Webflow vs. WordPress
Individuals and SMBs use website builders to create professional-looking websites and run their ecommerce businesses. In a market filled with many different types of website builders, it can be difficult to select the best one for you and your small business.
We’ve written this article to discuss the main differences between Webflow and WordPress. Below, we note how each solution varies in terms of features, pricing, usability, and website creator type each is best suited for.
All of our recommendations are based upon extensive research, discussions with website creators, and dozens of hours spent hand-testing the leading website builder software platforms. The details of our research process can be found on our website builder category page.
Comparison Summary
Webflow and WordPress are two well-known website builder solutions. We rated Webflow 84 out of 100 and WordPress 85 out of 100, respectively.
WordPress was rated higher because, compared to Webflow, its platform is more well-rounded in terms of features and is better for ecommerce. Webflow was rated lower because its website builder has a much steeper learning curve and offers lower quality blog and ecommerce tools.
This breakdown shows our review criteria and the ratings that Webflow and WordPress received for each category.
| Criteria | Analyst Rating | Features | Usability | Pricing | Customer Support |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Webflow | 84 | 8 | 8 | 8.5 | 9 |
| WordPress | 85 | 8.5 | 8 | 9 | 8 |
Webflow is more expensive than WordPress, but offers a wider range of differently priced website and ecommerce plans. Webflow’s most popular website plan costs $20 per month, whereas WordPress’s most popular website plan costs $14 per month. Webflow’s most popular ecommerce plan costs $84 per month, whereas WordPress’s only ecommerce plan costs $59 per month.
In general, both platforms offer standard website builder features. This includes a drag & drop editor, a blog editor, ecommerce tools, SEO optimizations, and traffic analytics.
Compared to WordPress, Webflow offers a superior website builder and is one of the best for web page customizability. However, its builder has a steep learning curve and Webflow’s platform falls short in other feature categories like blogging and ecommerce. WordPress is technically a more well-rounded solution in terms of features, and easier to use.
Here’s a few key differences between the solutions to determine which is best for you:
- You want an advanced website builder with Photoshop level customizability – including editing borders, padding, and adding drop shadows
- You want higher quality SEO tools – including sitemaps, and web page indexing
- You want a single platform that includes all necessary website features, without the need to download and install multiple plugins
- You want a WYSIWYG blog editor that lets you upload the same elements you can include in your web pages in your blog posts
- You want higher quality ecommerce tools – including filters to organize your inventory and orders
- You want to customize your platform using plugins
Table of Contents
- Comparison Summary
- Webflow & WordPress Price Comparison
- Webflow & WordPress Feature Comparison
- Webflow & WordPress Top Feature Comparison
- Bottom Line
Webflow & WordPress Price Comparison
Overall, Webflow is more expensive than WordPress. However, it does offer a wider range of differently priced website and ecommerce plans, and offers a cheaper starting price of $42 per month for ecommerce.
Webflow’s most popular website plan costs $20 per month, and its most popular ecommerce plan costs $84 per month. WordPress’s most popular website plan costs $14 per month and its only ecommerce plan costs $59 per month.
Webflow Pricing Details
Webflow’s pricing ranges from $15 to $235 per month. You can save around 10% to 30% if you pay for an annual subscription upfront. Here’s an overview of Webflow’s pricing plans:
| Plan Type | Plan & Pricing |
|---|---|
| Website |
|
| Ecommerce |
|
WordPress Pricing Details
WordPress’s pricing ranges from $7 to $59 per month. It offers both website and ecommerce plans. You can also save ~40% if you pay for the annual subscription upfront.
| Plan Type | Pricing |
|---|---|
| Personal | $7 per month |
| Premium | $14 per month |
| Business | $33 per month |
| Ecommerce | $59 per month |
Webflow & WordPress Feature Comparison
Webflow and WordPress both offer standard features found in most website builder solutions. This includes a website builder, a blog editor, ecommerce tools, SEO optimizations, and traffic analytics. However, as shown below, there are many features WordPress offers that are not available in Webflow.
For a full analysis of each solution’s features, read our Webflow review and WordPress review.
| Feature | Webflow | WordPress |
|---|---|---|
| WYSIWYG Blog Editor | No | Yes |
| Sales Analytics | No | Yes |
| Comments | No | Yes |
| Mobile App | No | Yes |
| SEO Tools | Yes | Yes |
| Automatic Tax Calculations | Yes | Yes |
| Drag & Drop Website Builder | Yes | Yes |
| Displaying Most Recent Posts on the Homepage | Yes | Yes |
| Plugins/ Extensions/ Applications | Yes | Yes |
| Contact Forms | Yes | Yes |
| Coupons | Yes | Yes |
| Traffic Analytics | Yes | Yes |
| Social Media Marketing | No | No |
| Email Marketing | No | No |
| Abandoned Cart Recovery | No | No |
| Automatic Shipping Rate Calculations | No | No |
| Visitor Engagement Analytics | No | No |
Webflow & WordPress Top Feature Comparison
Below we provide our in-depth analysis of five key features that are included in WordPress and Webflow – the website builder, blog editor, ecommerce tools, marketing tools, and analytics.
