Webflow and WordPress are two of the most popular website builders out there. They are both excellent with similar functions; however, they use very different approaches to building a website.
Deciding between the two largely depends on your experience, how you want to build your website, and what you plan on using it for. Understanding the strengths and differences of WordPress and Webflow is key to building a website that looks great and functions seamlessly.
In this guide, we’ll dive into who each platform is best for, how they work, the pros and cons, and other factors to help you find the right CMS.
WordPress – An Overview
WordPress is the most popular Content Management System (CMS) for building a website, used by over 40% of all websites worldwide.
It is a free, open-source software, meaning anyone can download and use it to create a website. Because it is open-source, there is an extensive knowledge base of resources and forums out there to help you create the website you’re envisioning.
WordPress is known for being relatively easy to pick up, as it comes with tons of themes and ways to edit your site. All you need to do is buy a domain name and hosting service, and you can have your website up and running in just minutes.
However, the ease of setup comes with the downside of not being able to customize your website as freely as you may like. If you want to go beyond the basic themes and pre-built templates, you’ll need to know how to code (CSS, HTML, and JavaScript).
Who Is WordPress For?
WordPress is best for those who want complete control over their site’s design and functionality, as well as those who have experience with web development, as you’ll likely need to do some coding to get your website exactly how you want it.
WordPress Pricing
WordPress is an open-source platform, meaning it’s free to use. However, you will need to pay for a few things to get started: a domain name, hosting, and plugins. If you want to use more than just the simple free templates (or themes), you’ll need to pay for them, too.
It depends on how you want your WordPress website to look and what you plan to use it for. For example, a simple blogging website costs much less than a comprehensive e-commerce platform.
The minimal costs of using WordPress can include:
- Hosting: about $2 to $15/year
- Domain name: about $10 to $30/year
- Preset themes: about $0 to $200+
- Plugins: about $0 to $200
WordPress also has some paid plans that include extra features, such as a free domain, premium themes, unrestricted bandwidth, and no limitations on site visitors. Below are the plans, ranging from Personal to Enterprise, that can be paid per month or yearly:
Webflow – An Overview
Webflow is a popular all-in-one software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform for building and hosting a website. Unlike WordPress, all features are built-in, so you don’t have to worry about finding a host or installing a bunch of extra plugins.
The best thing about Webflow is the ability to fully customize and design your website exactly the way you want it, without code–which is a major drawback of WordPress.
With Webflow, you get the best of both worlds: the advantages of using a visual editor with the flexibility of creating a completely custom website to your exact standards. You don’t need to know how to code, but it can take some time and effort to learn how to use Webflow.
Who Is Webflow For?
Webflow is best for those who want a straightforward, easy way to create a professional website. You can use pre-made templates, but the drag-and-drop design interface also allows for complete customizability.
What is the Price of Webflow?
Webflow offers two types of site plans: general and eCommerce. Their general plans range from free to $39+/month, and eCommerce plans range from $29 to $212/month. You get the most savings if you choose the yearly billing option.
Here are their general site plans:
- Starter (free): includes a Webflow.io domain and up to 50 CMS items. This plan is really only enough to test it out and upgrade your plan from there.
- Basic ($14/mo): includes a custom domain but no CMS for blogging, so it is ideal for a simple website.
- CMS ($23/mo): includes a custom domain, 2,000 CMS items, 50GB bandwidth, and 3 editors, making it great for a small blog.
- Business ($39/mo): includes a custom domain, 10,000 CMS items, 100GB bandwidth, 10 editors, and 2,500 monthly form submissions, great for a larger site.
- Enterprise: meant for those who need more storage bandwidth, uncapped users, and scalability. You’ll need to contact them to discuss pricing.
Their eCommerce plans include:
- Standard ($29/mo): includes all CMS plan features and up to 2,000 CMS items, perfect for smaller, new businesses.
- Plus ($74/mo): includes all Business plan features and up to 5,000 CMS items, perfect for higher-volume businesses.
- Advanced ($212/mo): includes all Business plan features and up to 15,000 eCommerce items, perfect for larger, scaling businesses.
Unlike WordPress, Webflow includes hosting as part of its pricing plans, so you won’t need to purchase website hosting separately.
Is it more cost-effective to use WordPress? Short answer–yes. Long answer–it depends.
With WordPress, your initial costs are low if you use a free theme and plugins, as you’ll only need to pay for the domain and hosting. Ongoing costs are more variable, as you may need to pay for premium plugins and maintenance services over time.
However, as your site grows, costs can increase, especially if you use a more powerful hosting platform or more advanced plugins.
