Colin Johnson

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Your Guide to Picking a Content Management System (CMS)

Colin Johnson

Content Management Systems: How to Pick the Best CMS

What is a Content Management System?

Content Management Systems, or CMSs, are platforms that help manage and modify digital content. They are most often associated with website management, and are also called Website Content Management Systems, or WCMSs. Content Management Systems offer varying degrees of user-friendly interfaces to build websites. They also manage the backend management, varying from indexing to programming and database management.

Introduction to Content Management Systems

Here are the most popular Content Management Systems used in 2019.

  1. WordPress

  2. Weebly

  3. Wix

  4. SquareSpace

Each of these Content Management Systems vary in such characteristics as user-friendliness, flexibility, customization, SEO capacity, customer support, price, and style. Some CMSs are better for people looking for a quick website and some CMSs website products have a unique style and aesthetic. Others are meant for more experienced web developers. Some are better for small businesses, others for larger business.

The good thing is that there is a CMS for every business or organization’s online needs. Whether you’re developing your personal brand, want to give create an online footprint for your small business, or are a non-profit organization looking to create awareness, picking the right CMS will be one of the most important decisions you make.

Pick the right one and you may not need to ever perform a CMS Migration. You’ll have a powerful website serving your specific needs. Pick the wrong CMS and, eventually, looming over your head will be the messy job of migrating to the right CMS (there are a lot of things to consider, price and compatibility being just a few).

To figure out the right one we must first undersand the difference between each CMS. My goal is to help you decide which Content Management System is the best one based on your personal experience and professional needs. But before I talk about the Pros and Cons of each CMS mentioned, there is one important thing to figure out:

Who will create your website?

There are three options

  1. Freelancer

  2. Agency

  3. Yourself

Lets examine what situations would call for each one.

Freelancer, Agency, or Yourself: Who Should Make Your Website

As we mentioned there are three options: Freelancers, Agencies, or Yourself. Let’s do a little defining:

  1. Freelancer - A freelancer is an individual who works for himself/herself, offering services to clients by contract.

  2. Agency - An agency is a business consisting of more than 1 person offering services to clients by contract. Usually at least 5 people.

  3. Yourself - An awesome human being, either working in an organization or for himself/herself, with a fantastic business idea who may find themselves needing a website.

Deciding who should create your website is equally as important as which CMS you use. While ultimately it’s your call as to what CMS you use, specialists like Freelancers and Agencies will have solid advice regarding this. In addition, this post will provide you with all you need to know to make the decision on your own. But first, let’s see the pros and cons of using each of the three types of website creators.

Freelancers

Advantages of using Freelancers:

  1. Cheaper than Agencies - This is because they are the only person working on the project. They do not need to pay others, get approvals internally, etc.

  2. Personalized Solution - Since freelancers are one person, they are able to remove any degree of bureaucracy internally, and can focus on you and your needs. This is true whether your an individual with a business, or a manager. Furthermore, they can create solutions within shorter time frames than agencies many times, should you need it.

  3. Zero Creative Boundaries - There aren’t any creative boundaries they can’t cross due to internal agency rules or guidelines. The only person they liaise with is you.

Disadvantages of using Freelancers:

  1. Not As Much Experience - Freelancers have less overall combined experience in comparison to an agency.

  2. Experience Is More Important - In relation to the first disadvantage, since there aren’t multiple people working with the client, his/her overall experience matters more. You want to be sure that s/he can provide you with a solution worth the budget you have allocated for this project.

  3. Time - While the may be able to work quicker than agencies, it is more likely for an agency to be on-time with their project than freelancers. Make sure you hire a good freelancer, and gauge their personality and make sure they sound confident in being able to deliver when they say they can.


Agencies

Advantages of using an Agency:

  1. Experience - There is more collective experience within an agency than a freelancer. You pay for it, but sometimes this is a safe option if you need the peace of mind (perhaps becuase your part of an organization) knowing that it will be successful.

  2. Reputation - It’s much easier to define and research the reputation of an agency than a Freelancer. Agencies leave much more of a track record and generally garner more client reviews on various review platforms (Yelp, Google Reviews, etc.). This can further give peace of mind.