Overall, Webflow offers a superior website builder and better SEO tools, but WordPress dominates the other feature categories in terms of quality.
Website Builder
Webflow and WordPress include drag & drop website builders that let you design your website. Both let you add a variety of site elements – including images, video, code, navigation bar, search bar, and buttons.
Overall, Webflow’s website builder is more advanced and allows for greater web page design customization. However, it has a steeper learning curve and is best for users who have some HTML, CSS, and Photoshop knowledge.
Webflow site elements are some of the most customizable. We would compare its customizability to Photoshop, where you can edit borders, padding, add drop shadows, and transform elements by rotating, scaling, and skewing them.
Unlike other solutions, Webflow also lets you edit your website pages as div blocks with classes and tags. With these, you can efficiently edit multiple elements at once, and make sure that your edits do not apply to the entire page.
WordPress lets you add over 50 kinds of site elements from images, buttons, social links, a search and navigation bar, and polls. WordPress also lets you view your website and its sections in a "list" format. This helps you view the structure of your website and access certain areas without having to scroll all the way down. While these features are sufficient for building a high-quality website, they are not as powerful or customizable as what is offered by Webflow.
WYSIWYG Blog Editor
A major advantage that WordPress has over Webflow is that WordPress offers a WYSIWYG blog editor. This type of editor lets you edit your content as it will appear when published. WordPress’s blog editor is also more intuitive to use and superior in terms of functionality.
WordPress lets you upload the same types of multimedia content to web pages and blog posts. WordPress also lets you enable comments on your blog posts. Comments can prove that your content is engagement worthy, and deepen the relationship you have with your readers through a back-and-forth dialogue.
Webflow’s blog editor is simple and lacks certain functionalities that are found in WordPress’s blog editor. This includes the inability to drag and drop content, or preview what your posts will look like when they are published.
Ecommerce Tools
You can use WordPress and Webflow to run your ecommerce business. Both offer tools that let you manage your inventory, orders, and calculate tax, and shipping rates.
Overall, WordPress’ ecommerce tools are more robust, and more capable of supporting a small ecommerce business without the need for plugins or extensions. However, we recommend looking into other platforms for ecommerce, or downloading the right ecommerce plugins to compliment WordPress (e.g. Woocommerce).
Advantages of WordPress for ecommerce include:
- Filters to organize your inventory and orders
- Email notifications when a product’s inventory count hits a given threshold
- Not charging an additional 2% transaction fee for payments made through its ecommerce plan
Marketing Tools
In terms of marketing, Webflow and WordPress only offer SEO optimization tools. However, Webflow’s SEO tools are more robust and approachable, especially for those who are new to SEO.
If you want a website builder with stronger marketing tools, we recommend Wix and Squarespace.
SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important factors to consider when creating your website. The search channel is the largest traffic driver for most websites. Unlike many other solutions, Webflow offers basic tools that help you optimize your website for SEO.
Below we describe why these specific tools are important for SEO.
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
| Web Page Indexing | Webflow offers an in-platform search index tool that automatically re-indexes your pages every 12 hours for Google. You can also manually index your website every hour. This feature makes sure that Google is aware of your most recent content updates. |
| Robots.txt File Editor | If you don’t want Webflow to automatically index your full website, you can edit this file instead to tell Google which pages of your website to crawl. |
| Sitemap | Webflow can automatically generate a sitemap, or you can create a custom sitemap. Sitemaps help search engines find all of the most important pages of your website. |
| Global Canonical URL | Setting this helps search engines know the proper URL to index, and helps you avoid duplicate content. |
| On-page SEO Optimizations | Webflow offers basic on-page SEO optimizations – including editing each page’s title, description, and image. |
WordPress’s SEO tools are limited to customizing the page titles for different areas of your website – including your front page, and posts. You can also only edit your front page’s meta description.
Analytics
Out of the two, WordPress is the only solution that offers effective in-platform traffic and sales analytics. If you want to use Webflow as a platform and view traffic and sales data, we strongly recommend integrating with a third-party app, like Google Analytics or Facebook Pixel.
WordPress Traffic
WordPress lets you view your traffic over time, including visitor count, top referers, and traffic by location. However, unlike other solutions, WordPress gives you additional data, like how many times your videos have been played, most popular search terms, and which pages get the most clicks.
Sales
If you choose to run an ecommerce business through WordPress, you can view your sales information through a dashboard. It displays graphical representations of your total revenue, number of orders, and average order value, as well as their percent changes between days, weeks, and months. WordPress also lets you view trends for the number of products that have been purchased, coupons used, refunds given, shipping charged, and tax charged.
Bottom Line
Overall, Webflow is best for technically experienced website creators who want complete control over their website’s pages. However, its website builder has a steep learning curve. Therefore, we recommend taking advantage of Webflow’s help articles and video tutorials before using the platform.
In contrast, WordPress is a more well-rounded solution in terms of features, and gives you the most control over your website’s functionality. If you are leaning towards building your website in WordPress, we highly recommend looking into the best plugins for your website to maximize WordPress’s functionality.
If you’re interested, visit Webflow or WordPress today to get started.