We often are asked the difference between Webflow and Wordpress when a potential new customer calls to learn more about H1’s websites. Both are web development platforms, however Wordpress hit the market first in 2003 as a blogging platform. It quickly evolved and, due to its open-source nature, other developers began creating third-party plug-ins for add-on functionalities that could be easily inserted into existing Wordpress themes.

Webflow was founded nearly 10 years later in 2012. With the rise of Google Chrome and advances in technology since the advent of Wordpress, Webflow allows developers to spin up professional, clean code and completely custom website designs much faster than Wordpress, and without the use of third-party plug-ins.

So, as a development company why do we use Webflow over Wordpress? Here are a few of the main reasons why:

1) The platform allows for much faster and easier development of completely custom websites. So, we can give clients a 100%custom design (no templates used) at a lower price point and turn it around much faster than typical custom Wordpress sites.

2) Webflow does not use third-party plug-ins. Many of the functionalities and features you see on Wordpress sites are plug-ins created by random developers from all over the world. While it might look clean on the front-end, code is actually being hacked together in the back-end which can cause a very chunky, poorly coded site. Since we code everything from scratch with Webflow, our website code is much cleaner, which has three main benefits:

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Better SEO – Google’s crawlers can’t see or hear your website. All they know is what the code tells them. When crawlers encounter discombobulated or poor code, they are more likely to rank you lower in search results because they assume the website offers a poor user experience.‍

‍Faster Page Load Speeds – One of the most important factors in SEO rankings is page load speed. Google wants to provide web visitors with a stellar user experience, which all starts with a quick load time. Wordpress sites typically load slower because they have more code to load in the back-end.‍

‍More Secure – Inserting lots of third-party plugins coded by developers around the world can open your site up to more security holes – especially if you have a developer who doesn’t know what to look for when it comes to website security.

3) From a client standpoint, Webflow's content management system (CMS) is so much easier to use than Wordpress. Webflow uses a visual, on-page editor that allows clients to make edits and actually see them as they happen rather than through the eyes of a back-end dashboard. The CMS is more intuitive and offers an overall better user experience than Wordpress.

Closed vs. Open-Source Platform

In short, Wordpress is similar to Android's OS software and Webflow is like Apple’s iOS. Wordpress (like Android) is open-source which means anyone can manipulate the code to create plug-ins. This makes the system much more complex, hard to maintain and a security nightmare. Webflow (like Apple iOS) is closed and they control the entire ecosystem, making the products built on the platform cleaner, many times a better user experience and easier to lock down from a security standpoint.  

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As a company that strives to be on the forefront of technology to ensure the best possible results and experience for our clients, we feel Webflow is the development platform on the market today that best embodies those values.