Disadvantages of using an Agency:

  1. Price - Quite simply, it’s much more expensive. You may pay anywhere from 2x-20x the amount a freelancer will charge, depending on the experience of both the freelancer and agency alternatives you’re considering. Agencies must pay people, and will charge a premium if they have a reputation. Depending on their reputation and experience, website projects can be upwards of $6,500-$10,000, although the majority are in the $4,000-$6,000 range, but this completely depends on the scope of the project and previously mentioned factors.

  2. Time - While not always the case, often times agencies work with large numbers of clients. While they may be more likely to be on schedule (since their management structure yields more formalized processes), the schedule itself may be a much longer in outlook.

  3. Lack of Personalization - Given that agencies work with large numbers of clients, upwards of 20-40 depending on the size of the agency, agencies may not be able to liaise with you as close as a freelancer. Specifically, they may not be as keen to work as closely with you because any one person in charge of one task (i.e. content creation) may be doing this same job with 10 other clients. This is one of the biggest differences between freelancers and agencies. Agencies will often have a signature style (but of course if flexible with your needs), while freelancers (who are looking to create a name, reputation, and portfolio) may have a more diverse capacity to meet your specific personal needs, preferences and overall business objectives.

Now that we’ve differentiated between what freelancers offer, and what agencies offer, let’s discuss when it makes sense to hire to create your website, or do it yourself. Doing it yourself means, depending on your experience, learning things. Many things in fact. Things, that I hope this blog post helps you with.

In deciding who should create your website, it’s important to weigh important factors such as Time, Money, Professional Needs, Urgency, Which CMS You Use, Website Needs, Purpose of Website, etc.

Time and money are the two most important factors, or constraints, to take into consideration regarding whether it makes sense to learn it on your own, or to hire someone to do it.

Lets examine when it makes sense to make it yourself, and when it doesn’t.

When you should make a website yourself:

  1. When you don’t have the budget - Hiring someone to create a website can cost anywhere from $300 to $10,000+. It all depends on whether you’re hiring a freelancer or an agency, and the breadth and degree of experience s/he or they have. However, even if you don’t have the budget, time also is a critical factor in this. Learning how to use WordPress takes time, especially if your unfamiliar with the innerworkings of the internet. Learning how to use SquareSpace takes less time. But then, SquareSpace isn’t nearly as good with SEO. Weebly on the other hand is the easiest to use, but is highly limited in customization.These are all factors i’ll discuss in detail further down in this post.

  2. When you have the time - If you have the time to learn a CMS and create your own website, you’ll save yourself thousands of dollars now and in the future in the creation and management of your website. While there are many elements of managing a website, some of which you may still need outside help with (like SEO), it can save you tons of money to create the website yourself. Furthermore, it will be more personalized to your needs. There are tons of resources ranging from videos to articles helping people develop their own website.

When you should hire to make a website:

  1. When you have the budget - Hiring a specialist who spends all day working on WordPress or SquareSpace or any CMS can be advantageous but costly, depending on who you hire. The main advantage is that specialists will not only be well-versed in creating the website itself, but should come with SEO knowledge, Copywriting and Content Creation ability and an eye for Design and User Experience. They’ll be able to set you up for success, and not just with a website. This alone may be valuable enough to decide to hire someone. But it’s important to weigh all the factors of your situation (Time, Money, Professional Needs, Urgency, Website Purpose, etc.)

  2. When you don’t have the time - This one may be obvious, and ties back in with your budget. Ultimately, if you’re strapped for time, freelancers and agencies are able to create websites of varying degrees quickly without sacrificing quality. While many freelancers will charge more for an expedited product, it may be worth it in your situation. One thing to note is that freelancers often times work with only a few clients at a time, while agencies work with any number of clients. Hiring a freelancer who can devote 10-12 hours in a day to your website and work weekends, might allow your website to be completed earlier, over hiring an agency who can devote 3 people for 3 hours a day. Of course the reverse can be true, and depends on the situation of the person you hire. But generally, freelancers have a larger degree of flexibility, and can offer a more personalized product at a cheaper price, while agencies have more combined experience and can streamline processes (note it’s most freelance marketers goals to start an agency as they can charge higher prices).

Lets assume that you’ve made your decision on who will make your website. Lets now go onto the million dollar question (sadly, this can be literal sometimes): Which CMS Should I Pick?

How to Pick the Best CMS

WordPress

WordPress is an open source Content Management System that offers the most customization and flexibility, and is by far the most popular Content Management System on the market today. WordPress powers 30% of the web, composing some 18 million websites.

