Webflow vs. WordPress: Best Choice for Your Website

Upwork, BankMobile, Bonsai, HomeRun, Lattice…

These are not random big names with great websites and amazing user experience. They all have one thing in common: They use Webflow. While half the internet is built on WordPress, why these big giants are using Webflow as their Go-to website builder in 2024?

Well, today’s Webflow vs. WordPress comparison is focused just on that. To help you decide which one to go with for YOUR website. 

Here’s what we’re going to cover:

We’ll discover the differences between Webflow and WordPress, see why big corporations are using Webflow, and why you should or should not. Since the point is to make it easy for you to focus on business instead of spending all year managing a website, here’s what we’ll cover:

• What are Webflow and WordPress and why should you care
• How do they compare (From different aspects)
• Which one is the right choice for YOU

Fair enough? Let’s get to it. 

Overview: Webflow and WordPress

Before we get to compare both website builders side by side, let’s give you a high-level overview of them. 

What Is WordPress?

WordPress is an open-source, mostly community-driven CMS (Content Management System) that makes it easy to build websites and manage blogs. 

Although WordPress began as a blogging tool, it’s now a fully blown website building platform with a mix of both visual design and back-end settings.

You can choose from a variety of pre-built themes and customize them to build different types of websites. From blogs and business sites to e-commerce stores, WordPress does it all. 

It can be self-hosted, where you find your own web hosting, or you can use WordPress.com for a hosted solution. Overall, WordPress is good for people who are fascinated by the backend of their website as much as the front end. 

What Is Webflow?

Webflow is a closed source (i.e., a private company) website building platform that brought the solutions WordPress couldn’t: ease of use.

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Webflow lets you create websites visually, without needing to even understand anything about code. You can drag and drop elements to build your site.

Its flexibility and creativity make it a good choice for people who want more control over the look and feel of their websites. 

It also takes care of the hosting, so you can publish your site directly on the Webflow platform without worrying about anything going on in the backend.

WordPress vs Webflow: Comparison Chart

To get you an expert birds-eye overview of both WordPress and Webflow, here is a side by side rating:

Comparison Between WordPress and Webflow

Now you have a very vague idea of how Webflow and WordPress work with what. But which one you should go with will completely depend on what you want to build and which platform offers the best experience to you managing your business.

So, let’s get you through some of the most important criteria that will actually help you decide on one platform over another. 

And our verdict will be based on ease and comfort. We believe that a business owner should have more time managing the business, rather than a website. 

Ease Of Setup/Use

In terms of setting things up and using the platform from the get go, let’s see which platform offers a better user experience. 

Webflow

Webflow has a simple, easily understandable, smoothly guided onboarding process. Even a newbie, who never set up any website before, can get started with confidence. 

The system will even take an intuitive quiz to understand how to serve you better. 

WordPress

With WordPress, the onboarding can be fairly easy if you’re familiar with website backends. Unless using the hosted version and paying a good amount with limitations, you’ll have a lot of technicalities to set things up. 

But it’s rewarding once done, and if you know your stuff. 

No-Code Usability

Managing a fully functional website without knowing anything about coding is a different kind of freedom. Let’s see which one gets it done better.

Webflow

Webflow gives you a completely visual builder, so you don’t have to know anything about coding. You can even develop cutting edge websites with fancy animations and functionalities. They made it possible to seamlessly work everything out. 

WordPress

On the other hand, WordPress usually takes its toll on your technical knowledge if you want to use it without 3rd party support. However, if you integrate third party plugins and apps, you can achieve that no-code experience almost close to Webflow. 

Design Aesthetics

Design and aesthetics are a big part of modern websites. Let’s see which platform makes it easier to build an aesthetically pleasing website.

Webflow

Although Webflow is a completely visual builder, surprising how they’ve managed to pack so much under the hood. You can build amazing, wholesome fancy animations just by dragging and dropping with Webflow.

Responsive design, dynamic content editors, and complete design flexibility, Webflow can keep you on course as a visual tool. All you have to do is choose the right plan. It can be eCommerce platform plan, workspaces plan, or the one that suites your situation.

WordPress

WordPress is known for its flexibility in terms of customization. Given that, you can build any sort of animation you want on WordPress if you want to. Then again, it’s the technicalities that put WordPress behind the race at some point. But if you use third party plugins, you can design stunning animations too.

