The 6 Best WordPress Alternatives for a Website, Blog or Online Shop

WordPress not your thing? There are many WordPress alternatives that offer a simpler (or more flexible) approach depending on your needs.

The Best WordPress Alternatives in 2022

1. Wix

Wix is ​​an intuitive website builder that includes most of the elements needed to build websites. All you have to do is select and drag them around, choose between a few options and you’re almost there. All without knowing a line of code. More than 125 million are using Wix, so let’s see what the team got right:

main features

• Contains powerful, easy-to-use tools in a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG editor
• Wix artificial design intelligence helps you create personalized websites
• 800+ design templates for any type of website
• Built-in tools to customize theme and layout
• Hosted solution with a powerful ecommerce platform
• Hassle-free coding for advanced functionality
• SEO friendly, mobile friendly and includes a mobile editor

pricing

Wix offers a free branded plan, but serious webmasters will want a premium plan:

• combo – $16 per month
• Unlimited – $22 per month
• professional – $27 per month
• V.I.P – $45 per month
• business basics – $27 per month

In some countries like India and UK there is a simpler plan called Connect Basicwhich is cheaper than any of the plans listed above.

WordPress or Wix?

• WordPress offers a huge library of themes and plugins, some of which can lead to incompatibilities, while Wix has a smaller number that are perfectly compatible in every way.
• Unlike WordPress, with Wix you’re pretty much dependent on the template you choose.
• Wix comes with a WYSIWYG editor so you can see the elements being added visually, while WordPress requires you to use a preview button to see your updates, or alternatively use a page builder plugin.
• Like most WordPress alternatives, Wix offers limited payment gateways.
• Wix prioritizes ease of use, while WordPress prioritizes being a flexible and customizable tool.
• Wix packs all the regular features needed for a website, but for something out of the ordinary, WordPress offers more functionality.

Who Should Use Wix?

Anyone who wants everything taken care of and just needs the regular website features. However, bloggers might want to give this a miss as it lacks many blog-specific features. This is why some bloggers are migrating Wix to WordPress.

2. domain.com

domain.com is a hosted solution that allows anyone to create any type of website, blog or even an e-commerce store. It includes an easy-to-use website builder along with a number of pre-made sections and page layouts.

main features

• AI assistance in choosing the right layout for your website, including images and initial content
• Customization options with theme protection to maintain professional looks and functionality
• More than 550,000 images in an integrated image library
• Powerful online store with inventory management tools for physical products
• Possibility to also sell digital products with coupons, discount codes and integrated shopping
• Social media sharing, lead capture forms and contact management tools to grow your audience

pricing

Domain.com offers three plans that are ideal for launching a new website, small business, or scalable online store:

• Starter – $1.99 per month
• business – $6.99 per month
• Ecommerce – $12.99 per month

WordPress or Domain.com Website Builder?

• Domain.com is cheaper. You can start a website for less than $2 a month, including hosting. WordPress itself is free, but hosting and other setup fees can add to the cost.
• Domain.com allows you to easily switch domains. This gets a bit complex with WordPress.
• Domain.com has ecommerce capability out of the box, while WordPress requires some work before you can start selling online.
• Little to no coding is required at Domain.com. The same goes for WordPress, although coding skills can help to better customize a WordPress site.

Who Should Use Domain.com?

Domain.com is a leading domain registration service. For small users, it makes sense to host their website on their servers and manage everything from one place. Small businesses that run an online store and want a one-stop solution for domain, web hosting, business email options, and support will be happy with Domain.com.

3.Shopify

Shopify is one of the best WordPress alternatives if you specifically want to create an ecommerce store. Here’s what makes Shopify a hit with store owners:

main features

• Fully hosted and offers 24/7 technical support
• Plenty of stylish, interactive, contemporary Shopify themes and templates to choose from
• Possibility to tailor your own theme
• An easy-to-navigate backend makes it easy to add products and other variants
• Easily track order and fulfillment status, notes and comments
• Offers various payment options
• A unique shipping and tax calculator
• Tokenized trading to connect crypto wallets to storage
• Exclusive NFT Commerce experiences that allow you to tie personal benefits to NFTs
• Integrated B2B and Shopify point of sale (POS)
• A dynamic third-party app store helps you grow your store

pricing

You can try Shopify with a 14-day free trial. After that, you can explore the fully-featured premium plans. Three popular Shopify price points are listed below:

• Basic Shopify – $29 per month
• Shopify – $79 per month
• Advanced Shopify – $299 per month

Additionally, Shopify has a starter plan starting at $5 per month that allows you to sell products through social and messaging apps, and Shopify Plus starting at $2000 per month for high-volume businesses.

WordPress (WooCommerce) or Shopify?

Who Should Use Shopify?

Beginners who want a nice-looking, fully-functional store without being too practical can go with Shopify.

4. drupal

drupal is the most popular content management system (CMS) behind WordPress. It’s open source, loads fast, is highly scalable, and includes features for any type of website. Here’s what makes it better suited for larger organizations:

main features

• Modular construction which gives flexibility to create versatile content. Themes help vary the presentation, and add-ons enhance functionality
• Packaged Drupal content or “distributions” serve as starter kits
• Integration with external services and apps so you can scale Drupal’s functionality
• Drupal is reliable and highly secure
• Rich media support for images, audio and video files
• API-driven multi-channel content delivery in both decoupled and hybrid decoupled modes
• Customizable workflows, mobile-first approach
• Multilingualism enables seamless translations

pricing

Drupal is free. However, you’ll have to find your own web host and pay for technical expertise if you don’t have coding skills.

