WordPress vs Webflow: Which tool to choose in 2023?
Wordpress vs Webflow, which tool is the best site builder?
According to W3Techs, Wordpress powers 43% of websites. 🚀
This means that without Wordpress SEO, almost half the web would not exist.
The page builder has evolved well since its launch in May 2003. It quickly became popular with media and blogs, which still use WP for content creation and for its Wordpress templates.
If you are interested in Nocode web page builders, you can't miss Webflow.
A first version was available in 2013, but 2019 is when the tool explodes in terms of user numbers.
Obviously, if you're a writer or designer who knows nothing about code, these two options are great.
Wordpress or Webflow? Which one to choose? 🧐
Strengths and benefits: Wordpress and Elementor
Most people who are interested in this kind of tool have already tried both. But what are the advantages of choosing one over the other?
Let's start with the advantages of Wordpress.
Wordpress pricing: it's free
Wordpress has become so popular because it is free. You only have to pay for hosting. This is very practical for a beginner who is starting to build a website. Note that the backend is fully customisable. It is thus very simple to add bits of Json code for example, to add functions to its page. Thanks to its accessibility, WP has become the reference for bloggers. According to WP, 80% of the world's blogs and media use Wordpress for their operations. When it comes to pricing, the balance is in favour of WP in the Wordpress vs Webflow match.
Wordpress and Elementor vs. Webflow
Since the Gutenberg update of Wordpress, the builder has been revamped. This means that its interface is closer to a page builder as we know them today.
However, many users still prefer Elementor. A powerful plugin, pre-Gutenberg, that makes it easy to create sites, especially at the front end. With a great freedom of graphic creation and an infinity of addons/templates available.
Elementor is very similar to what Webflow offers, particularly in its " drag and drop " function, which allows you to place contextual elements (search field, button, call to action, etc.) and graphics (banner, video, image, etc.) in a playful way by simply moving your mouse.
According to Wordpress, Elementor has exceeded two million users at the time of writing. This means that one in eight WP users uses Elementor.
The addon has taken so much place in the Wordpress ecosystem, that it has its own addons. The best known, such as WooCommerce, allow you to add payment systems, in order to create e-commerce pages quickly. There is even a Shopify or Wix addon, allowing you to use the templates of the famous e-commerce builders to use them on Elementor.
🔥 Please note: Unlike WordPress, Elementor breaks with free. While some of the addon can be used without payment, you'll need to sign up for Elementor Pro to unlock the rest of the features. And most of Elementor's own addons are also paid.
WordPress SEO and its addons
Yoast SEO is very well known for its SEO addons for Wordpress and for SEO. It is not the only one and there are a multitude of addons that can give advice on how to improve the SEO of your pages.
Because of its age and its large community, Wordpress is without doubt the page builder with the widest range of features for SEO.
The SEO study of Nocode tools carried out by the innovation experts at Alegria.tech and the SEO experts at the uRoot agency lists 50,000 SEO plugins, whereas Webflow has only 270 at the moment.
Wordpress templates
With such a community, Wordpress enjoys an almost infinite number of templates and pre-designed models allowing to create pages for almost all types of subjects. Of course Webflow is not outdone and even if it is more recent, the templates it offers are as numerous and varied, and no doubt that with time, Webflow will have as many, or even more templates available. So we can not conclude that the battle of Wordpress templates vs. Webflow is played in advance.
Before closing on the main advantages of Wordpress, it is important to note thatElementor, the page building addon and certainly the most popular of the platform, but much less optimized than Webflow. It's a fact, the many user testimonials are unanimous, Elementor is sometimes very slow, which is very annoying.
Even with a very good computer and a stable internet connection, the addon remains an addon and can be annoying because of its numerous slowdowns and screen freezes.
This is one of Elementor's biggest problems and explains the growing success of Webflow, which is much less resource-intensive than its Wordpress counterpart.
Strengths and benefits of Webflow
If both tools are very appreciated by those who do not wish to create in code, each one has advantages and disadvantages. But it is interesting to note that more and more users are switching from WP to Webflow, notably for its fluidity of use.
Webflow pricing: a limited free version
Publishing a site on Webflow will cost you at least 12 dollars per month if you choose the annual subscription. Unlike Wordpress, Webflow pricing is more expensive. But don't worry, the editor has thought of everything since it is possible to publish (without the possibility to remove the watermark), test and learn on Webflow for free. This is very useful to switch from WP to Webflow or for any beginner who wants to practice. Note that the size of your site and its traffic directly influence the price.
Webflow is intuitive and ergonomic
Unlike Wordpress, Webflow has chosen to categorise its pages in the form of a database. This is much more practical to segment its website but also to manage the data and the construction of the site.
A way of doing close to Airtable. And it's a good thing, because by linking databases with it, it is possible to create dynamic pages that change according to the data collected.
As far as the build interface is concerned, Webflow and Elementor are very similar with the difference that Webflow is much less energy consuming than its counterpart. It is therefore more pleasant to build and faster to build a site on Webflow.
With simple drag and drop, you can let your creativity run free and start from a simple page to build the web page of your dreams.
Webflow templates: a marketplace and Nocode artists
The Webflow community is smaller, but no less active than the Wordpress community. There are many templatesThere are many templates available, both free and paid, via the site's marketplace. The editor and the members of the community set a purchase price for the template that you can then modify as you wish. There are templates for everything: dentist's office, real estate agency, bakery, fashion, etc.
SEO and Webflow: how to manage SEO?
Unlike Wordpress, there are still relatively few built-in addons to help you with this. If you are one of the many users migrating from Wp to Webflow, you will have to say goodbye to Yoast SEO and many of the Wordpress-specific addons.
However, Webflow is making up for this by offering better SEO auditing and keyword research tools.
In addition,Webflow's analysis of the nocode-seo.com study highlights a performance score of 77/100 (compared to 54/100 for Wordpress). This "Core Web Vitals" performance criteria consolidates several aspects of the quality of the user experience and has a considerable SEO impact.
Conclusion : Wordpress vs Webflow which one to choose ?
With Elementor, Wordpress has nothing to be ashamed of compared to Webflow. Both tools are excellent and both contribute to the creation of web pages. Because of its age, Wordpress is more used than Webflow, but for how long?
Many designers now prefer to turn to Webflow. Anyone who has ever used Elementor knows that the addon is powerful, but unfortunately very poorly optimised. Unlike Webflow, which runs on most modern computers without any slowdown concerns.
Thus, we would tend to recommend using Webflow to build your website. In addition, you can supplement with third-party SEO analysis software if your goal is to rank for particular keywords.