Blogging Feature

Blogging can be a big deal for many websites, especially if you’re into publishing, news, or regular posting. 

Webflow

Webflow is compatible with blogs, but the downside is that you can’t really have unlimited unless you pay extra. Although they compensate more cost with features like blog templates and cool features, that’s still a bummer for Webflow. 

WordPress

WordPress primarily started its journey as a blogging tool, and it’s the most popular CMS in the world. This is the primary reason why WordPress is so popular it hosts almost half the internet.

E-commerce and Integrations

Integrations, especially for e-commerce, CRM, and Social media can be important for a fully functional website. 

Webflow

Since Webflow is a closed source platform, the possibilities for third-party integrations are very slim. Webflow does not make its code available to the public. That makes third-party developers less relevance to create integrations for Webflow. More so, Webflow does have some integrations with popular apps and tools, such as Google Analytics, Salesforce, and MailChimp. 

These integrations allow users to connect their Webflow sites with these apps and tools, making it easier to manage their data and workflows. But Webflow has all the necessary features natively available on board, meaning that you won’t even need to integrate anything for the most part. 

WordPress

WordPress clearly wins this part if you talk about third party integrations. You will get thousands of options on WordPress to integrate. Take it for eCommerce, you get the incredible WooCommerce plugin, which, by the way, is free! 

So, compared to WordPress, Webflow doesn’t even scratch the surface, even though they have it all packed into the builder. 

Maintenance And Updates

Maintaining a website can be a real pain if you want to spend more time with business. Here’s what you should know before you choose one website platform over another:

Webflow

This is where Webflow takes a vast leap forward compared to WordPress. You’re completely in control and can claim your peace of mind with Webflow. They take care of all things maintenance and updates, at times when you would usually need a developer. 

WordPress

WordPress can give you a hard time when it comes to website maintenance and updates. Since you’re using multiple third party apps and integrations, you can’t just let it run on autopilot. 

There will always be an anxiety chasing you. An auto update to anything, the theme, or a plugin might break up your site! The hosting could go wrong! In short, you’ll have to always keep an eye on the site. 

SEO Friendliness

SEO is super important for any website if you want to get organic traffic to it from the search engines. How easy it is to optimize the website for SEO matters a lot while choosing your website builder. 

Webflow

In terms of SEO, Webflow is quite the opposite of WordPress. In Webflow, you can optimize your website just fine, but you’ll have to know the ins and outs of SEO. Where you can set a plugin to do all the heavy lifting with WordPress, Webflow requires a lot of manual jobs. 

Find out how well does Webflow do in terms of SEO from this detailed discussion.

WordPress

WordPress has become the standard for SEO, especially if you’re primarily doing the website for SEO, blogging, and publishing. You can quickly set things up with advanced SEO using plugins like Yoast SEO or Rankmath. The plugins will take care of pretty much everything from sitemaps to structured data and beyond. 

Verdict:

In short, Webflow does good with Search Engine Optimization, as it was build with SEO in mind. But you might need professional help to set things up, especially for advanced SEO. 

Flexibility And Scalability

As your business grows, your website grows along with you. So, being able to scale the website without any hiccups is a must. 

Webflow

Webflow has done an amazing job keeping their pricing plans accessible for all business sizes. No matter how small a website you start with, you can scale the size and functionality of the website as you grow. All you have to do is upgrade to a higher plan. 

However, the flexibility of working on the core of the website is limited with Webflow. In short, the scalability of Webflow is not practically infinite. 

WordPress

With WordPress, however, the possibilities of scaling and customizing the website are truly infinite. Need to publish 10 thousand blog posts? No worries, you can do that in no time.

Here, all you’re limited with is your hosting, which you can easily upgrade or plan big ahead of time. 

Themes And Templates

Themes and templates make life easier while building a website, especially for a business owner. 

Webflow

With Webflow, you’re getting all things baked into the system without needing any third party plugins or templates. They offer a fair amount of themes and templates that you can choose from. You can build a Webflow website with any design idea or functionality you have in mind.

Be it contact forms, security plugins, content management functionality, or any other additional features, you get everything without any additional costs.

WordPress

You’ll get hundreds of thousands of themes, templates, and plugins to build or design your website. Although deep customizations often need raw development, you’ll never be limited to pre-built templates for almost anything. 