WordPress or Drupal?

• Although a helpful host can make things easy for beginners, you’ll likely need technical help to customize or update Drupal, while WordPress is much more intuitive and easy to customize.
• Drupal is very secure as is the WordPress core, but many WordPress themes and plugins can introduce vulnerabilities.
• WordPress is SEO friendly from the start and Drupal is built with SEO best practices in mind.
• Drupal is faster, although not really a DIY thing to keep it running smoothly, while WordPress site speed optimization is much more beginner-friendly.

Who Should Use Drupal?

Of all the WordPress alternatives, Drupal is perhaps the best for building content-rich websites with advanced features. The multi-level taxonomy and highly secure environment coupled with flexibility and scalability make it a good solution for larger organizations with a hierarchical structure. Newbies brave enough to try it may find the starter kits helpful.

5. Square room

Squarespace offers an all-in-one platform for almost any type of website. It’s a fully managed website builder that offers something for everyone and is especially suited to creative folks. Just select a template, edit it to your liking and a stunning website is ready to showcase your work.

main features

• A sufficient number of well-designed all-in-one templates to keep your website looking professional
• Customize by dragging and dropping entire sections
• Wide range of features to build any website including ecommerce websites
• Dozens of integrations with apps/services
• Free unlimited hosting with no website disk space or bandwidth limits
• Mobile-optimized from the start, AMP-compatible pages
• Option to upgrade to the new drag-and-drop editor, fluid enginewhich offers greater customization options using a grid system
• Branded email campaigns and social tools to grow your customer base

pricing

Squarespace offers a short free trial, after which you’ll need a premium plan:

• personally – $16 per month
• business – $23 per month
• Basic trading – $27 per month
• Advanced Trading – $49 per month

WordPress or Squarespace?

• WordPress has many themes with ready-made templates, but Squarespace templates really shine when it comes to design.
• Unlike WordPress, customization with Squarespace is limited to the features available in the customizer.
• Squarespace includes a section-based WYSIWYG editor. With WordPress, unless you are using a page builder, you will only see the changes in preview mode.
• In addition to many built-in tools that a website requires, Squarespace allows for some integrations with online services. The WordPress API is powerful to allow developers to significantly extend most of the functionality.
• Although Squarespace offers unlimited storage and bandwidth for all plans, WordPress lets you build cheaper websites.
• Squarespace only allows limited export of content to an XML file (excluding product pages, audio, and video content). That’s not the case with WordPress, where you can export everything.

Who should use Squarespace?

For any website that needs to display high-quality images in attractive environments, Squarespace is a great option. It comes with built-in blogging tools, making it ideal for a creative’s website with an accompanying blog. The impressive display with great ecommerce features makes it a good showcase for small websites. But you will feel limited as your business grows due to limited design and external integrations.

6. Spirit

For anything related to blog, magazine, publication or any kind of writing, Spirit is a wonderful platform. You can self-host your own Ghost-powered website or opt for the Ghost servers. Here’s what can make it a writer’s favorite:

main features

• Fully managed secure service that includes a range of modern and powerful publishing tools
• The fully extensible editor allows you to insert dynamic content blocks such as images, embeds, videos and text
• With dynamic routing and robust tagging capability, you can create custom home pages, URL structures, and multilingual content
• Full SEO optimization, built-in AMP support, detailed structured data, full RSS feeds, subscription capture forms, and Slack integration hooks all help spread your content widely across social media and other forums
• A JSON API that gives you complete control over data retrieval and display, and allows you to fully customize the user experience
• Create a level of access to posts using membership tiers
• Possibility to offer discounts
• Send posts via tag-based email as an alternative to publishing directly to your website
• New features like product cards, GIFs and NFT embeds

Pricing:

Like WordPress, you can self-host the Ghost software for free.

You can also pay Ghost to host it for you. After a 14-day free trial are here the premium plans:

• Starter – $9 per month (up to 500 members)
• Creator – $25 per month (up to 1,000 members)
• team – $50 per month (up to 1,000 members)
• business – $199 per month (up to 10,000 members)

WordPress or Ghost?

• While Ghost is built specifically for bloggers and publishing, WordPress can be used for any type of website.
• The WordPress editor separates the entire page into blocks. Ghost allows you to view the entire page using the WYSIWYG editor.
• WordPress has an extensive range of themes and plugins to cover the needs of a wide range of websites. Ghost has a smaller number to support blogs.
• Ghost uses Node.js, which makes it faster than WordPress.
• Installing and starting is more difficult with Ghost.

Who Should Use Ghost?

Ghost can be the ideal solution for any blogger looking for a clean, all-in-one blogging solution. The simple content creation process can be a big draw for those looking for good WordPress alternatives to blogging.

Let’s summarize these WordPress alternatives

And that concludes our collection of the top six WordPress alternatives for a variety of uses. To recap, you have:

• Wix – hosted website builder.
• domain.com – Affordable, easy-to-use website builder with e-commerce capability.
• Shopify – for ecommerce stores.
• drupal – Flexible CMS.
• place – hosted website builder similar to Wix.
• Spirit – Platform for blogging.

Do you have questions about which of these best WordPress alternatives is the ideal choice for your needs? Ask in the comments!

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