WordPress is an open sourced platform, meaning it allows anyone to change and redistribute its Source Code. What this means it that it has the most templates and styles available. Put simply, it has the most options.

Many of these options come in the form of Plug-Ins. Let’s define it:

Plug-In - A software that can be installed into your WordPress Website that gives your website certain functions (often from the front end, but from the backend as well) that it did not have before.

Popular Plug-Ins you may have heard of include Yoast SEO, Contact Form 7, Rank Math SEO, MailChimp For WordPress, and WooCommerce. Plug-ins are a powerful part of WordPress, and represent a portion of the Open Sourced component of WordPress.

The other main component of the open sourced nature of WordPress is the huge variety of templates that users have created for every type of situation. There are tens of thousands of templates on WordPress that users have created offering various styles and functions, with a huge degree of range of said styles and functions.

So what does this all mean for you?

WordPress has the most options - we know that now. This is great. But because of this huge degree of flexibility, WordPress is harder to use than any of the other Content Management Systems. It requires a degree of experience and a learning curve. So if you’re looking to use WordPress to create your own website, expect to devote a significant amount of time watching tutorials and reading about the internet and CMSs (depending on how much you already know).

In other words, if you’re going at this on your own, it’s a commitment. But one that can pay off.

Conversely, and highly recommended by any Digital Marketer, if you hire someone to make a website for you it’s best to have them use WordPress. This is especially true if you’re going to keep them on retainer to manage the website or any other Digital Marketing service such as SEO, Content Creation, or Copywriting.

However, if you plan on hiring someone to create your website and then pass it off to you, and you haven’t learned anything about WordPress (you can pay to have freelancers teach you as they do it, which isn’t as possible with agencies), you’ll be in some trouble. In this situation, it may be better to have the developer use WIX or SquareSpace, or even Weebly. This is because these three are WYSIWYG CMSs, which stands for “What You See Is What You Get”, which basically means you drag and drop and that’s it. I’ll get into this more in their respective sections of this blog post.

Now we know it’s the most customizable, but hardest to learn. It’s my recommendation that you use WordPress when you hire someone to make your website, or you have a significant amount of time to learn elements of website design such as SEO, UX, The Specifics of WordPress, Copywriting & Content. But the majority of people don’t have that time, and I will assume that you’re not going to be learning this on your own.

Let’s look at a “When to Use WordPress Checklist” in order of importance. As long as 4 out of 5 of these things are true for your situation, I highly recommend using WordPress for your website.

When To Use WordPress Checklist

  1. When You’re Hiring to Create Your Website - WordPress most customized and search engine optimized website. Freelancers or Agencies will be familiar with how to use these things. (Be sure that the freelancer and agency has a marketing background. If they are educated, even better. If you hire someone who is a website creator and not a marketer, your website won’t be as competitive as those that are created by those who’ve poured their marketing expertise into the website’s creation.)

  2. When You’ll Keep Someone on Retainer for Website Management - Leaving the entire management and creation of your website to third parties gives you time to focus on business development, setting goals and reaching them. While not totally necessary, I’ll reiterate that learning WordPress and all necessary skills takes a lot of time.

  3. When You Really Want to Reach For the Stars - Basically, WordPress has the best SEO capacity out there, thanks to its open sourced nature. If you’ve set your long term objectives high, this will be necessary in you getting there. Perhaps better stated, this is the most appropriate website to optimize your website in SEO and get search engines to provide you in SERPs

  4. When You Want Everything Integrated - WordPress is the most widely used CMS, accounting for 30% of the internet. For example, incorporating MailChimp is easier than ever on WordPress thanks to their open source network. Companies know that WordPress is the real deal, and have created their own iteration of product that interacts with WordPress. This is true for others, but most true with WordPress.

  5. When You Want the Widest Range and Ability to Edit - Even if you’ve established your website and you’re getting traffic and converting clients, you may want to change some things on your website. Of course, you can do this with all CMSs. But WordPress offers the widest range of customization, without doing too much to the backend or SEO.

There are many other reasons to choose WordPress for your website.

The Final Word On WordPress: WordPress is the number one Content Management System. If you’re ready to dive into something a bit complex, but will offer you Return on Investment then use WordPress. If customization is what you want, then use WordPress. If you’re hiring someone to create your website (and yuo’re either willing to learn over time, or will keep him/her on retainer) then use WordPress.

