Throughout this video series I'm going to walk you through the whole process of
setting up a website for yourself but in this video I want to take some time to
let's talk about choosing the right platform for your website. I know that
you're probably just gearing up and wanting to get started and you just want
to pick a website platform and just get going but you really want to take just a
few minutes to look at the different platforms that are out there and decide
which one is right for you. When choosing the right platform it's a good idea to
maybe take out a piece of paper and pen and jot down some of the things that
you're looking for in a website. If you're not sure what you need then you
can also look at your goals for your website and what the features you want
your website to do. Some of the things you might be looking for between the
different platforms could be price, do they offer a trial account, can you go in
and create an account and take it for a test drive to see if it's going to be
what you need? What are some of the features that they offer and do they are
they what you need? Some examples could be do you want a blog section? Do you
need a photo gallery? Do you need an online store or maybe a reservation
system? Think about the features that you're looking for on your website and
do those features, are those available in the platform that you're looking at. Also,
look at growth options. Yeah you're just starting out right now and you're
probably looking at what you can do right now and that's really important
but then once you become more established will this website be able to
grow with you? Will you be able to add things like an e-commerce store later on?
Will you be adding regular updates to your website? Will you be selling more
products? So you want to make sure that the platform allows you to grow as your
business grows so the first one we want to talk about is let's discuss
WordPress.org. The self hosted WordPress powers over between 28 and 33 percent of
the top websites out there at the time of this video recording so it's a really
popular and robust system and when you hear WordPress there are two different
versions and we'll cover both of them. The one I'm talking about with this one
is the WordPress.org and then later on I'll discuss WordPress.com. The self
hosted WordPress tops our list of most popular
Solutions simply because of its features, the functionality, the stability, and
security that you have with it. It's an open-source meaning that it is free for
you to use the software and you also have the maximum control over what you
do with your website, because you have ultimate control and it's free to use
the software you will need a hosting provider to put the software on it and
the hosting provider provides the servers for you so you don't have a
server in your back room running for you that you have to worry about a server as
well. So some of the pros for that is obviously pretty much absolutely
anything that you can think of to do on your website you can do with WordPress.
There is usually a plugin, a plugin is like an app that extends the
functionality of your website there's probably a plugin that's already out
there and it's probably free or low cost solution that you can install on your
website. Things like adding an e-commerce store to your website that is done by a
plugin so out-of-the-box being able to make your website do exactly what you
want is available with WordPress with a little bit of setup. Along with the
plugins or extending the functionality there are thousands upon thousands of
themes out there. The theme is the look and feel of your website and there are a
range of free and premium themes that you can purchase to make your website
look and feel exactly how you want. Now on the flip side there are some cons. The
biggest con is the fact that you will be handling all of this yourself. You have
to get the hosting server package to put the software of WordPress on there and
then you're required to maintain that and for some people they just don't want
that burden of maintaining it. You'll also be required to make sure that the
updates are done, the plugins are updated, and that the backups are done. If you get
the right hosting provider then they can do a lot of that for you and it's built
into the pricing. So talking about pricing the pricing structure of the
software itself is actually free, again because you have to do a hosting
provider, you have to buy a hosting provider package. That can range between,
its averages about $12.99, as a WPBeginner user you're able to get a
website for only 2$.75 a month through Bluehost if
you'll click on the link below we've set up a discount through them for you and
that comes with a free ssl certificate and a free domain name. But what I like
about is it, is you can extend it as you need to so you can be as, as inexpensive
as you need to to begin and then as your site grows you can grow with the
complexity and the expenses with it. The next platform I wanna talk about is Wix.com.
This is a hosted platform meaning they do the hosting, everything's through
them, all you have to do is log in through one login area and they handle
the servers and everything for you. So it's considered a fully hosted platform
you don't have to pay for hosting, you're simply paying for them to host it and
for them to setup the software for you. You have your choice of several hundred
templates that you can choose from and a little bit of functionality that's
already set up. If you're just getting started they do offer a free limited
plan but obviously you can use this to test drive your idea to see if it's
going to work for you. Now the free plan doesn't include your own domain name so
it would be something like yoursite.Wix.com
so keep that in mind. You also get a free SSL certificate with that but you'll
have to turn it on as well. Some of the cons for Wix are some of the lower tier
like the free and connect domain plans will show the Wix branding on your site
and they'll also show ads on your site and you don't get the ad money they will
get that instead. Also we've, we've had several people move from Wix and when
moving from Wix it can be quite tedious and almost impossible to do. Their
pricing tiers are a little bit different, their range from nine dollars a month up
to $26.25 a month if you want to add ecommerce. Also their connect domains
you'll still have to get your own domain for that.
