WordPress powers more than 40% of all websites across the internet, making it the world’s biggest website platform. But for those considering building their website on WordPress, the options can be confusing.
Do you opt for a bespoke build? Employ an agency? Use the built in WordPress website builder? Or use one of the best website builder tools dedicated to the WordPress platform?
Ultimately, which approach works best for you will depend on several factors ranging from your goals and budget to your technical skill.
We talked to 4 experts from across the industry, including representatives from some of the best WordPress website builders on the market, to get their thoughts on why you should, or shouldn’t, consider using a dedicated website builder for building your website on WordPress.
1. Elementor
As the Product Marketing Team Lead @ Elementor, Gabriella is responsible for establishing the marketing strategy of the Website Builder, and increasing feature adoption. Gabriella has been with Elementor since 2021, prior to this role, she has spent the last decade in marketing software products and is passionate about technological innovation and products that make a difference. Elementor powers 10% of the internet’s websites, used by millions of users worldwide , and is the most popular WordPress website builder.
When it comes to building websites for your clients, the tools you choose can make all the difference in your business’s success. While WordPress provides a solid foundation, using a website builder can take your projects to the next level, allowing you to handle more work and expand your business effectively.
Automating repetitive tasks, generating personalized content, and optimizing website layouts through AI integration enables professionals to allocate more time to creativity and client collaboration.
Streamlined design flexibility
In today’s competitive market, distinguishing yourself requires offering unique and visually captivating websites. A website builder with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface enables you to unleash your creativity effortlessly.
Whether you’re creating simple landing pages or intricate, dynamic layouts, a tool with a wide array of widgets and advanced customization options including the ability to apply Custom Code & CSS, ensures that every design concept is within reach.
By delivering bespoke websites that captivate your clients’ audiences, you not only elevate your business but also ensure a great client experience, fostering long-term satisfaction and engagement.
Efficient workflow with AI integration
Advanced AI technology streamlines workflow and enhances efficiency for freelancers and design agencies. Leveraging AI-driven content creation and layout generation tools accelerates the website design process. This allows professionals to handle more clients, and deliver projects quicker, while also maintaining high-quality standards.
Automating repetitive tasks, generating personalized content, and optimizing website layouts through AI integration enables professionals to allocate more time to creativity and client collaboration.
Check out our list of the best AI website builders on the market.
Client empowerment and control
In business, prioritizing client satisfaction is essential for ensuring long-term success.
By enabling your clients to manage their website content, you not only improve their experience but also strengthen your relationship with them. Utilizing role management features, you can customize the editing experience for each client, granting them autonomy while safeguarding your design integrity. This approach allows you to entrust your clients with the responsibility of their digital presence, knowing they have the necessary tools to maintain professionalism and ownership of their website.
Enhanced collaboration and efficiency
Efficiency is fundamental for a successful business, and effective collaboration is essential to attain it.
Streamlining communication and feedback loops is crucial, enabling seamless interactions between you and your clients. Integrated communication tools facilitate the clarification of design preferences and address inquiries, ensuring everyone remains aligned throughout the project lifecycle.
By centralizing communication within the website building platform, collaboration efficiency is enhanced, ensuring timely delivery of projects to the highest standards.
Improved performance and speed
Integrated communication tools facilitate the clarification of design preferences and address inquiries, ensuring everyone remains aligned throughout the project lifecycle.
In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, website performance plays a critical role in user engagement and search engine rankings.
Optimized code and lightweight architecture are essential for achieving faster loading times and overall improved performance. Incorporating an image optimizer feature further enhances website loading times, significantly increasing business conversion rates.
Research shows that even a 1-second reduction in website loading time can amplify conversion rates by up to 2.5 times. Utilizing image optimization tools ensures clients’ websites display visually appealing content and deliver a seamless browsing experience, driving conversions and strengthening their online presence.
Conclusion
Incorporating a website builder into your business’s workflow is more than just a choice; it’s a strategic investment in your success. By embracing innovative technologies and prioritizing user experience, you can position your business at the forefront of the industry, ready to tackle any challenge and exceed every expectation.
2. Americaneagle.com
Sean is a motivational leader and agile web professional with over 20 years of experience, including over 15 years working with WordPress. With a multidisciplinary background across commercial, operational, creative and technical roles, Sean provides deep and extensive expertise in delivering successful digital projects. Sean is a passionate problem-solver with extensive agency enterprise-level strategic and delivery experience. During his career, Sean has built and overseen large departments of technical and operational staff, creating teams capable of successfully delivering large-scale digital projects.
The organization must balance the encouragement of innovation and exploration whilst maintaining its brand consistency.
There are a number of reasons why page builders are rarely, if ever, used by enterprise organizations. Fundamentally, what page builders do is empower people without a technical background to create complex and uniquely designed content. This is at odds with the priorities of an organization which is typically focused on consistency of visual language and centralized governance for its digital presence.
