Square Online vs. Webflow vs. WordPress

If you are having students create websites or information pages about something they are studying in class, this is a great option. The fact that students can spend less time getting situated and learning the app and get right to work researching and creating their pages is great. For middle to high school, this is a fantastic app to use. However, if you want more nuanced analytics or want students to focus on blogging more than webpage building, this is limited.

Incentivized

Since the purpose in my case is to build a small professional looking site to present project outcomes and other research, I can create custom fields and design experimentations. Webflow builds sites that are super professional, with many amazing templates that don't look cheap. Additionally, I can test responsive layouts. Apart from this, I used 1-2 static pages to illustrate key findings for example what a multilingual site could look like with screenshots without needing CMS in free version, which are all the valuable skills to acquire. Compared to WordPress, Webflow is expensive with limited free features, although it has really cool additional features that will make the site I build stand out.

Incentivized

Wordpress is a great solution for a website of nearly any type. It may not be as suitable if a fully custom solution or app is needed, and it does have some limitations when it comes to connecting it to external products (especially if the product doesn't have any support from a native system), and it does require a lot of testing. Multiple plugins in one install are common but also increase the risk of conflicts, and when those do occur, it can be exceptionally time-consuming and tedious to identify what is causing the issue. As third parties create many plugins, you're also at risk with each potential security breach, which needs to be kept in mind. I would be cautious to use WordPress to store any sort of sensitive PPI. That said, it's a wonderful, easily customizable solution for many, many different types of websites and can allow even inexperienced client users with low-tech knowledge to update basics.

Incentivized

• Drag and drop interface makes it very easy to add all types of content, including images, text, video (and YouTube videos), embeddable applications and more.
• It's very easy to set up navigation features like cascading menus and sticky navigation (where the menu stays put - may depend on the template chosen though).
• A technical backend is fairly straight-forward for setting up a fav icon, 301 redirects, SEO, Google Analytics, etc.

Incentivized

• Saves time- because I don't have to do double entry of content.
• It saves money. I like that it is an all-in-one system, so I don't have to host elsewhere.
• Flexibility - Webflow provides me with a lot of flexibility in my webpage design, allowing me to adjust pages as needed, depending on the content types.

Incentivized

• Easy to use User Interface
• Coding / Plugin Implementation is awesome
• There's always a solution available for the platform
• Security is easy to use and robust
• Implementation with 3rd party platforms, such as Google's variety of tools
• Can download and host on your own server or use their hosted servers

Incentivized

• Weebly doesn't have a lot of templates to choose from, so if you don't have any experience with CSS or HTML, it's hard to customize your site to an extent.
• Weebly isn't fully SEO friendly. They don't allow you to add H1 tags to pages out of the box.
• You can't create folder structures when it comes to web page URLs. You can put web pages under a main menu dropdown, but they don't allow you to put all sub-menu items in a structured folder (like site.com/folder/page-1 and site.com/folder/page-2).

Incentivized

• Brand recognition is still behind WordPress, which can make it a challenging sell for clients looking to play it safe in their CMS decision.
• The CMS is ideal for smaller datasets, but higher content sites introduce some minor challenges.
• Alignment between designers and developers is key prior to implementation. The flexibility of the platform requires careful planning to avoid over-engineering.

Incentivized

• WordPress breaks often so you need to have someone who understands how to troubleshoot, which can take time and money.
• Some plugins are easier to customize than others, for example, some don't require any coding knowledge while others do. This can limit your project if you are not a coder.
• WordPress can be easily hacked, so you also need someone who can ensure your sites are secure.

Incentivized

Weebly is consistently adding features that line up with our needs. The ease of use makes it the perfect program for us since we have users of multiple age brackets and knowledge of web design. We love that we can give users access to only the pages they are affiliated with

Incentivized

It's the perfect balance of GUI and code control

Incentivized

The complications we have and the lack of support. Every plugin has a differente team of support in charge and make one plugin work with the other one always affects the website performance. It's a thousand times better to have only one provider with all functionalities included unless you are an expert web developer or have a team dedicated to it

Incentivized

Very easy to use and intuitive to design after all of our business needs. From the website and POS system to how we represent ourselves internally and to our customers... Square is second-to-none in helping our business and others in our same boat become the kind of businesses we want to be when it comes to our inventory and sales of these kinds of products.

Incentivized

Webflow is very easy for a beginner to get started with and achieve good results, but to achieve an expert level of understanding requires experience and some web development knowledge. HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript knowledge aren't required to use Webflow, but an expert will know BEM class naming patterns, be able to create reusable elements and design systems, and add 3rd party integrations that require custom code.

Incentivized

Extremely easy to use and train users. It took very little time to get everyone trained and onboarded to start using WordPress. Anytime we had any issues, we were able to find an article or video to help out or we were able to contact support. The menu options are well laid out so it is easy to find what you are looking for.

Incentivized

In my experience, their customer service is an absolute joke, I tried reaching out to them they took forever. I had to keep following up with them as if they never received it in the first place. It’s a new platform, so guidance is needed. Tried the university they offer, in my opinion, it is completely useless, I would just completely move on from this website.

