The Best WordPress Alternatives and Competitors

Why many have switched from WordPress to ButterCMS? If the limitations of WordPress are making you consider WP alternatives, then you are in the right place.

My experience with WordPress

I understand WordPress because I’ve directed a team of marketers for several years, and we started with a high-traffic financial services website running on WordPress. When I was hired as the Director of Marketing, I inherited a website that had not changed much in nearly 10 years. Our marketing team was scared to touch it because the template was highly customized, and even minor changes could break it. The multiple plugins often caused conflicts, and because it was a financial services site and handled sensitive data, we had a team of developers who had to vet every change we requested. 

The result was that the site loaded slowly and looked outdated, and no one wanted to run tests to improve it. When the team did make changes, it was painful how many weeks it took to get the minor changes completed. Improving SEO was one of my top goals, but our team’s problems with WordPress kept us from making much headway. 

Our developers also hated working with WordPress, so it wasn’t hard to take our case to our executives to find a WordPress alternative.

Pros and cons of WordPress

Once you realize the limitations of WordPress and begin evaluating alternatives, creating a short list of pros and cons is helpful.

Pros of WordPress:

• The most well-known CMS

• Low cost to start

• Numerous templates

• Lots of plugins to extend functionality

Cons of WordPress:

• Vulnerable to many security risks

• Not great for SEO, even with a plugin

• Templates and plugins often crash and slow down the site

• Complex and difficult for most content teams

• Missing many features more modern competitors offer

• Limited scalability

• Issues with website speed

• Difficult to code unless you specialize in PHP

• No dedicated support

Types of WordPress alternatives

If you want a WordPress alternative, you first need to determine which type of alternative is best for your needs. If you don’t work with developers, then you should stick to options 1-3. If you work with developers, then you may want to consider options 4-6.

1. Website builder
2. E-commerce website builder
3. Hybrid website builder
4. Headless
5. Enterprise
6. DXP

Website builders like Wix use a WYSIWYG drag-and-drop interface to make building sites possible without a developer. The trade-off is that you are limited in what you can do with them.

E-commerce website builders like Shopify have the same pros and cons as regular website builders but add online shopping functionality. Once again, your design and functionality options are limited.

Hybrid website builders like Webflow give more opportunities for developers to work alongside content creators, so there is more flexibility than website builders but not as much as with a headless, enterprise, or DXP.

Headless CMSs require a developer but are infinitely scalable and flexible. They can control content on websites, mobile apps, and e-commerce sites. Headless CMSs are often called “compossible” because headless solutions allow you to compose a website with the all “best-of-breed” solutions that can be connected and swapped as needed. If you can dream it, a headless CMS can power it.

Enterprise CMSs are focused on high scalability and flexibility, but they are very complex and very expensive. Most organizations don’t end up using all the functionality they pay for.

DXP is a digital experience platform that is similar to an Enterprise CMS, but it allows control of the entire customer experience across multiple channels. Once again, all that functionality makes it very difficult to learn, and it’s expensive.

WordPress competitors

Another route to take if you want something similar to WordPress would be to use a WordPress competitor. When WordPress emerged in the first decade of the 2000s, its competitors were all open-source or free. They were all installed by users on a server and had to be maintained and updated by the users. Though free, the setup, maintenance, and support became ongoing costs. If you work with developers, they’ll have to work in PHP to use WordPress or its direct competitors.

• Joomla

• Drupal

Recommendations

WordPress competitors: WordPress and its direct competitors only make sense if you have to work with staff who are experts in them. Even then, what happens when these experts leave your organization and the industry has treaded even further down the path of modern structures?

The best WordPress alternatives will depend on whether you will work with developers. If you are not working with developers, a website builder like Wix will serve you well. Shopify is excellent if you plan on selling on your site.

If you are working with developers, a headless solution makes the most sense for most customers. Only the most prominent organizations with many dedicated specialists will find an Enterprise or DXP the best option. 

Migrating from WordPress made easy

The best WordPress alternatives make migration easy. A migration tool simplifies porting your existing content from WordPress to your next content management system. Support from specialists who have done multiple WordPress migrations is also very helpful, and any good solution should offer both options.

• Automated tool to port all content from WordPress to your new CMS

• Migration specialists who can offer support to ensure a smooth migration

How long it takes to migrate depends on how much content you have in WordPress. With a migration tool, moving your content over can only take a few minutes or hours. Migration specialists can help ensure that internal links and SEO are kept or improved.

Pick the best WordPress alternative - the criteria

A criteria list helps you narrow down your choices and use logic to prioritize which options are most important to make the best choice from your shortlist. Start with this diagram to choose which of the 7 WordPress alternative categories will best fit your needs.

If you chose “Headless CMS like ButterCMS,” go to this article to see how ButterCMS stacks up against WordPress.

Once you know which of these six categories fits you best, you can narrow your shortlist by prioritizing how important each of these categories is to your success. Use the “How to evaluate a CMS” list below to compare your shortlist.

How to evaluate a CMS 

Below, we've put together a rating table you can use to evaluate each of your CMS options.