SquareSpace

SquareSpace is a user-friendly Content Management System that strikes a balance between customization, ease of use, and quality. SquareSpace is not an open source Content Management System and is a WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) platform.

WYSIWYG is powerful because you can create a website much like you would develop a document or power point becuase you can drag and drop, and watch it develop in front of your very eyes. This makes it very easy to develop a website for anyone. It also produces what I call Clean Websites, which are basically websites that offer a pristine and vibrant look. This is attributed to being able to watch the website develop in front of your very eyes.

Basically, SquareSpace (and others such as Wix and Weebly) take the complexity out of the front end (the part that you do) and add it to the back end (the part that the CMS does). As with many CMSs (including WordPress to some degree), you work in what are referred to as “blocks”. Again, we’ll define:

Blocks (in the context of web design) - A segment of space one can design a piece of content with; the medium through which users of CMSs can add different forms of content, from Images, Text, and Forms to HTML, Links, and everything in between.

It is through blocks that users create websites. SquareSpace has an intuitive drag and drop system, with an emphasis on visual appeal, producing easy to make websites that are nice to look at.

SquareSpace offers a good variety of templates, however, no where near the amount that WordPress offers. This is because SquareSpace is not an open source platform. The entire solution of the product is made and offered to users - there is no changing the source code and basically no editing of template design (other than the degree of flexibility given within the template).

SquareSpace also has a decent blogging capacity, letting you create and manage blogs with just as much (if not more) ease than creating the rest of your website.

So what does this all mean for you?

SquareSpace is easy to use. I would say it’s tied with WIX as the easiest for anyone to use. It’s important to note that Weebly is easier than both of them to use. But I believe that while Weebly creates some beautiful sites, they lack too much customization. SquareSpace (and WIX) has done a great job of creating a solution that anyone can use, while offering enough customization.

You don’t need to know anything about website design. You simply need to get accustomed to the system, and there are a ton of resources to do that including videos and articles.

Compared to WordPress, SquareSpace is much easier to use. I would say after several hour long videos, you would be capable of putting together something - it may not be what you want as their are still technical things to know in SquareSpace. But it would be a start.

Weebly is also a good alternative in terms of ease of use. However, I believe that comparing SquareSpace and WIX is a better comparison, as Weebly is in its own in terms of the specific solution it provides to people looking to create a website. WIX and SquareSpace offer great services with a good blend of front-end customization and backend management, while Weebly seems to have a differnet balance of this all together catering to people who are looking for the simplest solution.

It is my belief that WIX and SquareSpace aren’t so hard to use that it needs to be made even easier. But there are absolutely situations where Weebly is the best choice, which I will discuss in the Weebly section.

SquareSpace and Wix are the best for DIYs who want to develop a smart website for a small business, a personal brand, or a local organization (non-profits, etc.). One of SquareSpace’s best attributes, in comparison to WIX, is that it automatically sets up websites to be perfectly responsive on mobile. WIX requires manually doing this, which means YouTubing a solution for how to do this.

Anyways, you can still consider hiring someone to make a SquareSpace website for you, and might be a good idea for a couple of reasons.

First, if they are familiar with SquareSpace (not all are actually, because it’s seen as such a DIY platform) then it shouldn’t take them nearly as long as a WordPress website. This is because there are no Plug-Ins a web designer needs to work with, and the drag and drop is very easy.

Second, while SquareSpace has a good enough SEO capacity, to truly optimize your page and be able to compete for keywords, you would likely need a specialist to develop your site’s SEO. SquareSpace’s SEO capacity is no doubt limiting. It comes with a good basic SEO foundation - but editing it to truly optimize it for someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing could prove to be very difficult. It takes someone who truly knows both SquareSpace and SEO to do it correctly.

Still, for someone with limited resource, SquareSpace (and WIX) is the best option for creating a website without hiring someone. In fact, this is precisely what I recommend it for to people. The only other reason is while there aren’t very many templates, (90 compared to 10,000+ for WordPress) their templates are beautiful and can work for a variety of needs. Some templates are perfectly suited for various things (I think photography portfolios work very well on some SquareSpace templates).

Lastly, SquareSpace has a darn good eCommerce component, that I believe beats WIX (barely), and is easy to install and manage.

Let’s look at a “When to Use SquareSpace Checklist” in order of importance.