Enterprise organizations purposefully create layers of friction between content creators and publishing to ensure quality checks and consistency. Marketing teams oversee the design, UX, accessibility and key features within each component, while IT teams track scalability, performance and security. These elements are provided to content creation teams as pre-baked components to use in their storytelling but page builders remove this friction, putting layout and design decisions into the hands of an individual content creator. Without these layers, consistency often suffers.
With that said, page builders are sometimes present in an enterprise ecosystem. It’s very common for enterprise organizations to have digital assets that sit outside central control and governance, created by different teams or business units. These sites will often use page builders for speed and convenience.
While these initiatives provide a quick route to market and can be very valuable to the wider organization, they can also be a huge headache — the organization must balance the encouragement of innovation and exploration whilst maintaining its brand consistency. Lacking both brand consistency and centralized governance, these outlier digital properties can quickly become tech debt with security and business risks.
3. WP Engine
As WP Engine’s Director of Technical Solutions, Andrew specializes in enhancing development workflows for businesses and tackling complex problems with technical strategies. A DevOps Engineer by trade, Andrew has vast experience as an agency technologist, spending the majority of his career at agencies prior to his current role. Andrew lives in New York City where he enjoys going to Yankees games, running, golfing and trying new restaurants.
Almost all of the benefits of using a third-party option can be derived from the low- or no-code nature of a website builder, which streamlines efficiency in maintenance and standardization and decreases time spent by developers. Website builders — especially paid versions — often come with more robust block and theme libraries, allowing companies to utilize unique designs that wouldn’t be available with the default Gutenberg block library. These offerings often include templates for pages or layouts that allow users to simply swap out content and implement their own.
Site upkeep and administration is critical to longevity, and a third-party builder makes this maintenance easier.
The ease of implementing new content with pre-built layouts comes with many benefits, the foremost of which is cost. WordPress developers are expensive, and businesses that don’t want to pay one full time can reduce their operational costs by paying a nominal license fee for a website builder that can be easily managed by an existing employee.
Related to this, web builders are also a big time saver. Whether or not you are a technical developer, building custom blocks and layouts is a time consuming process — and projects are often fast-moving, meaning teams don’t always have that luxury. Pre-built components enable users to get going without any initial development, setup or configuration.
Additionally, site upkeep and administration is critical to longevity, and a third-party builder makes this maintenance easier. As I’ve already mentioned, so much time and effort goes into building and launching a website. This effort is all for naught if the website doesn’t properly function while it’s live. Website builders allow users to easily swap out and restructure website content — enabling continuous site improvements while maintaining consistency through the standardization that comes with a third-party builder.
Finally, third-party website builders need to constantly innovate to stay ahead of their competitors, and this focus on innovation is yet another benefit of using one. This need for innovation forces third-party builders to create unique offerings. For example, as AI tools become more common offerings from third-party builders, it will enable greater innovation and streamlining of processes for users as companies continue to innovate in a competitive marketplace.
4. Bluehost
Mike Hansen is Vice President of WordPress Product at Newfold Digital, parent company of Bluehost, and has been involved with WordPress since 2008. He has over 100 contributions to the WordPress core project and has spent most of his professional career with roles in product and engineering. He loves to enable dreamers and SMBs to succeed with their online goals.
WordPress has long been known for its power and flexibility, though historically, it hasn’t always been the easiest for crafting visually appealing sites. This is where website builders came into play, simplifying design for average users and speeding up the process for web pros. These builders introduced a layer of technical complexity where users could not assume compatibility with other plugins and features. Recent developments, like the block editor, have made it easier to incorporate layouts and functionalities within individual pieces of content.
This is where website builders came into play, simplifying design for average users and speeding up the process for web pros.
As Full Site Editing (FSE) is becoming more robust, allowing for comprehensive site and layout designs. There’s a shift in the landscape of WordPress tools; newer builders that enhance the block editor and FSE are gaining popularity, while some of the previous giants are experiencing a slowing in adoption. The key difference lies in their compatibility and integration with the block editor, blocks, and FSE. This is why we built WonderBlocks, which provides industry-specific, curated patterns that seamlessly integrate with these new WordPress functionalities, aiming to deliver an efficient and targeted design experience that is fully compatible with the future of WordPress.
What is the point of WordPress website builders? Summary
Although each expert in this guide is different in their approach, there are some common themes we can recognize throughout when it comes to understanding the purpose of WordPress website builders. These themes focus primarily around improved speed of website creation and cost savings when compared to more bespoke website design solutions.
It is clear that WordPress website builders aren’t for everyone, especially those looking to create complex websites with a professional level of brand consistency. After all, it would be strange to find business behemoths dealing with non-bespoke domains and onsite advertising that come with the best free website builders. For these businesses, even enterprise level website builder plans may not be suitable.
However, WordPress website builders are clearly perfectly suited to small businesses and businesses without the need or budget to hire an agency or internal team to build and manage their websites.
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