Pros and Cons of WordPress
Pros:
- It is cheap. WordPress is a free, open-source software that anyone can use. All you need to pay for are the hosting and domain names, which you can get for relatively cheap. WordPress is a great option if you want to get your website up fast without many upfront costs.
- It is open source. If you ever get stuck while working on your website, chances are that somebody has already had the same problem and has a solution out there, or somebody has built something you can use. WordPress has forums and Reddit pages you can look at.
- Very small learning curve. For a basic site, you don’t need to know how to code or do anything on the backend. WordPress has pre-built templates that you can download for free to edit text, images, etc.
- Perfect for blogging. WordPress originally started out as a blogging software, so it has many great functionalities such as tags, plugins, categories, widgets, and more.
- Easily customizable with plugins. Known for its plugins, WordPress allows you to customize your site and add the features and functionalities you need.
Cons:
- Lack of customization. If you want to go beyond a simple blog or fully customize a template, you’ll need to know how to code. You can’t really customize your website down to the pixel, as the themes are pre-built, essentially locking you into what you can do.
- Tricky to expand from blogging. WordPress makes blogging seamless, but if you want to create an eCommerce platform or something a little more complex, it can be tricky to navigate.
- You need to know how to code. Beyond the basic template and text editing, you’ll need to know how to code in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript if you want to deeply customize your website.
- Requires more work. Compared to other platforms, WordPress requires more setup, technical ability, and work to maintain the systems. You need to be able to set up your domain name and configure WordPress to your needs, which can take some time and effort.
Pros and Cons of Webflow
Pros:
- You have complete customization. Unlike WordPress, Webflow allows you to build your website from the ground up with unlimited styling options. You aren’t locked into a pre-built theme.
- Great for visual people. Webflow makes it easy to drag and drop various elements and build complex designs without coding. There are many options with different styles, themes, texts, links, etc.
- Live prototyping. You can visualize your website by creating mockups and live prototyping. Essentially, the design and development process become one.
- No plugins. You don’t need to install any plugins, as everything is included with Webflow. As a result, you’ll have a more stable, faster website.
- Great for animations. You can easily create thoughtful animations to make your website stand out, without using any code.
- Great customer support. Webflow offers direct customer support (for some plans), along with Webflow University, the Webflow blog, forum, and community.
Cons:
- Steep learning curve. To be able to design and develop your website exactly as you want it, you’ll need to invest some time and effort into learning how to use Webflow. There are classes on Webflow University, but it will probably take a few weeks for you to really get the hang of it.
- More expensive. It costs more than WordPress, as you’re paying for the ease of use and complete customizability. Paywalls for services and upgrades can be frustrating when quoting and budgeting for projects.
- Less integration. Webflow doesn’t integrate with as many third-party tools as WordPress, making it both easy to use and frustrating at times.
- Restrictive page limits. Webflow page limits are restrictive compared with many other platforms. All paid plans have a 150-page limit for ‘static’ pages. The ‘CMS’ plan allows 2,000 ‘dynamic’ pages, rising to 10,000 on the ‘Business’ plan. For professional bloggers or publications posting multiple articles daily, these limits could quickly become a problem, even making Webflow unusable after a couple of years.
Webflow vs WordPress: Ease of Use
Let’s see how Webflow and WordPress stack up against each other in terms of how easy they are to use.
WordPress
When first getting started with your website, WordPress can be a bit more difficult to set up than Webflow when first getting started with your website. With WordPress, the first steps include:
- Finding a hosting service
- Registering a domain name
- Installing WordPress
- Installing a theme
- Installing plugins
Once you have all that installed, WordPress can be quite simple–it all depends on what kind of website you want to create.
For example, you can build a blog quite easily. To create a new post, all you’ll need to do is select “Add New” under the post option on the main dashboard. Use the block editor to edit pages, posts, media, and more.
However, if you want to create a more complex website that you can fully customize, you will need to know how to code (at least the basics) and you’ll need some technical knowledge.
Webflow
Webflow is much easier than WordPress to set up; however, it can come with a steeper learning curve and can take some time to really learn how to use the platform and be able to customize your website the way you want it.
Webflow is a visual site builder that is quite intuitive, user-friendly, and has many more design options than WordPress’s basic block editor. With its drag-and-drop design, Webflow makes it easy to customize your website down to the pixel without any coding knowledge.
There are great accessibility, multi-language tools built in, and a functional built-in eCommerce tool, but some may require additional payment.
