SquareSpace vs Wix vs Weebly vs Wordpress vs Jimdo?

illumination on 05/12/2016 - 14:07

Have any of you here used a combination or a few of these website building platforms?

I've had a read of some of the comparison articles on Website Builder Expert like this and this, and I can see that the general concensus seems to be that Wordpress is actually a lot more technical than I first thought.. and that the other options are probably more beginner friendly.

The comparison between SquareSpace and Wordpress reminds me of iPhone (or iOS) vs Android where SquareSpace = iOs and Wordpress = Android.

The key things mentioned were that whilst SquareSpace has a lot less "flexibility", everything is more "polished", they generally have better support, but less customisation options.

The other platforms sounded more similar to SquareSpace than WordPress. There were subtle differences but I won't go into detail.

Does anyone here have any insight to share? Ideally I'd like to hear from those of you that have used several different platforms.

I'm very much a beginner so my personal feel right now is that I'm definitely leaning towards using SquareSpace.

Internet

Comments

  • railspider on 05/12/2016 - 14:20

    If your an absolute beginner and just want to drag and drop elements to make yourself a webpage, Squarespace or Wix will do the job. Squarespace is probably slightly more popular, but both are extremely similar - so since this is OzBargain, go for the cheaper option.

    What sort of website are you wanting to build? Squarespace/Wix will likely have templates that fit your need.

    Wordpress & Weebly are better if you know what you're doing, or if you need more custom elements. Never heard of Jimdo.

  • Diji1 on 05/12/2016 - 14:40

    Pay for shared hosting at Hostgator, look on youtube about how to setup wordpress with a domain. It's not very hard. Then you won't be stuck paying $30 per month per website which is what squarespace charges.

  • [Deactivated] on 05/12/2016 - 14:57
    +1

    Wordpress isn't really the same thing as the others, as it's a fully functional platform and way more customisable (and you can install plugins to make it more feature rich, even write your own if you know php and js). It's not quite iOS vs Android, more like… iOS vs full desktop Windows. One drawback though, I find it heavy/bulky and slow ish.

    • scotty on 15/12/2016 - 17:44
      +1

      Not to mention that you need to remember patching it up all the time as there are lots of scripted attacks on WordPress sites against its old vulnerabilities.

  • DeepSea on 10/12/2016 - 12:44

    Depends what type of site you want. The hassle of Wordpress is not worth it unless you are interested in web development, and think you will enjoy learning and managing a CMS and server. Could you be bothered checking and updating Wordpress including each plugin whenever they're updated? Backing up your database, ensure the updates didn't break anything, etc…

    Personally, after working with Drupal and other CMS for a long time I would rather not deal with them. I prefer an advanced framework like Flask, otherwise a simple static site (just plain HTML/CSS/JS, maybe some basic php if more than a few pages). Uses far fewer resources and pages load so fast.

    Choose a website builder like Squarespace/Wix until you can afford the 5k-50k or whatever it costs to have a professional build a custom solution.

  • illumination on 14/12/2016 - 00:46

    Thanks for the feedback guys!

    Based on the feedback I think I'm most keen on SquareSpace, but I will probably give SquareSpace/Wix both a try before I decide to settle on one.

  • congo on 06/01/2018 - 10:25

    Been using Wix. Its great IMO.
    But costly, unless you have 50% discount codes. Any current discount codes?

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