Anyone can visit WordPress.org and download a fully functional copy of WordPress free of charge. Additionally, WordPress is offered to users as open-source software, which means that anyone can customize the code to create new applications and make these available to other WordPress users.

In my opinion, it is horrible, the rendering takes forever. I have the newest MacBook and the platform will still lag and slow down on me. I’m not a developer, I am a designer which makes it worst because I am using the features they are providing not extra coding features. In my opinion, it is a horrible platform really, stay away.

Mostly, any performance issues have to do with using too many plugins and these can sometimes slow down the overall performance of your site. It is very tempting to start adding lots of plugins to your WordPress site, however, as there are thousands of great plugins to choose from and so many of them help you do amazing things on your site. If you begin to notice performance issues with your WordPress site (e.g. pages being slow to load), there are ways to optimize the performance of your site, but this requires learning the process. WordPress users can learn how to optimize their WordPress sites by downloading the WPTrainMe WordPress training plugin (WPTrainMe.com) and going through the detailed step-by-step WordPress optimization tutorials.

I haven't had to engage them from a support perspective; however, there is a considerable user community for tips/ideas/troubleshooting and the like. I believe the Pro plan supports additional resources but we didn't find that the cost justified the outcome. Overall the need for support has been relatively minor.

Incentivized

I give this rating, which I believe to be a great rating for a community based support system that's surrounding it. Most platforms and products have their own, and as WordPress does have their own team that help here and there, a lot of it's handled by community involvement with dedicated users who are experts with the system who love to help people.

Varies by the person providing training. High marks as it's incredibly easy to find experienced individuals in your community to provide training on any aspect of WordPress from content marketing, SEO, plugin development, theme design, etc. Less than 10 though as the training is community based and expectations for a session you find may fall short.

It is very easy to find online resources to learn how to do just about anything with WordPress.

WordPress is not a great solution if you have: 1) A larger site with performance / availability requirements. 2) Multiple types of content you want to share - each with its own underlying data structure. 3) Multiple sites you need to manage. For very small sites where these needs are not paramount, WordPress is a decent solution

Weebly's designs, plugins, and customization options are a little more advanced in some cases than other similar programs. WordPress requires a different level of expertise and knowledge of code, keywording, and plugins, so I wouldn't even compare them. Wix is a little more user-friendly because you can drag and drop your design, which was very convenient for customizing your site. I didn't personally select Weebly, but it is user-friendly and nearly anyone comfortable with a computer could figure it out. Weebly support is also pretty good.

Incentivized

A lot more design control and easier to create a custom site, and then also to scale that site going forward. There's a lot about WordPress I miss, though, when it comes to managing a blog—user permissions, SEO control, edit HTML version of posts.

Incentivized

WordPress isn't as pretty or easy to use as certain competitors like Jimdo, Squarespace or HubSpot, but it makes up for it with its affordability, familiarity and the ability to find quality outside help easily. The same can't be said for certain competitors, as you might need to find an expert and it could get costly.

Incentivized

I feel it doesn’t perform the way it’s supposed to and it doesn’t have any beneficial factors to it. In my opinion, there is no reason to use a platform like this when Wix and Shopify, and WordPress exist. I believe Webflow is a platform that shouldn’t exist and it’s only popular because of the hype it received. I tried it and hate it completely.

WordPress is completely scalable. You can get started immediately with a very simple "out-of-the box" WordPress installation and then add whatever functionality you need as and when you need it, and continue expanding. Often we will create various WordPress sites on the same domain to handle different aspects of our strategy (e.g. one site for the sales pages, product information and/or a marketing blog, another for delivering products securely through a private membership site, and another for running an affiliate program or other application), and then ties all of these sites together using a common theme and links on each of the site's menus. Additionally, WordPress offers a multisite function that allows organizations and institutions to manage networks of sites managed by separate individual site owners, but centrally administered by the parent organization. You can also expand WordPress into a social networking or community site, forums, etc. The same scalability applies to web design. You can start with a simple design and then scale things up to display sites with amazing visual features, including animations and video effects, sliding images and animated product image galleries, elements that appear and fade from visitor browsers, etc. The scaling possibilities of WordPress are truly endless.

• Weebly has allowed our business to create a connection with our customers by offering home decor, cooking and styling tips.
• Weebly gives us the chance to relay information to customers regarding merchandise, current sales and promotions, store hours and locations etc. Which has helped increase business.
• Weebly has given our not very tech savvy business the opportunity to have a website and stay relevant with our competitors.

Incentivized

• Webflow vast marketing makes it easy for me to sell the product
• Webflow has been growing so much in recent year that more and more clients ask for it, and the demand is only increasing.
• Big companies understand the power of Webflow and big companies tend to have a large budget for their web projects.

Incentivized

• Allowed us to being all websites under a single umbrella, saving costs on similar products.
• It's increased our website turn time and made us faster and more efficient at launching websites.
• Edits and tweaks happen much faster as we have a customized environment.

Incentivized