According to one study released by W3Techs, 41% of businesses of all sizes use WordPress as the preferred platform to run their websites. Most businesses use WordPress as their preferred choice of platform because it is easy to use if they are new to web development, and it has various robust tools to create and manage a website. 41% of businesses are dependent on WordPress to make their website, and the remaining 59% are run on various platforms, some of which have emerged as competitive alternatives for WordPress.
Many people who have previously had their websites run on WordPress are also shifting to alternative platforms. For example, in the Web Design Services, while for some businesses, WordPress might be the ideal option for their CMS, every company has varied needs, and WordPress is not cutting it anymore.
Even though WordPress is one of the best platforms for small businesses, bigger businesses and multi-million-dollar companies often resort to other alternatives. Here are some of the most common reasons for businesses across various industries not using WordPress or transitioning to alternatives from WordPress at a later period:
Lots of plugins: WordPress websites use a lot of plugins to ensure that you are getting optimal results from your website. Some of these plugins are free, however, most of them require you to pay a fee, making it challenging for businesses to keep track of all the plugins for extra features on their websites. In addition, since anyone can build a plugin that you can use on your WordPress site, it possesses security risks too. Since WordPress is a widely used platform, there are many malware, viruses, and malicious methods designed explicitly toward WordPress websites.
Security risks: Since WordPress uses many plugins, there is a higher security risk to the websites. Since plugins do not come as a part of the core package, you must download them from third-party websites and synchronize them with your website features. If you do not know which plugins to use, it might often slow down your website speed, which is not suitable for a business to have a slow website. In addition, WordPress websites have been the subject of many hacking attacks in the last few years, which affected many businesses.
Low Flexibility: Since WordPress is mainly meant for people who have little to no technical knowledge and want to create a quick and easy website, it does not give enough flexibility to experienced designers. So when medium to large businesses expand their services and have specific needs, they do not have the flexibility to add new features to their website. The limited features and low flexibility often prompts businesses to transition to alternative platforms for better results.
Frequent maintenance: It is crucial to keep your website and app updated to improve user experience and benefit from it; however, too many plugins and theme updates often become a hassle. With WordPress, you will be required to update your themes and plugins frequently, which becomes tiresome. Frequent updates also mean the features in WordPress use codes that include weaknesses and bugs, which is not safe for businesses.
Limited SEO features: One of the many reasons businesses are shifting to WordPress alternatives is because it offers minimal SEO features. If you do have the option to implement all the necessary Search Engine optimization techniques, ranking on Google and other major search engines becomes hard. Therefore, a business needs to rank higher on SERPs to ensure growth in sales and an organic customer base.
Limited Image handling: Whether you have a business selling products or offering services, images are an essential part of marketing and optimizing your website. To ensure that all your images on the website are properly optimized, you would be required to edit them. Unfortunately, WordPress offers extremely limited image handling options like cropping, rotating, and flipping. Since the images appear in different dimensions across different devices, a platform must allow users to do zoom-and-pan cropping or focal points for better optimization.
These are some of the top reasons people choose WordPress alternatives or shift to alternative platforms to host their business websites.
If you are a business owner weighing options against your WordPress websites, here are details of a few alternatives that could help your business reach new heights:
Read More: How to Make the WordPress Site Mobile-Friendly?
Ghost: Ghost is probably one of the most popular alternatives to WordPress for its beautiful yet straightforward UI that allows users to create blogs and posts without distracting them with any menus, tools, or widgets that are not related to writing. Ghosts offer a high chance of ranking higher in the SERPs for business because it is built with JavaScript using Node.js. In addition, the platform is designed for optimized performance and scalability as it has a non-blocking I/O model.
Websites built on Ghost also have higher speed improvements than WordPress, at 678% higher than the latter. Both web developers and users love websites with high speed, making Ghost the instant favorite and a better alternative to WordPress. Even though small businesses find it challenging to find a hosting service that can run Ghost because it is pricier, big businesses are shifting to Ghost almost every day.
Jekyll: If a fast-loading website is crucial for your core business operations, nothing can be better than Jekyll hosting your site. Jekyll takes your text files and stitches them together to create a static HTML site, making it easier for the website to be fast loading. If you have a web developer in your team who loves getting their hands dirty using the command line, Jekyll is best suited for you.
Since Jekyll is a static site generator, it does not require server-side programming, and you can easily host your website using GitHub pages. If your website developer is someone who would rather work with coding than pretty UIs, for high-performing website solutions, Jekyll is something they would enjoy.