When to Use SquareSpace Checklist

  1. When You have Limited Resources (Time and Money) - If you have limited resources, I highly recommend SquareSpace (WIX too). I will compare WIX and SquareSpace in the WIX section, but I believe SquareSpace is a little easier to use than WIX, but since they are so close in user-friendliness its more a personal preference. It also takes much less time to put together a website on SquareSpace: Depending on your experience you could finish the actual creation of your website in a day or two.

  2. When You Want It to Look Pretty - SquareSpace’s templates are very gorgeous, and is one of the strengths of SquareSpace. WordPress has thousands, so of course they have pretty ones (many more visually appealing templates, in fact), but SquareSpace really puts its money where its mouth is in this regard. That’s why I’ve always thought of it as the best option for people looking to create their website themselves. Looks Pretty and it’s easy.

  3. When You Want to be Able to Edit It On Your Own - No retainer contracts necessary here. If you make it yourself or hire someone to make your website, you’ll be able to quickly learn how to edit SquareSpace thanks to the vast amount of resources out there and ease of use of the platform.

  4. Want a No Stress Hassle Free Website - Again, relating to the ease of use, it’s just easy. If you’re just starting out in business, or in your field, this is your best bet.

The Final Word On SquareSpace: Easy websites that look pretty and take very little time to create (even quicker than WIX). If you want that, and good everything else, then pick SquareSpace. Weebly is easier to use, but I believe SquareSpace isn’t so much harder to use that you should opt to sacrifice a few things and use Weebly. Also, a strong emphasis with SquareSpace is in the design - if this is important to you it basically beats all other easy to use Content Management Systems on the market.

WIX

WIX is another user-friendly Content Management System utilizing the WYSIWYG concept, offering a similar product to SquareSpace in a number of respects. The main difference between SquareSpace and WIX is the style, SEO capacity, and Apps section.

Additionally, WIX offers a free plan (with ads of course) that is a nice alternative but it’s advised to pay for your website. But this does give you the opportunity to try it out and see if you like it before you buy it. WIX also does not let you change your template once you have chosen one, which is a quirk of WIX that SquareSpace does not have.

Some may say WIX is easier to use than SquareSpace, some the opposite. This means it’s up to a matter of preference and both are good options.

WIX’s SEO is arguably better than SquareSpace, but not by much. Credit to WIX though, as they seem to be addressing this issue recently and have launched some SEO components that make it a little easier - but they still have a long way to go.

WIX also has a variety of apps and add-ons that you can use, which is probably the largest and most important difference between SquareSpace and WIX. SquareSpace is literally what you see on the page - that’s it. WIX, however, gives you the capacity to download things such as reservations (great for restaurants or hotels), and advanced forms.

This means that, while it’s not open source, there are additional things you can do to your WIX site. In other words, you can add things to your WIX website that are either impossible on SquareSpace, or would require a great deal of coding knowledge - something we’re assuming you don’t have for the purposes of this blog post.

So what does this all mean for you?

WIX is a powerful CMS that offers a unique degree of flexibility given that it is a drag and drop interface. WIX’s templates are definitely not as pretty as SquareSpace, but with the right design eye can be made to be visually appealing.

Similarly to SquareSpace, if you’re starting out, I’d recommend using WIX (or SquareSpace) due to its ease of use. Web Designers disagree over which is easier to use which just means both are good options.

As with SquareSpace, there are still some merits in hiring someone to create your WIX website.

First, since WIX is easy to use, it too shouldn’t take very long for a user to produce your website. As a website designer myself, it would be possible (if I had all the information I needed) to finish your WIX (or SquareSpace) website in one day.

Secondly, while WIX is a bit better than SquareSpace regarding its SEO capacity and offers more instruction on how to do it per se, to truly incorporate SEO that will make a significant difference it could be a good idea to hire someone.

That being said, the real value of WIX comes from the user-friendliness and the anyone-can-do-it solution. Both WIX and SquareSpace give people who do not specialize in Website Creation the ability to do it, if they’re willing to sit down and learn how to use the software.

Personally, while I am experienced in both WIX and SquareSpace, I just like SquareSpace better due to their designs. I have a marketing background, and I think that SquareSpace truly triumphs over WIX in that regard. I believe it is important for your website to look good, and the ability to give anyone the capacity to make a good looking website means a better product - at least for what it set out to do.

