WordPress is one of the popular choices of people throughout the world for blogs, websites and online shops. It has to be as it offers lots of amazing features at your business sale. WordPress is flexible, and it comes with plenty of Themes and Plugins, making it a user-friendly. Although it is one of the leading CMS platforms, it can’t always be the right option. In certain cases, you might need better options, especially if you’re not much familiar with creating and running a website. So, in this post, we’ve listed out WordPress alternatives that have similar features but are more focused on blogging, website creation, or eCommerce.

First let’s learn, Is WordPress the Best CMS for SEO?

Many SEO experts consider WordPress as the best CMS for SEO because of the various benefits it brings along to your business. Read below to learn what makes WordPress the best option for search engine optimization.

SEO-friendly out the box – Using WordPress for SEO offers several benefits to you. For instance, it helps you take care of various important elements, including

1. Proper HTML markup
2. SEO-friendly permalinks
3. Easy content creation
4. Title tag and headings
5. Optimized images

SEO-optimized Themes – WordPress offers many features such as themes, which can really enhance the search engine optimization of your website. Whatever your goals are there is a theme for any purpose or industry.

Heaps of SEO Plugins – Besides themes and standard features, WordPress also have loads of plugins that help to improve the SEO capabilities of your site.

Build Quick-Loading Sites – You must be aware that it matters to Google that how long website takes to load. One of the biggest benefits of setting-up WordPress is that it builds quick-loading sites.

Top-Grade Security- WordPress is a secure option for SEO. It comes with plenty of security plugins, that offer high-level security to your website.

Social Media Support – Besides Google, there are many alternative search engines such as social media. WordPress offers plenty of solutions for social media such as SumoMe, Jetpack Sharing, and more.

User-Friendly – WordPress is so user-friendly that anyone can implement the above-listed things.

Read further to learn about WordPress alternatives!

CMS platforms::

Joomla-

When it comes to CMS platforms, Joomla is another popular and popular choice for blogs, websites, or online shops.

Pros of Joomla:

1. It offers several thousands of free plugins at the homepage.
2. Unlike WordPress, Joomla offers a more multilingual platform.
3. The Joomla layout modules are more flexible and can be shifted to individual menus or pages.

Cons of Joomla:

1. As compared to WordPress, the third-party community of Joomla is not large enough.
2. Some plugins are difficult to run without serious work on PHP.
3. Joomla is neither developer friendly nor user-friendly.

Drupal-

After Joomla, Drupal is the next great WordPress alternative and has many essential features.

Pros of Drupal:

1. It is an ideal option to create highly advanced websites.
2. Drupal helps rapid prototyping. Therefore, it can create a complex site in a short time.
3. It is highly extensible.

Cons of Drupal:

1. Drupal is not an ideal option for beginners because of its complexity.
2. It may require a lot of time, if not tweaked properly.
3. Unlike WordPress, the blogging modules are good enough.

Craft CMS-

Craft CMS may not be popular among the users, but it is an effective content management system.

Pros of Craft CMS:

1. When it comes to Craft CMS, users can view the admin console and the website side by side as well as the changes they make as they go.
2. Craft CMS supports multiple environments that help you to develop the site locally, deploy to production, and staging.
3. In craft CMS, the admin can group together and restrict or enable users to access specific features.

Cons of Craft CMS:

1. It is not ideal for beginners or simpler websites.
2. Unlike WordPress, craft CMS requires payment to enable separate client logins.
3. The plugin collection is not as great option as you require to code your solution.
4. As compared to other alternatives, Craft CMS might have stability issues as it is new project.

eCommerce CMS::

Shopify-

When it comes to eCommerce websites and online business, the first thing that would click to our mind is definitely Shopify! It is one of the amazing alternatives to WordPress that helps the users to easily create an online shop.

Pros of Shopify:

1. With Shopify, you get the option to showcase countless items as it comes with unlimited disk space.
2. You can easily integrate PayPal or use the Shopify POS for an effortless payment transaction.
3. You can enjoy options like real-time shipping and advanced reporting along with discount codes option.
4. Free Website create along with plenty of options for themes.

Cons of Shopify:

1. Unlike WordPress, Shopify is not a flexible option and is mostly focused on eCommerce purpose.
2. You can’t extend the SEO of any content using plugins as you do with WordPress.
3. As compared to WordPress, the blogging functionality is not very effective. BigCommerce
4. After Shopify, the next big name among eCommerce platforms is BigCommerce. It is a hosted eCommerce solution, allowing users to create their own online store and sell their products.