Statamic: Statamic uses both static and dynamic elements to be the perfect alternative for WordPress CMS development services. It is a flat-file CMS where you can create and render website pages on the fly like WordPress but by storing the content in a simple directory structure using flat files. Statamic is designed to build and manage bespoke, custom websites for big businesses.
It is an excellent alternative to WordPress because WordPress gets complicated the more and more custom functionality you add, while it is the opposite of Statamic, as it thrives leveraging the access to the entire Laravel ecosystem. In addition, for all the data stored in Statamic CMS, you can see any changes you make to these files through version control, eliminating the need for database backup.
Craft: One of the many reasons WordPress is not flexible is because it was built as a blog tool for bloggers to share their content. While it may have become a de-facto tool for building websites easily, it is still a tool for blogging over the years. Craft is one of the WordPress alternatives, a flexible tool that allows you to organize and manage various forms of content like pages, events, products, venues, categories, users, files, widgets, etc.
Unlike WordPress, you also do not have to stick to a specific, pre-built template to design the website. Instead, craft allows developers to design and build a website from the ground up, tailored to their requirements. It is also far more secure than any WordPress site you would ever come across because it is built on the Yii framework, with a more reliable and scalable ecosystem.
Perch: With Perch, you can build your website first and then add CMS functionality later, and it has both static and dynamic content. For small and medium businesses, Perch is the ideal platform to build a website on because it is designed to deliver the optimal solution to all the content management needs. If you have a web developer in your team, use Perch as your WordPress alternative because it is targeted at professionals who like working with complex designs for better results.
Since Perch does not have pre-designed themes, code, or visual elements, it is perfect for businesses looking for uniquely designed websites both in terms of visuals and optimization. Additionally, since it does not have built-in designs and themes, Perch’s editing and browsing websites are faster than WordPress.
Joomla: With 6.6% of global websites built using Joomla, it is fast becoming one of the most popular alternatives to WordPress. When using WordPress, you cannot go back once you select a template to work with, which is not the case with Joomla. Joomla allows you to use multiple templates on your website that you can use to differentiate between your primary website and blog pages. Joomla is far more robust than WordPress, as it allows you greater content flexibility with exceptional design freedom.
In WordPress, if you want to make your content available in multiple languages, you will have to install plugins separately, increasing your workload. Joomla allows you to make your website multi-lingual from the start, and if any language you want is not available already, all you need to do is install the language module.
Grav: If you are looking for a static website with CMS, Grav is another solid alternative to WordPress. As a flat-file CMS, since Grav stores files and data in text files rather than databases, websites built using Grav have a faster loading speed. Grav not only offers the best technology in the business, but it is also easy to use and offers an attractive WordPress website design.
The themes in Grav are easier to modify; you can take out any theme you do not like and add anything that suits your business and industry best to your website. Like WordPress, Grav also allows you to install plugins with it so that you can make the most out of it. Since it does not require any installation and offers easy theme customization and multi-language support, Grav is perfect for small and medium-sized businesses.
Since WordPress is a reasonably popular platform when it comes to hosting websites and CMS, finding an alternative that you can trust is not an easy thing to do. However, you might look for alternatives for various reasons, and to find the ideal one; you should do some research and factor in certain requirements of yours. For example, suppose you are looking for an alternative that has website building tools and hosting tools in one place. In that case, you might benefit from proprietary CMS because they have advanced security features and built-in SEO tools.
If you like to have website building tools and hosting in one place but do not want to pay for advanced features and CMS’s built-in features, website builder platforms are ideal.
Publishing platforms like Medium and Tumblr are the perfect alternative
If you just want to share your content without worrying about site maintenance. It allows you to publish your multimedia without paying for any features, and it comes under your budget too.
Choosing the WordPress alternatives often depends on your budget, the amount of control you want with your website, and how secured and fast you want your website to be. Once you figure it out, finding a suitable alternative is easier and more worthwhile.
Having more than eight years of experience, Deepak Chaudhary is well versed in planning and prototyping new applications. Deepak Chaudhary is on the Website Developer team. As part of his many operational duties at JDM Web Technologies, Deepak Chaudhary oversees web development and builds the company culture. With a background in design and development, Deepak Chaudhary has the unique perspective of creating a website. Deepak Chaudhary started programming in 2010 and became an experienced web designer. He is well known for testing the site and applying different browsers. He has been are often involved with the designing and appearance of a website.
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