But this isn’t about me, this is about you. I believe any random person can create a great WIX or SquareSpace website, and it is a matter of making a good judgement and seeking additional information regarding deciding between the two. I will be creating a WIX versus SquareSpace comparison within the next few weeks of this post, so stay tuned!

But for now, lets look at a “When to Use WIX Checklist” in order of importance.

When to Use WIX Checklist

  1. When You Have Limited Resources (Time and Money) - Like SquareSpace, the main reason to use WIX is if you have limited resources. WIX is easy to use, and might have more flexibility in the drag and drop component. In SquareSpace you can’t drag and drop things anywhere, while in WIX it feels like you can. Furthermore, WIX offers a free subscription (with ads) meaning that for those with Limited Resources this may be your best option (do note that WIX’s first pay plan to get rid of ads is actually higher than the competition). However, if you’re creating a website for a personal brand, organization, or business, you get more functionality across all platforms the more you pay and should be considered a primary expense of doing business (and starting a business for that matter)

  2. When You Want to Incorporate Easy to Install Add-Ons - One thing WIX undeniably beats SquareSpace in is their app store. WIX has one, and SquareSpace doesn’t. This means that you can create a relatively easy to produce website with things such as Events Calendars, Live Chats, Reservations Templates, Site Searches and Social Media Streams incorporated into your site. This is powerful because it solves some problems that SquareSpace users have complained about. WIX might be better for businesses, but SquareSpace is good for portfolios, blogs, and design.

  3. When You Want to be Able to Edit It On Your Own - Similarly to SquareSpace, given its ease of use and the power of its drag and drop interface, you can create your own website and not even need to hire someone to manage it for you. It might be a good idea to find someone to incorporate SEO best practices, but that is a heck of a lot cheaper than the whole Website Design, SEO, Content and Copy package.

  4. When You Want to Try the SEO Stuff On Your Own - One difference between WIX and SquareSpace is that while SquareSpace might have overall a more integrated SEO package, WIX actually has a SEO wizard that shows you what to do. SquareSpace doesn’t have something quite like that which means you have to figure it out and know, yourself. The SEO Wizard on WIX is good, but for SEOs (like myself) it is simply not good enough. But if you're going to take on SEO yourself, it may be better to use WIX over SquareSpace.

The Final Word On WIX: Use WIX if you intend on tackling the majority of the website creation and management yourself because if you’re going to hire someone, you might as well make them do WordPress. With WIX, the main difference is the App-store and the SEO wizard. These things give you the easiest access to incorporating these technical things (from the perspective of someone who isn’t comfortable with technology or the internet/computers), with the highest performance from these things as well.

Weebly

Weebly is the easiest Content Management System to use. It has a really great balance of functionality which allows users to very easily create a great website for their small business, personal brand, or non-profit organization.

Weebly uses a Drag and Drop interface and is a WYSIWYG concept. Weebly has an app store with many different products that give a great degree of functionality to your website. While WIX’s app store is probably better, for users taking advantage of the greater ease of use that Weebly offers over any of its competitors, this can be very beneficial. Apps are easy to implement and manage.

Weebly’s SEO capacity is pretty good, offering everything you need to compete against other small businesses, except for one bizarre on-page SEO component (and an important one at that, especially for blogs.)

One of my biggest gripes with Weebly is that for some bizarre reason, users cannot implement heading tags H2 - H6 which is an extremely important part of on-page SEO. You need a Plug-In to make Weebly do this.

Since Weebly is targeting people that aren’t familiar with website design, it seems silly to take out something so simple and important to SEO. If users weren't aware, they would have no idea they were missing out on such an important piece of on page SEO. Heading tags make webpages much easier for Google and Search Engines to read as they act as a type of organization of on page content (much like they do for human eyes as well). This represents an important part of SEO and people who aren’t familiar with website design would very easily miss this component.

Despite this gripe, Weebly provides an incredibly easy to use service that is a great solution for anyone looking to build a website that looks nice, quickly.

Weebly’s eCommerce components are up to par as well, and give users the right degree of functionality.

So what does this all mean for you?

If you know that you’re lacking in anything internet related but need a website, Weebly is likely the best choice for you. They offer cheap plans, ease of use, great designs and have an app store like WIX.

I think Weebly does lack many features that all other Content Management Systems have, however, some people do not need them. I think of my mom, for example, who is a therapist. She does not need a blog, or anything complicated - she just needs something on the internet that conveys information about her business.

