where users can design their website by dragging and dropping elements. It doesn’t require coding, although the option is available if needed. The level of customization attainable without coding surpasses that of Elementor or Divi in WordPress.
🕷️ SEO-friendly: Websites on Webflow are hosted on their servers, known for speed, and the code is reportedly SEO-optimized, making Webflow sites SEO-friendly.
🙋♀️Community: Despite being a relatively new tool, Webflow has a supportive and engaged community, ensuring assistance for any issues that may arise.
💰Cost: Based on features, pricing plans range from $12/month to $36/month. It’s a bit pricier than the other options but includes domain name and hosting.
🛒Ecommerce: Currently, Webflow does not support ecommerce websites.
Conclusion
There’s a wide variety of platforms for creating websites, each catering to different project types. Examining and comparing them before deciding is crucial, as migrating between platforms can be expensive and time-consuming.
Webflow is ideal for those without coding knowledge, as it enables the creation of professional websites without coding. WordPress, React, or Webflow could work for landing pages or portfolio websites, with the choice likely depending on the programming language you’re most comfortable with.
If these platforms don’t quite fit your needs and you want to create a no-code e-commerce website, consider Shopify. Stay tuned to our blog for more on this and other platforms!
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