It also has many useful tutorials and Webflow University, where you can take courses and become certified in building websites using Webflow.
Webflow vs WordPress: Customization
WordPress and Webflow are quite different in terms of how you can customize your website. Here’s our take on it:
WordPress
If you know how to code, WordPress is almost limitless when it comes to flexibility and customization. You can browse thousands of free and paid themes, as well as over 50,000 free plugins to extend the functionality of your site.
You can go above and beyond the simple themes to really customize your website by tweaking the CSS or HTML or doing more advanced PHP coding.
WordPress is great for hosting a blog, as it was built for it. The Gutenberg editor allows you to write and customize blog articles using blocks that contain text and other media like images, videos, and links. You can manage the content, users, settings, and comments all within the WordPress dashboard.
Webflow
If you’re new to building websites or want a more visual approach to creating your ideal site, Webflow is perfect for you. It requires no code and has many options to make your website your own. It also has a huge library of modern, beautiful themes, making it far more advanced than WordPress in this department.
The drag-and-drop website builder uses blocks called containers to build the different sections of your site. Within these containers are elements like images, headers, and buttons, and you can style these elements with classes.
The code is still there, however, and if you have coding knowledge, you can go into the backend and access it, but it is not necessary. Webflow is more tailored towards web designers and front-end web developers.
Webflow vs WordPress: Plugins and Extensions
Both Webflow and WordPress offer all the tools you’ll need to create a website, but you may need to install some plugins and extensions to maximize your site’s functionality.
WordPress
WordPress has a massive library of over 50,000 plugins that you can install to add features to your site. Other marketplaces and independent sellers also offer a variety of premium plugins. For more advanced integrations, you can use tools like Uncanny Automator and WP Webhooks.
Popular WordPress plugins include:
- YoastSEO: SEO plugin for search engines
- WPForms: Drag-and-drop WordPress form builder
- WooCommerce: eCommerce platform
- Elementor: Intuitive drag-and-drop website builder
- MonsterInsights: Google Analytics plugin
- Akismet: Identifies and removes spam comments
- Jetpack: WordPress site security
Webflow
Unlike WordPress, Webflow does not offer official plugins, meaning you cannot add extensions that work with the Webflow interface. There are, however, over 250 integrations in the Webflow library.
However, you can use code to extend your services and features. For example, you can integrate a JavaScript snippet from a live chat service or use code to set up a membership site.
Webflow vs WordPress: eCommerce Functionality
Both Webflow and WordPress are great for creating eCommerce websites. Webflow has a functional built-in eCommerce tool and three different eCommerce site plans, ranging from 15,000 to 50,000 eCommerce items and 2,000 to 10,000 CMS items.
With WordPress, you can install plugins like WooCommerce to add full eCommerce functionality to your website. This even beats most dedicated eCommerce platforms.
Webflow vs WordPress: Customer Support
If something goes wrong or you just need a push in the right direction, the ability to contact customer support is what makes a business stand out.
WordPress
WordPress does not offer customer support, but there is more established documentation and support forums for users. There are also free resources like WPBeginner, where you can find guides and tutorials on how to create pretty much any type of site with WordPress.
Webflow
For most Webflow plans, you can contact customer support to help you with anything you need. New feature developments, product improvements, and more are also included in your monthly fee.
Which Is Better, WordPress or Webflow?
When deciding between WordPress and Webflow, there’s no easy answer. It all depends on what you need out of your website.
Webflow is a great option if you have a specific design in mind and want full customizability of every aspect of your site. You don’t need coding knowledge, as you simply drag and drop different elements to create your site’s pages. However, it is a bit more expensive than WordPress as it provides you with more built-in tools, templates, and features.
Many web designers and front-end developers will opt for Webflow, as many of its features are aimed to help designers build sites faster. It also has a huge library of templates and is fast at rendering visually beautiful websites, like artistic portfolios.
WordPress is great for those who are more tech-savvy and know how to code; although it isn’t a requirement, it helps you customize your site further. Most individuals and businesses who want to create a website will go with WordPress, as it is a cheaper option, quite flexible, and integrates with many more tools and plugins than Webflow.
WordPress also has a popular eCommerce plugin, WooCommerce, which is one of the best open-source tools on the market for creating successful businesses.
In a nutshell…
You should choose Webflow if you’re looking for an easy-to-use, all-in-one solution with powerful design capabilities and are willing to pay a monthly fee.
Choose WordPress if you need more flexibility and scalability and are okay with managing hosting, DNS, updates, and security yourself. It’s better suited if you need many third-party integrations or are creating complex projects.