WordPress Page Builders vs Coding

WordPress is undoubtedly a fantastic tool for business owners and web development teams alike.

However, one criticism of it is that it can be a little bit more complicated for complete novice web builders, which the majority of business start-ups are.

Instead, for beginners there are website builders and WordPress page builders which are really easy to use and sometimes may include your web hosting privileges.

But how do these options compare to actually hardcoding a site? Will you be missing out by trying to do it yourself? Read on to find out!

What are website builders?

You’ve probably heard of a few different web builders before. They’re extremely popular ways to put together a basic website and appeal to the average Joe. There’s a reason Wix and Squarespace are household names and something like React isn’t!

Website builders can be useful if you want to just get your site up and running as soon as possible and don’t care for the specifics of how or why your site looks and runs the way it does.

You can usually drag and drop content, images, and files directly onto your pages and see it exactly how users to your site would see it. Sure, this might sound easy (and it is), but it’s extremely limited in its actual functionality and doesn’t leave you with much freedom to make your website stand out from the crowd.

We don’t recommend using website builders if you want to take your business seriously. Any time that you spent designing your site on a website builder is pretty much time wasted should you ever decide to upgrade your site.

Instead, it’s better to futureproof all the work you’re doing by using WordPress and having your site hardcoded by a dev.

What are WordPress page builders?

Similarly to website builders, WordPress has page builders that are there to make the web building process quicker and easier for non-developers.

While these are better than using a website builder, they’re still not ideal.

The most popular WordPress page builders are Elementor, Divi, and Beaver Builder. Each of these offers something slightly different, although they’re pretty much more of the same. Rather than dragging and dropping content in, the process of updating a page builder site is a little bit more complicated and potentially intimidating.

You’ll see the back end of your site that visitors won’t get to see. Therefore you’ll have more functionality than if you were to use a website builder, but this comes at a cost.

WordPress page-built sites sometimes struggle with speed and rankability (they can be hard to organically find on Google). Also, page builders can sometimes struggle if you want to implement your own unique theme. So if you choose to use a page builder then you could get stuck down the line with a website that looks like everybody else’s unless you know how to code.

Benefits of a coded site

If you’re serious about what you do and you want a website that reflects that, then the only option you should consider is hardcoding your website.

Hardcoded sites have no equal. They are extremely functional and can be made to do pretty much anything you could think of all while looking unique to your business.

By using WordPress as a Content Management System (CMS) rather than a page builder, you have a database to store all of your admin related data while your code is busy making the site work exactly how you want it to.

A coded site is faster, cleaner, and easier to integrate future content into than the other options available to you. This includes custom plug ins and functions that make your website one of a kind.

Of course, there’s the cost associated with a coded site compared to a website builder or WordPress page builder. But in all honesty, if you’re ready to throw yourself into your business then this cost will likely be very minimal in the grand scheme of things.

So if you want a fast website, that’s precisely yours and with no compromise, get in touch with our web team at Blaze Media and we can get started on making this a reality for you!