What if WordPress and Builder.io decided to Arm Wrestle?
A head to head platform comparison of Builder.io and Wordpress
Tuesday, Dec 5, 2023
As a seasoned professional in the digital agency space, I have decades of experience leveraging Content Management Systems (#cms) like WordPress and Digital Experience Platforms (#dxp) like Adobe, Sitecore, and Optimizely to help my clients digitally transform their customer experiences. Recently, a new customer who was looking for an alternative to WordPress presented me with a challenge. They sought something with a similar cost profile. This quest led me to discover Builder.io, which at first glance seemed to meet all the criteria as a solid alternative to WordPress, boasting comparable features and costs.
However, as we know, first impressions can be deceptive, so I decided to dive deeper. I built a website, www.jhsdigitalconsulting.com, on both platforms to document my experience. In this blog, I will recap my experience and provide a more detailed comparison of the two platforms.
First, Let's Level Set
Before delving into the comparisons, it's essential to understand the lineage of these two platforms.
WordPress is an open-source platform that began as a blogging tool in 2003 but has since evolved into the most widely used content management system on the web, thanks to its vast repository of plugins and themes.
Builder.io is a more recent addition to the scene, introduced about five years ago, emerging from the Headless CMS ecosystem to address the challenges that many headless CMS platforms had with enabling marketers to rapidly create new marketing experiences without developer support.
Cost Comparisons
When it comes to costs, both platforms are competitive, with free versions scaling up to enterprise offerings around the $25,000 mark annually.
Edge: Draw
Core CMS Capabilities
Both platforms offer a comprehensive set of modern content management capabilities, including content authoring and WYSIWYG page creation. WordPress, however, is initially narrowly focused on blog website creation but can be extended by adding open-source or freemium plugins like Elementor. Builder.io has all of these core features natively available in its free core version. One area where Builder.io seemingly excels is in content references and structured content types. WordPress may offer these capabilities through plugins, but I found them more intuitive to access in Builder.io.
Edge: Builder.io
Usability
Both platforms offer robust self-service and low-code capabilities that enable marketers to create websites with minimal technical intervention. However, I found Builder.io to be more user-friendly, particularly because it doesn't rely on a variety of third-party plugins to add functionality but rather includes these capabilities natively in the core product. If you can't find a plugin that meets your needs, you can develop your own, making the platform infinitely extensible.
Edge: Builder.io
Extendibility
WordPress's extendibility is unparalleled, offering a vast selection of plugins for every conceivable need. However, Builder.io aligns with MACH Alliance standards and supports leading platforms, presenting a solid framework for innovation. Overall, I give the edge to WordPress as the sheer amount of pre-existing add-ons offers a differentiating advantage to companies at this price point who probably don't have the budget or need to develop custom plugins and are happy not to reinvent the wheel.
Edge: WordPress
Technical Architecture
WordPress is built on a PHP/MySQL architecture (e.g., LAMP) and can be self-hosted or leveraged under several SaaS platforms like WordPress.org. Builder.io is a SaaS-based platform for the CMS but is designed leveraging a headless approach and supports many flavors of front-end development, the most common being React/NextJS.
Overall, I found Builder.io's platform much easier to work with and extend as a developer as it leverages a modern, component-based development approach and supports modern CSS frameworks like Tailwind.css and an intuitive set of APIs (Node.js, REST, or GraphQL).
WordPress, on the other hand, has extensive amounts of abstraction and many plugins that complicate customization from a code perspective. So, while the WordPress community of developers dwarfs that of Builder, I believe any web developer can quickly learn Builder.io and work within whatever development framework they are comfortable with.
Edge: Builder.io
Search & Performance Optimization
A comparative performance analysis using Google Lighthouse revealed that Builder.io marginally outperforms WordPress. Here are the results that each implementation received:
Edge: Builder.io
Security
As the most common cms platform on the planet and one that is built on PHP WordPress has a history of security vulnerabilities and there are a constant stream of security patches you need to apply to your site. Builder.io is a SaaS platform where Builder.io takes care of all of the security concerns of the SaaS platform and then your website runs on a headless / JAMSTACK approach and hence isn't going to be subject to the same amount of security threats.
Edge: Builder.io
Other Key Differentiators
One of the biggest differences between the platforms is Builder.io's Visual Co-Pilot feature, which in my opinion is a game changer especially if you are doing custom design work that needs to be implemented in your CMS. This plugin allows you to easily export designs from Figma into the CMS and furthermore into your codebase at the click of a button. While Wordpress has a massive library of site templates to choose from, many brands want a bespoke design and in that case this capability is really a game changer as you can improve your design to development productivity by up to 80%
Edge: Builder.io
Summary
In summary, I found Builder.io to be a worthy opponent to WordPress and in many regards a superior choice. WordPress remains a great fit particularly for organizations that have WordPress skills and are happy to build their sites leveraging an out of the box site template or theme as a starting point to accelerate development. Builder.io however should be a strong consideration for organizations that want more bespoke designs, and don't already have WordPress experience or are dissatisfied with WordPress and looking for an alternative at the same budget price point.
