Web design with WordPress or a dedicated CMS?

This will be challenging and confusing a bit, as there are pros and cons for each method, WordPress and dedicated CMS. Depending on the website type, one method would be suitable to be applied. Hence, firstly we need to determine what kind of a website you want to design.

What is a dedicated CMS?

CMS is a content management system or the management panel of a website. Many free open-source CMSs have been designed in recent years which are now available in the market. The most popular free CMSs are Joomla, WordPress and Drupal. In dedicated CMSs, the management panel and database architecture are tailored to the needs of your website.

Advantages of using a dedicated CMS

There are many benefits associated with using a dedicated system. Here, we have discussed the most important ones:

High speed and more flexible

Everything is implemented from the beginning by a professional web designer and tailored to your needs which refers to avoiding any unnecessary code or tables in the database and information accessibility as quickly as possible. Also, the designer controls the main code and inner communications of the code, helps him upgrade the program easily and gives him the capability of adding new features to the program.

High security

One of the most important factors in a dedicated CMS is its high security. This security is due to the uniqueness of the codes and the fact that no one knows how it’s been coded.

Assume that your website has been coded in a new language that no one in the world knows. Therefore, it would be very difficult to spy on such a system.

It is important to note that the specificity of a CMS is not sufficient for its security, as in some cases, dedicated CMSs may even become more vulnerable than free CMSs. The security of the codes highly depends on the knowledge and experience of the developers.

Disadvantages of dedicated CMS compared to WordPress

In addition to features such as security and speed, which are considered in a dedicated CMS, there are some other disadvantages that may affect your decision. The most important ones are discussed below:

High cost and time consuming

 If you want to buy a suit you have two options. You will either buy a ready to use suit from a store or as the second option, you may go to a personal tailor to order a suit only for you. Obviously the second option would be more expensive and take more time! The same thing applies to website design. When you use a free content management system, you will not spend a lot of money on design and development of the management panels. While, if designing a website with dedicated CMSs, it takes a longer time to design and the cost will be higher accordingly.

A company may offer the same price for a dedicated CMS as it is done in WordPress. In such a case, be aware that the CMS is not dedicated to you but to the developer company. That means a CMS is implemented by a team of 5 to 10 people and it will be sold to you as a dedicated system. However, at the same time, the same system will be sold to other companies with different fields of work. This CMS is practically exclusive to the company that has produced it.

WordPress content management system has reached its current position in 14 years with the efforts of millions of people around the world. It has been able to become the most popular system in its field of work. This statistical community shows how WordPress can add value to your web design capability.

It Is Estimated That It Takes One Hundred Years To Implement A Content Management System With WordPress Features By One Person!

Poor or expensive support

When an open-source content management system, like WordPress or Joomla is used, a community of millions of website designers with different abilities and experiences around the world are there, while in a dedicated system, there is only one team of designers.

When website design companies are at their peak of work, they delay your requests or charge you a lot of money to make small changes. In both cases, you will experience a difficult situation. Therefore, the longer this cooperation lasts the more dependent you will be on the company and the situation to receive support becomes more difficult. Conversely, if the core of your website is WordPress and the supporting company does not provide adequate services, you can quickly find an alternative company or workforce at a reasonable price.

It is necessary to consider the point that both WordPress and Dedicated CMS have their own pros and cons, so both can be useful depending on your business scale.

What kind of websites does CMS suit best?

 In this section, we will review the most popular websites and decide which content management system is suitable for each.

Online store design

A good example of using dedicated CMSs is the website design for very large online stores. Usually, websites that sell a wide range of products need a dedicated platform for communications between important departments, such as the delivery department, the administrative department and the warehouse.

In this case, it is recommended to create a proper connection between the departments by using special coding and provide suitable conditions for rapid system upgrade. These companies usually prefer to design an online store by an internal team and IT department within the company, in order to respond to their system needs and requirements as soon as possible.

A successful example of such companies is SOUQ. However, if you are planning to set up a specialised online store to sell products in a specific field and with a limited target community, using WordPress can be a very good idea, as the time and cost of setting up the site will be much less compared to the conditions in which you build a team yourself.

After one or two years of activity and gaining appropriate level of knowledge and experience in the market, you can design and implement a dedicated CMS, based on your needs. During the design of this system, your site is well available to your customers and provides services as usual.

Website design for companies

Designing websites using WordPress for companies or manufacturing groups is the best available choice. These companies usually require complex features in their admin panel and pay more attention to the design of the outer shell. In this case, WordPress meets all their needs. By designing a dedicated template, they will be able to work online at a reasonable price.

Website design for governmental agencies

In addition to providing information on their websites, governmental agencies need a central portal to be able to manage the human resources and internal communications. Therefore, they generally deal with companies who are specialised in designing enterprise portals and ERP systems.

In these organisations, the internal relations of the company can be separated from the website, as they practically use their websites for introduction and information providing purposes only. In such cases, designing a corporate website for web-based activities and managing internal relations through an enterprise portal is recommended.

News website design

SEO is generally very important for news websites and all the features of a news website can be implemented on the WordPress platform. Some people think free content management systems, such as WordPress, do not have the ability to host websites with a lot of content and users, which is not right. Using WordPress for top news websites in the world implies that WordPress is able to host large websites too.

Creative websites design

Creative websites are generally referred to the websites that are implemented by a startup and that follow a completely different approach. Usually on these websites, we need to implement features and capabilities that are not available in any other website. In these cases, WordPress and dedicated CMSs are in exactly the same situation and development and creativity are needed for both.

Due to the fact that startups generally do not have the required capital to code a dedicated CMS and build a strong team in their first months of activity, they normally implement an initial version on the WordPress platform to analyse the customer’s feedback. Whenever they feel that the idea has reached the development stage, they decide to re-implement the website based on a dedicated CMS or even add their desired features to the website in WordPress platform.

Share your experience of starting a new business using WordPress or a dedicated CMS. What other factors do you think we should be considering for appropriate decision making?