One important note about Weebly is its blog. I am a blogger. While I currently use SquareSpace, I am going to switch to WordPress for this specific website. I also am developing another brand on a WordPress site. But if I was picking between SquareSpace, WIX, or Weebly for a website that places importance on its blog - I would never choose Weebly.

Weebly’s blog component simply is not up to par, especially in comparison to its direct competitors WIX and SquareSpace. Some quirks about the blog include not being able to copy your blog content anywhere and only being able to share on Facebook and Twitter. Additionally, their are basically no templates for the blog, meaning that despite images and formatting, they will all look the same.

That being said, if you simply need a website on the internet, want to get it up quickly with very little learning curve, Weebly is a great option for a Content Management System.

Lets examine a “When to Use Weebly Checklist” in order of importance.

When to Use Weebly Checklist

  1. When You Want the Easiest to Use Website Builder On the Market - All website developers agree that Weebly is the easiest CMS to use. It just works smoothly, is intuitive, doesn’t require much learning and can be done very quickly. If this your absolute main concern, then pick Weebly. However, SquareSpace and WIX aren’t much more complicated and I don’t think the added ease of Weebly is so valuable that you should skip over consideration of WIX and SquareSpace. Both WIX and Weebly offer free plans so you can try it out (although I recommend getting your domain from GoDaddy or SiteGround so you can have a greater degree of flexibility if they don’t work for you). SquareSpace is a good balance of ease of use and customization, but it really just depends on where you fall in terms of how comfortable you are with technology, the internet, and computers.

  2. When You Want a Simple Website But with Options to Incorporate Add-Ons - Basically, with Weebly you can create a website with great ease, and leave it for a while. You can do what you are able to do with SEO or hire someone (best to hire a freelancer in this situation) to help, consult, or manage Content and Copywriting incorporated with SEO. But should you want to, you can take it to the next level and add some add-ons such as social media feeds direct on your website, yelp reviews, a PayPal button, Google Maps Info and Live Chats.

  3. When You Want to be Able to Edit It On Your Own - As with the other Drag and Drop interfaces, you do not need to hire a website manager or webmaster - you can simply do all the editing on your own. This is where Weebly’s ease of use shines. You basically can do it all on your own, and don’t need any help change your website or incorporate add-ons.

The Final Word On Weebly: Use this if ease of use is the absolute most valuable part of creating a website. When I say this, I mean that you don’t really care so much about anything else (knowing that ‘everything else’ is done just fine i.e. SEO), and you just want a good page on the internet with as few questions, friction and confusion as possible.

The Final Word On How to Pick the Best CMS

One important thing I want to mention is if you’re hiring someone to make it for you, listen to his/her advice. But also do your own research, because while s/he may make your website, the management of the website is just as important. If you don’t intend to hire someone to manage your website down the road (in the foreseeable future), then that makes a HUGE impact on which CMS you should use.

On the other hand, if you’re going to hire someone to manage your website, I really highly recommend just using WordPress. Your freelancer or agency should know how to do this - if they don’t, do not hire them.

So, then, one of the important ways to look at this decision is:

Should I Use WordPress, or Another More Simpler Content Management System?

Once you've decided this, if you’ve chosen to use a simpler Content Management System, take a close look at the differences between the two. Summarized it’s this:

  1. Use Weebly if you want the easiest to use just to get a website on the internet, with the added ability of incorporating add-ons later

  2. Use SquareSpace if you care about the design of your website and want a great combination of SEO, support, template variety, and eases of use.

  3. Use WIX if you want to make an easy website with a comprehensive Drag and Drop interface, with the added value of benefiting (either now, or later) from a great app store, and a SEO wizard to incorporate probably the best automated SEO of the three non-WordPress CMSs.

If you’ve chosen to use WordPress, it’s either time to start learning about WordPress because it takes some time. Or it’s time to look into a Freelancer or Agency to find help.

I am experienced with WordPress (WIX and SquareSpace) and offer affordable and comprehensive solutions regarding Website Design, as well as Copywriting, SEO, and Content Creation. In each of my services, I incorporate the most important elements of my other services so you’re never just getting SEO or just Content. Each one is informed by elements of the other!

Even if you do not go with me, should you decide to hire someone, make absolutely sure that s/he / they approach their services in this way.

Feel free to inquire, and stay tuned for more valuable content about getting started with your website.