My Personal or Business Website. Comparison of different solutions.

You are running a business, or you have a new project, and you need to be quickly on the Internet with a website ? WordPress, Joomla, Wix, Jimdo, Prismic, HTML, CSS, Javascript, CMS, MMS(not that one, obviously!)… It’s hard to swim accross the sea of different solutions.

And what about the hosting, the SEO, the advertising, social presence, and all. When you just “need a Internet Website“.

Rest assured, this quicke guide is here to help clarify (at least a little) the panel, and help you choose the best solution for your use case and your constraints (price, skills, size of the project).

Website Builders

Like Wix who is the market leader, Jimdo, or others, they offer to quickly build web pages. Easily, with WYSIWYG interfaces (drag & drop). You can then apply one of the many predefined themes.

Plus

• Quickest solutions of the panel
• No setup or particular skill needed to start

Minus

• Customization options stays limited
• Not sufficient for Website with many pages, or with content that changes a lot
• Can be expensive when you add many useful options (SEO, Bandwidth, Storage, Email)

Classical CMS

The most popular is WordPress, but there are others like Joomla.

These actors are on the market for at least a decad. Their solutions are robust and based on Open Source Software backed by companies and a huge community of users and developpers.

Plus

• Most Affordable solution
• Unmatched quantity of plugins and themes to extend the core

Minus

• Configuration is not trivial
• Hosting is not provided
• CMS updates are not fully automatic

Online CMS

Most recents, they are based on private SaaS solutions for the configuration and the content management.

They hide the complexity of server management and CMS configuration.

For example Webflow or SquareSpace .

Plus

• Power of a CMS, with ease of use of an SaaS solution
• Transparent updates

Minus

• Price is high, and pricing grids are sometimes not advantageous (based on server resources or number of editors)

Classical CMS, but Managed

We could see them as standard CMS, without the hardships of installation or server management.

For example, a WordPress on Online CMS mode. With most of its advantages (1-click install, easy configuration, updates management), and sometimes offered by the hosting companies themselves, who are handling the hosting complexity. Examples (Ionos, wordpress.com)

Plus

• Availability of the CMS plugin and themes ecosystem
• Automatic updates
• Optional Load Balancing and Scale up are possible

Minus

• The cost can be really high for professional top notch solutions, like Google Cloud Platform or Amazon Web Services.

Comparison

	Ease of Use	Updates	Customization	Themes	Plugins	Load Management	Price	Total
Site Builder	5	5	2	4	2	4	3	25
CMS	2	2	5	5	5	2	5	26
Online CMS	4	5	4	4	3	4	2	26
Managed CMS	3	4	5	5	5	5	4	31

Out of the Scope

The following solutions were removed from the scope of this comparison :

DIY HTML/CSS/JS

Needs Web development skills, and fit only a few use cases (static pages with limited editions).

PHP Frameworks (Symfony, Laravel)

Needs an investment in development and maintenance. More useful for bigger projects or enterprise application.

JavaScript Frameworks (React, Angular)

Needs an investment in development and maintenance. More useful for bigger projects or enterprise application.

Headless CMS (Prismic, ButterCMS)

Needs Web design skills. Useful for sites with complex editing rules and multi channel publishing.

Conclusion

All the presented solutions to create a Website are good, and they all have advantages and drawbacks. The choice can be made depending of the use case and the needs.

Website Builders : I advise them for personal pages or portfolios. Or for enterprise sites or landing pages, which won’t be edited often and by many different editors.

CMS : If you already have a server for the hosting or if you have skills in infrastructure management go for it. It can also be useful when the same server serves other purposes in the beginning?

CMS Online : For the needs too big for the Website Builder, keeping the easiness and the Time To Market objectives.

Managed CMS : For blogs or websites with multiple users and editors. A need for third party integrations, or with further content customization and configuration.

Finally, the Managed CMS solution appears to be the best quality/price/difficulty compromise. And in my opinion, it is a good choice in 90% of the cases.