After running your business in the physical mode for years, you may be keen to switch it to the online mode. This switching will enable your business to capitalize on the rewarding and lucrative business growth opportunities available in the online market. But for availing these opportunities, you first need to have a website of your own.
For building a custom website for your business, there are two popular website development options available; HTML and WordPress. Being new to the website building world, you may be in a dilemma over which one to choose among them for your website development.
Here we are making a fair comparison of the functionality and capabilities of these two popular website development solutions. This will help you in choosing the solution that is right and perfect fit for your business’s website creation.
But let’s first gain a basic understanding of these website development options:-
HTML
HTML, also known as Hypertext Markup Language, is a coding language that is used for building web pages from scratch. This language is used for the development of static websites.
WordPress
WordPress is a content management system that enables users to publish content, upload files and host media without using any code. WordPress is used for the development of dynamic websites.
Let’s now understand the key differences between the two:-
1. The way of information sharing with users
A static HTML website is made from a library of HTML files and one HTML file is allocated for each page of the website. When a user visits a static website, the browser on his device makes a request to the server.
In response, the server returns a single HTML file along with some style sheets and scripts for displaying the webpage in the browser. A static HTML web page looks the same to every user and it can be changed by modifying its HTML code. If you have good coding knowledge, you can modify the code yourself. Otherwise, you will have to hire an expert developer of a professional website development company Delaware for performing this task.
Dynamic websites built using WordPress have a different way of providing information to users. A dynamic WordPress website does not have a library of ready-to-ship HTML files as is the case with an HTML website. In response to a user’s request, the website constructs a new HTML file from the data stored at the hosting server and sends it back to the user’s browser to display. The website uses PHP coding language for constructing the HTML file. Dynamic websites built in WordPress provide individual visitors greater flexibility and a more personalized experience.
2. Ease of website development and maintenance
Building HTML websites requires more time and effort. This is because the HTML and CSS code needs to be written for performing every function and for including every element in the web pages.
The effort in building these websites increases with an increase in the number of pages of a website. Similarly, the effort gets reduced with a lesser number of pages in a website. Even for updating and modifying these websites, code needs to be written. If these websites have to be updated and modified less often, then the effort in maintaining them gets reduced.
But there are ways for speeding up the HTML websites’ development process. This can be done by using open-source toolkits like BootstrapCSS that contain pre-designed navbars, buttons, tables and forms, and other components. So the websites need not be built from scratch.
In comparison, building WordPress websites requires quite less time and effort as no to minimal coding is required in their development. Also, they can be easily updated with the use of drag-and-drop plugins and themes.
For your knowledge, plugins are additional softwares that allow customization of websites, apps, computer programs, and browsers. Themes are a group of files containing graphics, style sheets, and code that help to control the overall appearance of a blog or website.
3. Search engine optimization
SEO, also known as search engine optimization, involves optimizing a website to make it rank high in the search engine result pages. For doing SEO of your website, you need to focus on on-page SEO, off-page SEO and technical SEO.
On-page SEO, also called on-site SEO, is the process of optimizing various front-end and back-end components of a website. So it ranks in the search engines and brings in new traffic. On-page SEO components consist of HTML elements, content elements and site architecture elements.
Off-page SEO covers external linking, social sharing, and more.
Technical SEO involves all the SEO elements that are not included in on-page and off-page practices. They include more technical parts of SEO like site speed, structured data and mobile readiness.
You can optimize an HTML website for search engines in several ways. Only you need to know how to do it.
Inserting keywords in the posts and pages and linking to internal and external pages are some of the best on-page SEO practices. Optimizing heading tags, title tags, meta descriptions, URLs and image alt text are some other best on-page SEO practices.
While in website building platforms like WordPress, there are buttons on a dashboard or third plugins with which you can easily perform these steps. But in an HTML website, you need to spend time and effort in creating the right tags and code for your website. If you can’t do this yourself, you need to hire a specialist website developer for doing it.
While optimizing an HTML website’s on-page SEO is relatively easy, optimizing its technical SEO is much more difficult. In comparison to this, WordPress has built-in plugins and functionality for adding these features easily and quickly.
To build a responsive HTML website from scratch, you need to define viewport meta tags, add media queries, resize text and images and more.
In a WordPress website, doing SEO is quite easy, effortless and quick.
WordPress lets you easily customize image-alt text, headings, meta descriptions and custom URLs right in your dashboard. You can customize them without editing any code.
