Currently, numerous CMS hosting tools and WordPress hosting plans are available in the market. Do these new alternatives mean WordPress is no longer the go-to solution it once was? Not at all. WordPress still empowers over one-third of all websites and two-thirds of websites that use a content management system (CMS). However, there are now newer, more productive, and importantly, superior alternatives to the WordPress platform.
In many scenarios, affordable web hosting for WordPress may no longer be the optimal solution for users with diverse business needs. While WordPress is a powerful CMS, it often requires basic coding expertise to make customizations. Additionally, users need to manage other aspects like domain registration, hosting, themes, and more to extend the functionality. Thus, in this blog, we will discuss the top ten alternatives to WordPress––each with unique features that may better suit different types of users and projects.
Certainly, WordPress isn’t a bad option; however, one of the following alternatives might be a more appropriate solution for you.
Table of Contents
Top 10 WordPress Alternatives
1. Joomla
Joomla holds the second largest market share among CMS platforms, making it one of the best open-source alternatives to WordPress. It provides more advanced user management capabilities compared to WordPress. Since Joomla is free, you only need to pay for web hosting, templates, and extensions. Joomla offers exceptional features like SEO tools and multi-language support out of the box.
Additionally, it lets you deploy many small customizations without depending on third-party plugins. With WordPress, this feature isn’t included unless you use a plugin-based editor such as Elementor or Beaver.
2. Drupal
Drupal ranks right next to Joomla in the CMS popularity chart. For instance, Drupal features a powerful taxonomy system, custom content types, superior user permission control, along with multi-language functionality. Its modules and themes make it even more flexible. One of the key benefits of Drupal is it’s more secure than any other content management system, making it a popular choice for CMS for government websites like NASA.gov.
Drupal is free, yet more costly in terms of time or expertise. It either demands your time, or you pay for a developer’s time and expertise. WordPress’s over-dependence on the third-party ecosystem makes it vulnerable to security threats. In contrast, Drupal uses business-grade security, making it a great solution for websites that prioritize security.
3. Square Online
If you are looking for a free CMS for your website, then Square Online can be an ideal alternative for you. Square Online is one of the best free website builders, offering an easy-to-use and intuitive layout editor. Unlike the free plans offered by other website builders, Square Online stands out by offering generous features.
Its free plan also includes a broader range of e-commerce features compared to most competitors. Owing to its drag-and-drop interface and professionally made templates, users can effortlessly create professional-looking websites.
4. Squarespace
Squarespace is a visual drag-and-drop website builder. With Squarespace’s pre-integrated themes, plugins, hosting, and SEO tools, you never have to touch the coding part. Squarespace is popular for its innovative templates. They typically feature a distinct yet user-friendly appearance— bold typography, white space, and ample scope to showcase photography.
They also come with superior features such as outstanding blogging, photo galleries, podcast hosting, e-commerce, and much more. Thanks to its pre-integrated photo gallery plugin, you don’t need to waste hours searching for the perfect plugin. Additionally, Squarespace is fully hosted: hence, there’s no need to set up or configure a host; everything works effortlessly right out of the box.
5. Shopify
Shopify’s core caters to ecommerce features such as products, discounts, analytics, marketing, and much more. Shopify comes with a robust App store that supports various tasks such as, gift wrap upsells, and back-in-stock notifications.
However, there’s a lot more to Shopify than the App Store. They’re continuously transforming the e-commerce industry with their cutting-edge solutions. Shopify offers a myriad of services, including Shopify Capital for small business loans, Shopify Payments for seamless payment processing, Shopify Fulfillment Network for proficient shipping, and much more. Contrastingly, a few things only work perfectly well with Shopify—for instance, deploying a Facebook Pixel can be seamless with Shopify.
6. Web Flow
The Webflow designer tools offer you the flexibility of front-end coding without the need to code. You can also incorporate a full CMS into the WebFlow Designer. The CMS allows you to create content types from fields—for instance, texts, images, colors, and a WYSIWYG editor.
Webflow can also be white-labelled and can manage several client projects within one dashboard. Plus, Webflow includes a client billing service to bill your clients and even add your markup. An editor interface is also available for teams and clients, avoiding the necessity to guide clients through the complicated WordPress backend.
7. Ghost
Ghost is an open-source platform like WordPress; however, unlike WordPress, Ghost is solely dedicated to publishing. Ghost has a different vision—it remains focused on publishing, rather than becoming a full-scale CMS.
It offers publishers a plethora of benefits such as:
Apart from that, Ghost remains an intuitive solution. You can consider Ghost if you’re seeking an elegant, streamlined alternative to WordPress without the clutter of complex menus and settings.
8. Jamstack
Jamstack is not merely a tool; it’s a whole repository of tools. And this is more for developers, as Jamstack needs coding. Jamstack offers an advanced way of creating websites that don’t use server-side rendering.
That might seem abstract; however, in practice, it’s quite powerful. For instance, Websites designed with Jamstack often experience performance boosts—some even report Google PageSpeed scores improving from the 30s to the 90s. Additionally, you will be able to integrate with a great CMS (Netlify CMS).
The Jamstack ecosystem is rapidly evolving, offering a multitude of new tools that can be seamlessly integrated to create flexible and efficient web solutions. For instance, there are many static website generators such as Gatsby, Hugo, Jekyll, and more. These static website generators can be combined with all kinds of CMSs, Contentful, Sanity, and many more.
9. Wix
Wix is quite similar to Squarespace, as both serve as all-in-one website-building platforms. With Wix’s templates and beginner-friendly drag-and-drop editor, you can create a website, blog, or online store—no need to write a line of HTML, CSS, JS, or PHP code.
Websites made on Wix are more customizable compared to Squarespace, thanks to its flexible editor and vast array of options. For leveraging this flexibility, you need to have a basic understanding of design and elements, to enhance the outcome. However, the learning curve for WordPress exceeds that of Wix. Wix comes with its ecosystem. You can use Wix’s free plan to test the platform and create a website without spending anything to see your live website.
10. Carrd
One of the common use cases of WordPress is creating personal websites or professional landing pages. These websites don’t need more than a single page–ideal for introducing yourself, telling your story, and highlighting your projects on a single page.
If your goal is to build a clean, single-page website, Carrd is a streamlined and more purpose-built alternative worth exploring. Carrd is precisely designed for creating a single-page website. While there’s a small learning curve, Carrd is significantly more beginner-friendly compared to WordPress. With Carrd, you can get started from idea to website quickly—no need to worry about hosting, plugin compatibility, or backend support.
Conclusion
With a multitude of blogging platforms available, you no longer need any coding skills to launch your blog. The real challenge is now identifying what best aligns with your needs. While WordPress remains a dominant platform, it’s no longer the only path to create a successful online website. These alternatives offer sturdy solutions for blogging and CMS hosting.
If you’re seeking new platforms to start your blog or CMS website, MilesWeb is a reliable solution to consider. With blazing-fast servers, dedicated customer support, and customized plans for bloggers and CMS users, MilesWeb makes launching and managing your website swift and effortless.
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