Shopify is a great ecommerce platform so if you're looking to build up an
ecommerce store then this is a great solution for you. Their whole platform is
built around ecommerce so from the ground up it's directed at building
products and showing products to users. There are several themes to choose from
they're also several third-party apps that you can
integrate with your site and such, and the same as with Wix it is a hosted
platform so they host everything for you and all you have to do is log into your
Shopify account to get started. For payments they allow Shopify payments as
well as third-party and your own gateways are accepted through there
which is great. They have a website builder Shopify comes with a full
inventory management system for you to keep track of all of your inventory. For
themes they have several hundred themes to choose from both free and paid and
they have a decent intuitive drag-and-drop system when you're wanting
to change up your theme to match what you want your site to look like. So some
of the cons for this is if you're just starting out then it will be a little
pricey, it's higher than most other websites speaking of pricing it comes at
$29 a month and that's for the base amount and then if you want to upgrade
you'll have to go up to $79 a month for the advanced Shopify is also $299 a month.
They'll do a light plan which I've tried that before and it's only $9 month but
basically that just allows you to add products on to your own site so you
don't really get the inventory in the backend stuff you just are able to add
products to a site that you already have. It's a great way to test out if you're
wanting to get into e-commerce and then move up is what I recommend doing. Also
if you ever want to move away from Shopify it's pretty difficult to move
all of your stuff over from Shopify to another hosting platform. The next
platform I want to talk about is Weebly. Like the other hosted platforms
this is a hosted platform, all you do is log in and you set up your account and
you start creating your website. They have a drag-and-drop feature that allows
you to make your website look and feel however you want.
They have several website designs and you can do a drag and drop to make it
look exactly how you want. It also has a built-in support for e-commerce through
square and this allows you to start a online store and start selling pretty
quickly. There are several built-in features
automatically such as contact form, photos, sliders, and things like that. Some
of the cons for this is it's a fully hosted platform so the features that are
available are the only ones that they offer. In other words you can't hire a
developer or you can't code your own stuff into it if you need a different
functionality for your site. The other thing is Weebly charges a three percent
transaction fee on every purchase made through your ecommerce store. If you want
to avoid those transaction fees then you'll have to upgrade to their business
plan. Some of their pricing is that Weebly is free to start off with just
like with Wix but it's like yoursite.Weebly.com and they're paid plans will
start from $8 a month billed annually or $12 a month if you're billed monthly.
Then their business plan costs $25 a month to get started and then
same with Wix you'll also have to purchase your domain name separately.
The next platform is Squarespace and this is probably one of the most popular of the
hosted platforms that there are aside from WordPress.com. Squarespace has
enterprise level infrastructure and hosting so you can focus on just growing
your site and not having to worry about the server structure. There are several
designs to get started or themes if you will. There's also a lot of third-party
apps that extend the functionality as well. If you're looking to turn it into a
store they have e-commerce functionality that you can add to your site. Some of
the cons includes limited integrations with third-party services and that could
be a hurdle if you're wanting your site to do a certain thing might be difficult
to find the integration that you're looking for. Their ecommerce plans only
allow stripe Apple pay and PayPal for a payment so you can't add your own
gateway. For pricing they're ranging between $12 a month and $18 a month and
then their online store starts at $26 and $40 a month. Again with most of the others
you'll also have to get your own custom domain name separately and then the
final one that I want to discuss is the WordPress com. I started off the video
talking about WordPress.org and there are some similarities between the two.
They both are using the WordPress software. The difference is WordPress.com
is the hosted platform, you, like with the other hosting solutions out
there, you simply log in and you start building up your website. Obviously the
beauty of that is you don't have to worry about software or backups
or WordPress updates you just it gets taken care of for you.
There are free and paid plans that you can choose from and the set of features
will be different for each plan that you're using. All plans will have several
hundreds of free and paid themes that you can choose from as well as some of
the plugins that you might want. Some of the downsides for WordPress.com is you
can't install custom plugins, there are certain premium themes that you cannot
install unless you upgrade to their business plan, also the premium and lower
plans don't include ecommerce, also if you're looking to earn money from ad
networks the lower plans don't allow ad network integrations either. As I said
the basic plan is free but again that'll be yoursite.WordPress.com and personal
plans start at four dollars a month premium plans will go as much as $8.25 a
month and then your business plan will be $24.92 a month billed
annually and then that business plan gives you the ecommerce addon that you
were looking for. After looking at all of the solutions we think that
WordPress.org is the best solution that beats them all in overall
performance, ease of use, functionality, and the ability to extend your website
to do what you want it to do. Now that we've gone through and chosen the right
platform for our website, in the next video I want to walk you through how to
pick the right name for your website so I'll see you in the next video. Did you
learn today's video? If so subscribe to our YouTube channel and we'll send more
helpful tips to help you manage your WordPress website and thanks for
watching