There are thousands of responsive themes to choose from for designing a mobile-friendly WordPress website. You can install and activate a responsive theme with just a few clicks. Also, you need not worry about defining viewport meta tags, adding media queries, or setting text in the viewport width unit.
If you do not have good knowledge of SEO, then you can take advantage of various WordPress plugins. They will help you control many aspects of your website’s technical and on-page SEO.
4. Blogging
HTML websites offer more customization options for blogging than what are available in WordPress websites. They allow you to create more complex blog posts by using HTML and CSS than what can be created on WordPress.
In an HTML website, you can add bullet points, format headlines and create tables. Also, you can insert images, display posts in your sidebar and do other things. But for including any of these, you need to write the code which obviously will take time.
Suppose you want to display some text in a simple list format in an HTML file. You will have to write the code for this text. But in a WordPress website, you can display the text by simply dragging and dropping the list block onto the website page.
The drag-and-drop block editor and advanced built-in blogging functionality in a WordPress site allow you to manage users and control content visibility. They also enable you to create and manage content right in the dashboard. If you know how to code, you can also edit the existing code in the site to make particular customizations you want.
An HTML site gives you total control over the content structure and design. But to get that control, you need to have a deep knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Also, you need to spend a lot of time in writing the code. If you lack this knowledge, you will have to utilize the services of a seasoned developer.
If you need to publish blog posts on a regular basis and don’t possess coding knowledge, WordPress would be a better option for you. It provides you a fast and more accessible way for publishing a high volume of blog posts.
Compared to this, an HTML website provides more customization options, but requires extensive coding knowledge. If you want to publish a high volume of posts in it, then you either need to hire a developer or have excellent coding knowledge. If you lack both of these, your blog publishing sequence will get affected.
5. Speed
Websites that load faster are ranked higher by Google. For providing a better user experience and lessening the bounce rate, your website should load quicker.
HTML websites load faster as they require less server resources. In comparison to this, WordPress websites load slower as they require more severe resources.
HTML websites are faster because they do not require PHP execution or database queries for loading. But to load fast, their code has to be optimized. In the case of WordPress websites, they need to execute the PHP code and retrieve information from the database to display the correct information to the visitor. Consequently, they require more server resources which increases their load time and delays.
To improve the speed of your WordPress website, you can take certain measures. These include choosing a fast hosting provider and purchasing a content delivery network. The network helps to spread the website’s workload across several different servers across the globe which consequently reduces server resources. Optimizing and compressing images and some other steps can also help to enhance the speed of WordPress websites.
Similarly, the speed of HTML websites can be improved by performing certain steps. These include removing unnecessary white space, avoiding comment sections and caching the website’s content on a regular basis. Reducing the number of inline scripts and compressing and minifying images will also result in a fast loading time. Using lazy loading for images and performing some other steps can also contribute to speed improvement.
6. Price
There are various factors that impact the cost of building a website. The major ones among them are time, budget, technical expertise and design skills. If you have time but lack technical knowledge, then you can learn how to build an HTML website. If you neither have time nor technical knowledge, then building a WordPress website will be a better option.
Let’s find out the costs of developing a website with HTML and WordPress.
Hiring a website development agency to design and build your HTML website is the costliest option. This is going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars.
For maintaining your HTML website, you will have to shell out more money. It can range from a few hundreds of dollars to more than tens of thousands of dollars. The maintenance cost will eventually depend on the size of your website, the extent of changes and the rates of the website development company. If you know how to code, then the HTML website maintenance cost will get reduced.
In comparison to HTML websites, building and maintaining WordPress websites costs significantly less. This is because WordPress is an open-source software and it can be downloaded and used free of cost. But you need to pay for a custom domain name and hosting for launching your WordPress website. Also, you will have to pay for any premium plugins or themes you want to install on the website. As per HubSpot, an established CRM solution provider, premium themes can have a price up to $200, while plugins’ price can range from one-time fees of $3.99 to annual fees of $250. These design options are most likely to be cheaper than hiring a web developer or designer for customizing your HTML site’s appearance and functionality.
The prices of domain registration, hosting, themes and plugins vary. So building and managing a WordPress site may cost you in the range of a couple hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars.
If cost is a key consideration for your website development, then WordPress website building platform will prove to be the better option.
Deeply considering and critically analyzing these main differences will help you decide which is the better website development option for you.
Once you have made the choice, the next step for you is to hire a specialist website development company to work on your website. You can go with Vcana Global, a provider of outstanding and reliable website development services Delaware.
It has successfully delivered many website development projects to diverse businesses. It will ensure your project’s success too. So don’t wait and share your unique website development needs with us today.