Pros of BigCommerce:

1. It allows the users to set up their own online store and to easily sell their stuff on other well-established sites such as Amazon, eBay, and Google shopping as well.
2. BigCommerce doesn’t require any transaction fee. Therefore, it is more suitable option for store processes.
3. It is comes with option to add shipping quotes with real-time rates from UPS, USPS, FedEx and more.
4. BigCommerce has multiple security layers such as PCI compliance.

Cons of BigCommerce:

1. The available premium themes are more expensive than users expectation.
2. When it comes to theme editor, it not as advanced as WordPress or Shopify.
3. As compared to other eCommerce options, pricing plans are more expensive in BigCommerce.

Website Builders::

Wix-

One of the most popular and widely used website builders is Wix! Among all other options, Wix is probably the most user-friendly site builders available, therefore competing with WordPress.

Pros of Wix:

1. It is user-friendly and extremely easy to use. Wix is ideal for beginners as well as novices.
2. You can choose from a great range and well-designed templates.
3. Plenty of useful features including a blog, SEO, social network integration, website building, and more.
4. The Dashboard and Post editor is so easy that anyone uses it.

Cons of Wix:

1. If you choose free plans, it comes with ads that may lead to an unnecessary distraction.
2. Internal URL’s generated are impossible to understand.
3. You cannot modify some of the available templates.

Weebly-

If Wix is not the right site builders option for you, then Weebly is another amazing WordPress alternative.

Pros of Weebly:

1. It is ideal for beginners and novices for simple websites.
2. The overall outlook of Weebly is user-friendly and functional.
3. The available templates require little modification to look great.
4. It has Education and Onboarding options to help users out.

Cons of Weebly:

1. It has no option to add Custom Content types.
2. It is not easy to include advanced marketing tools on your site.
3. To move to other platforms, you need to manually copy and move the contents through RSS.

Squarespace-

Another popular website builder platform is Squarespace. It is a versatile builder for portfolio sites, blogs, and online stores.

Pros of Squarespace:

1. You don’t have to sign up for purchasing a domain.
2. It comes with the option to create own design with the help drag and drop builder based on content blocks.
3. Squarespace is beginner-friendly.
4. You can select from the available beautifully designed templates.
5. It is suitable for almost every niche of small-scaled websites.
6. Squarespace is secure and comes with fast loading time.

Cons of Squarespace:

1. As compared to other website builders, Squarespace does not provide a mobile editor.
2. It lacks support from third-party plugins and extensions.
3. Squarespace is not ideal for sites that are completely based on e-Commerce purpose.
4. It has more expensive plans as compared to other website builders.

Blogging Platform::

Ghost-

Although WordPress is the most preferred publishing platform throughout the world, over the past few years, WordPress has become more than just a blogging platform. That’s why we have another popular WordPress alternative Ghost. It is a NodeJS based publishing open-source platform, specially designed for blogging.

Pros of Ghost:

1. The Dashboard design is comparatively simple and clean. If you need any information, it is available at your side.
2. The Ghost’s Post editor is more advanced.
3. While writing and editing the content, you also get to view the live preview simultaneously.
4. It is extremely user-friendly. Therefore, any beginners can easily create an elegant looking blog.
5. When it comes to the download and usage, it is similar to WordPress.

Cons of Ghost:

1. Since Ghost is a new blogging platform, it is still in the testing phase.
2. Although it has lots of themes available, there are no plugins to install and use.
3. Ghost is specifically designed for publishing and blogs, so it’s not ideal for other types of websites.

Medium-

One of the fast-growing online blogging platforms is Medium. It allows the users to create posts and upload them on their web space.

Pros of Medium:

1. It has a larger range of audience, therefore more exposure and views for your content.
2. The content management system is very easy to work.
3. Medium generates plenty of backlinks regularly with great content, which makes it more liable to rank higher on SERPs.

Cons of Medium:

1. It has less potential for generating high-quality leads.
2. As compared to WordPress, Medium offers limited control over the ownership of their content.
3. Less accessibility to the analytics of your work.

Although WordPress is an all-in-one platform for blogs, eCommerce, website building, and content management, there are some that compete. Depending on your needs and users, choose an appropriate platform for your business.