Tip:

Unless you’re looking for a super custom website with customized elements to each level, Webflow won’t come short. That, is if you’re building the website yourself. If you’re hiring a developer, both Webflow and WordPress are just fine to go with. 

Security

Security is one thing you can never overlook while building and maintaining a website. Especially if you’re hosting user data and sensitive information, it becomes first priority. 

Webflow

Since Webflow is a closed source platform, everything security and updates are taken care of. It’s like having an iPhone with more security, compared to an Android with control in your hand.

WordPress 

With WordPress, the entirety is in your hand. You decide how secure the website will be and how well it will perform against intruders. That said, if you have secure hosting, and built the website with utmost security in mind, you should be just fine. 

Make sure all your integrations, theme, plugins, and codes are well-chosen and written. Otherwise, you might end up with a constant anxiety of getting bunked since there are too many moving parts.

Community And Support

Getting support when needed can be crucial for some, especially because it’s not you who built the platform. 

Webflow

You’ll get everything under one wrap, from hosting to CMS, and all sorts of functionality with Webflow. To get support, you can contact the Webflow customer support team, and they’ll get you dedicated help. Besides, there are now so many Webflow communities that will gladly help you figure things out. 

WordPress

WordPress, on the other hand, is primarily a community driven, open-source platform. While that might seem a no-go, the vast community is so dedicated, you’ll never feel alone when needed support. 

So, both the platforms are good to go when it comes to getting a community to hang out with and getting support. 

Pricing/Cost

Cost and pricing are where Webflow and WordPress choose the complete opposite paths to begin with. 

Webflow

Webflow is a company that runs for profit and makes their platform not by the community, but by employees. Therefore, you have to pay the premium fee to use their platform and build websites. 

For standard websites, the price for Webflow starts at $14 a month, $29 for CMS functionality, and $49 for big business websites. And if you have eCommerce functionalities to the site, it can be anywhere between $29 to $212 a month.

All these prices are for all things Webflow, meaning you won’t pay anything other than this monthly fee. 

WordPress

WordPress has two options; the hosted, and the self hosted version. The hosted version is pretty much the same as Webflow, where you pay a fee for all things taken care of. 

The self hosted version, on the contrary, will cost you nothing to start with. However, the prices start to add up as you start to buy things such as hosting, the theme, plugins, and so on. 

For a standard website, with a theme, 3 to 4 plugins, and the price for hosting, it can be around $200 to $400 a year. This can go beyond that if you want more custom functionalities, eCommerce, or high-traffic sites.

Tip:

As for the initial design and development phase, Webflow will cost you more then WordPress. However, once set up, Webflow has minimal maintenance cost. You can tackle minor things on our own and the rest are taken care of by Webflow. 

On the other hand, WordPress needs constant supervision to stay in good shape.

Webflow vs WordPress: Which One To Choose?

Okay, now that you have an idea about both the platforms, which one you should choose for your next website?

Well, it completely depends on two essential things:

• Are you technically sound enough for development?
• How you’re planning to maintain the website?

Choose WordPress?

If you’re a developer yourself, or have a dedicated developer to help you out with the job. Even though WordPress does have drag and drop, visual builders available, you still need to be technically savvy to use them. 

Everything from setting up hosting, to adding functionalities to the website, will take technical knowledge. If you’re ready to spend time learning or maintaining the website, WordPress can be a cost-efficient option to go with.  

Choose Webflow?

If you’re not a developer and love aesthetics, Webflow is here to rescue you with a completely visual building experience. Webflow is also a better option if you don’t want to invest time maintaining the website constantly. 

With Webflow, you don’t need extensive coding knowledge to build stunning websites. But if you want a completely custom website with third party tools, you want to go with WordPress.

Webflow is better for people without technical expertise between these popular website builders.

TLDR:

Final Verdict

Big businesses are using not WordPress, not totally custom websites, but Webflow. Why? 

Because Webflow offers the freedom you desire and the peace of mind you deserve. After going through both of them, you should have a good understanding of that by now. 

To sum it all up, If you want to have a highly functional website without having to know a line of code, Webflow is your best bet. And if technicalities aren’t your trade-off and are okay to invest time and effort in maintaining the website, WordPress has a higher stake.