Sitebuilder or CMS
Website creation is not dedicated to programmers any more because of the technology fast improvements. You have various options to get your website live in short time. Instead of seeking for web development company to program your business site, you can make use lots of existing solutions like the drag and drop sitebuilder wizard or powerful cms softwares like wordpress. Should you use sitebuilder service or install cms software to start with? This article compares the two solutions side by side and help with your final choice.
About Sitebuilder Wizard
Sitebuilder wizard is one of the earliest solutions to help people launch website in quick time. Most sitebuilder softwares are setup by step by step guidance where you can choose website templates, create pages and final publishment. You don't need programming skills in order to use this solution, each element is editable so you can make the layout/navigation etc as you like. A leading sitebuilder solution comes with hundreds of templates to choose from and you can always find a design that works with your needs. Some popular sitebuilder service like plesk sitebuilder and RV sitebuilder are all good choice.
About CMS Software
CMS(content management system) is a complete website creation platform. You will get all source codes and database scripts after installation. Because you have full access to each code behind, you can fully customize it based your real needs. Many web development companies nowadays make use of the leading cms solutions like joomla & drupal because of the advanced code structure.
Sitebuilder vs CMS – Ease of use
Sitebuilder wins for start users based its simple design and straight guidance. You don't have to touch a single code from behind but just navigate through a powerful GUI interface. The entire process is just like to fill out a form then you can publish to get a complete website.
On the other hand, you need to get some basic knowleges about database and html etc in order to use a cms software in right direction. Sometimes you also need to search solutions from official communities or hosting support in using it. Although all cms vendors are trying to make their products easier to use, you still have to deal with lots of technical stuff because of various modules/plugins in the gallary.
Sitebuilder vs CMS – Scalability
CMS wins for this round. For sitebuilder you have to edit everything from the sitebuilder wizard account and you have to publish the entire website again for a single change. Once there's a problem with the software or your internet connection, the publishing will fail and your website might be destroyed. Also, sitebuilder is featured for simple only. If you would like to add some dynamic contents like a blog or forum etc, it's either impossible or it will slow down your site a lot. Because most sitebuilder does not include a database. If it does, it's mostly ms access but not other engines. Ms access database is definitely not suitable for blog/forum for the modern requirements.
But all cms softwares are dynamic languages based with either mysql or sql server database powered behind. No matter if you want to edit existing pages or add new modules to your site, you can do it easily from admin panel without having to publish the entire site. The leading cms solutions like joomla and wordpress are all modulbe/plugin based where you can make customization on the fly.
Sitebuilder vs CMS – Web Server Requirements
Most web pages published by sitebuilder softwares are plaint html that has almost no requirements for hosting servers because you don't need a web server at all to open it. What you really need is a reliable hosting servers to ensure your website is always online.
CMS is different, they're either php/mysql based or .net/sql server based. You will need different server technologies to host your website. You might have been familiar with various cms platforms and be able to create a professional site with your skills. But most of the time you have to research a lot in order to get the right hosting provider.
Conclusion
Sitebuilder is great solution if you just need to create a simple enterprise website and don't plan to edit it frequently. But if you need a dynamic website with frequent updates, cms is perfect choice. You don't have to be a programmer in order to use the platform but just need basic html and database skills. When you have to completely rely on hosting provider for sitebuilder service, you have full control over cms system. You can migrate your cms site easily to other servers but you can't migrate the sitebuilder site sometimes because many sitebuilder service will not give your the actual files as everything is central managed in their system.