Web Platforms

This is one of the most frequently asked questions, what should I build my new website in, or should I rebuild my site onto a new platform. With this in mind, let's look at the options so you can make an informed decisions.

I believe it is generally best to stay away from really new platforms, as they may not be tested and trialed yet, and who wants to be the guinea pig when they are trying to market online. There are many popular platofrms to choose from.

Wordpress

Wordpress is probably the most popular open-source, free platform, you can also create working eshops using Woocommerce, and it is completely free with thousands of themes to choose from. If you want to start customising though that is when you would need to start purchasing tehemes or plugins for that extra functionality. Especially Woocommerce. Much of the Woocommerce eshop functionality is put into paid plugins. With that said, you can still run a completely free, working eshop with just the base Woocommerce free plugin.

Shopify

Shopify, as probably it's main contender, takes care of your hosting too, so you build on their servers online. As a consumer, Shopify is easier to get started with, you need to pay for it every month, and things can get pricey the more products / plugins etc you require. So it is not free. Also, since your webiste is on Shopify servers, Shopify has complete control of your setup and owndership, and has in the past, and probably will in the future take webistes off line or penalise as they see fit. You can land up with your site taken offline without your permission.

Both Shopify and Wordpress are customisable, developers are able to change your theme to exactly how you want it via their backend coding. This is very helpful and gives you a unique setup. You are also able to edit your own website through login dashboards for both platforms, so it allows you the ability to change your own content. Wordpress, however, is far superior when it comes to customisation and is much easier for developers to work with than with Shopify, all the coding has to be done on their browser and not on dedicated developer software, so it makes custom building in Shopify quite exhausting.

React & NextJS

React and NextJS are the newish contenders and have taken over much of the web market over the last years. They require a Full Stack developer to build and there is no limit.ation to the functionality you can get, This free platform is used extensively from websites to software development to mobile apps and there are extensive libraries to choose from.

You no longer are able to just build a website, but you can leverage the interactivity power of React to create really useful web apps for your users that are incredibly fast and have excellent performance ratings.

React has changed the game of waiting for a website to load or pages navigation loading, and all the drama of sluggish sites is replaced with the speed and efficiency of a platform built specifically to work fast and seamlessly in our modern times.

Everything is available, for free or using free tiers. Dashboards can be built relatively easily through available libraries, eshops can be seamlessly created, and there is no bloat, just clean, efficient code. It is definitely our present and our future at the moment and I highly recommend using it for any new builds unless you really have to build in another platform.

There are other platforms, not mentioned here, but hopefully you will gain some insight into these 3 main ones. Which one you should choose is entirely up to you, there is no right answer, but some perform better, some are easier to initially set up, some are more free than others with more functionality, and others need more development than others, it is your choice.