WordPress is easily the most popular content management system available on the web today. For most businesses, few platforms come close to offering the same degree of user-friendliness and expertise offered by WordPress.
Of course, although a lot of people love this platform, it’s certainly not the only available solution out there for those who want to build up a new and reliable website. If you’re interested in trying out something slightly different, there are a range of different and innovative solutions available across the web today that can help you to make the most of your blogs and web design experiences.
1. Ghost
Many WordPress users who want to focus primarily on creating blogs for the world to enjoy and read are starting to feel as though the traditional WordPress platform is heading in a new direction. This opinion gave way to the development of “Ghost”, a type of blogging software specifically designed for the purpose of sharing blog content. Ghost focuses entirely on blogging and avoids the additional features that are often seen in WordPress today.
2. Joomla
Joomla has been around for quite some time now, which should be enough to indicate that some people are very happy using it as an alternative to WordPress. It has a strong community full of developers and users, and is a multi-purpose CMS that comes from an open source. Already accessed by millions of small businesses, users, and corporations around the world, it’s not a bad choice at all if you’re looking for a popular alternative to WordPress. You should find that you have no problem running a Joomla website from a variety of different web hosting platforms.
3. Drupal
Drupal is yet another popular form of open-source content management system perfect for individuals looking to develop a website for the very first time. Drupal has a powerful developer base and user community, and powers almost 2.1% of all the websites on the internet today, including the State of Georgia website and the Economist. Just like WordPress, Drupal can be accessed with a host of themes and modules, and shares many of the same software requirements of Joomla and WP too, so it can run on just about any hosting service that is capable of supporting WordPress.
4. Wix
Wix is a very well-known hosted website builder that is free to use for business and personal websites – so long as the site itself is relatively small. Wix comes with a host of pre-designed templates that can be modified using the drag and drop page builder element. Wix also comes with ecommerce support if you use the paid plan, which will permit site owners to accept various payments using authorize.net or PayPal.
5. Weebly
Weebly is another completely online-hosted site builder that allows you to design and manage your own website using a collection of wonderful predesigned templates, as well as a drag-and-drop page builder too. Weebly has a limited amount of support for ecommerce purposes, but you can always access a range of custom domain names which can make it ideal for those in search of specific blog presences and more.
6. Shopify
If you’re hoping to build an online store for customers to purchase directly from your website, then Shopify might be a great alternative to WordPress, as it provides simplicity and easy-to-use tools that will allow you to design your creations from scratch. You will be able to accept payments with ease and sell your products without having to download a bunch of extra plugins.
Shopify comes with plenty of easy tools that will help you to get started with your website, and has many ready-made templates, integration options, and apps to access too.
7. Google Sites
Google sites is a simple and straightforward way to develop small websites. It is easy to use, free to host, and you can even use your own custom domain for the site too. It can’t really be compared with the CMS software on the list, but it can be compared with services like Weebly, Wix, and Squarespace.
8. Blogger
Finally, blogger is still a wonderful alternative to WordPress for some people. It’s a free service offered by Google and has much of the features that you might need for blogging, including built-in social abilities, commenting systems, templates, and the option to insert your own domain name.
Great post! I personally like blogger. I think if I ever switched away from my hosted wordpress, I would go back to blogger. It was easy to navigate and while it didn’t have all the bells and whistles… well it didn’t have all the random stuff that I’ve no use for.
Yep, me too. I started my blogging career in blogger. It’s so easy to use plus I’m more confident with the security knowing that Google owns it. But because of other factors like SEO or ranking for my blog, I have to say that I’m hands down to WordPress. But other than that I’m still happy using blogger for some static websites that I creates 🙂
I enjoyed learning about the variety and what was best about each. I’m most familiar with Word Press or Blogger.
It’s actually hard to choose between two varieties how much more 8 right? But sometimes, I enjoyed learning knew alternatives, especially if it’s kind of related with my line of work hehe. Thanks for stopping by Sophia 🙂
I think I’ve seen/ heard almost all of these around, either fellow bloggers or authors who made their website at one of those places. It sure is hard to decide as a newbie blogger with which platform to go. It’s nice to read a bit about each platform and what they work best for.
That’s totally true. It’s just great to break out each platform’s advantage to help bloggers choose which platform they want to use that can satisfy their needs or specifications.
I hadn’t heard of most of these, except Weebly and Blogger! I know more people using Blogger than WordPress so it’s funny to hear you call Blogger an “alternative” to WordPress. 😀 Great post!
Alyssa @ The Eater of Books!
Actually Alyssa, this post doesn’t just cover as a blogging platform but as an overall CMS. Over the year, WordPress has been the most used platform and Blogger only comes 5th. You can check out this article for reference 🙂
I think you misunderstood – I know (PERSONALLY) more people using Blogger than WordPress. Obviously I don’t know every single person in the world. Most of the people *I* know (friends, blogger peers, etc.) use Blogger. 😛
Oh, my previous comment sounds kinda jerky lol. Sorry about that, Alyssa (peace *wink).
And yep, I totally understand. When I started blogging, I don’t know any of them excluding wordpress and blogger, and at that time, blogger is more appealing considering how user friendly it is plus less restriction with their free accounts. Well, personally, when it comes to free blogging platform, my most recommended application is blogger.
Very interesting post! I learned some new things, too! Thanks for sharing 🙂
So glad to hear that Michele 🙂