This will be unbiased. I have been using different page builders (WordPress and Cloud-based modern builders) over and over again for years to build websites. I worked designing an entirely new page builder myself for one of my previous clients that they wanted to use for their internal content management teams to design custom pages. So what I share here is unbiased and based on trying multiple page builders. With that being said, please know that I am not a developer but a designer by trade, which means when I use a web page builder, I measure it on the following key points:

1. Ease of use
2. Good UX
3. Maximum features with minimum code
4. Scalability: For if my website will have large amount of data and features in future
5. Performance: of both the builder itself and the front-end of the website.
6. The business future of the said platform or builder. (as we have seen examples of digital product businesses shutting down after few years)

Now there's no doubt in stating the fact that WordPress has dominated the website building industry for over a decade. Even though, there's always been love-hate perception for it, close to 50% of all the websites that exist on the internet are powered by WordPress. Organizations like NASA and The White House use WordPress for their official websites.

How does WordPress work

To fully understand the major differences between WordPress and it's alternatives, it's important to understand how WordPress actually works. Especially if you're new to this.

WordPress serves as a single platform (or as some call it Monolithic) for your entire site. This means, it has a CMS (Content management system) within where you can add, update pages and different content types and it has the front-end page (the public facing) designing capabilities. This means you can manage the content, as well as the front-end design of the website within WordPress, hence the term 'monolithic'

WordPress works as a package that can be hosted on any hosting. For testing and development purposes, WordPress can also be hosted on your local computer. This means, it doens't have a dependancy on any cloud-based software or platform. All you need is a web hosting space and you can host your WordPress site on it. This information will make more sense as we go forward.

What is Bricks Builder

WordPress's own front-end page building experience (Gutenberg, a page builder within WordPress) has a long way to go, this is where modern page builders, such as Bricks Builder, come in to help you design the front-end with ease. Bricks builder has great drag-and-drop elements and features with which you can design almost any website. Bricks builder also has advanced data-binding features, through which you can pull data (such as posts, pages content) from WordPress CMS and display them on the front-end design of the site.

For WordPress, there are may be 100 similar page builders. To name a few Divi, Elementor, Beaver Builder, Oxygen, Breakdance. However in most cases, Bricks builder outshines all those for its advanced funcationality, great performance, ease of use and a helpful community Facebook page.

What happened to WordPress

Recent legal disputes have arisen between WP Engine and Automattic (the parent company of WordPress) led by co-founder Matt Mullenweg. The conflict is based on allegations regarding WP Engine's 'very small' contributions to the WordPress open-source community and full access to WordPress.org resources.

This dispute and drama has caused concern within the WordPress community. Some developers fear that such conflicts could undermine the collaborative spirit essential to open-source projects. Some developers faced that their plugins were removed from WordPress directory and their access was blocked to WordPress community channels. And naturally, businesses and developers have started looking into alternatives. This applied to our parent web design company Sundeck Studio as well, looking into alternatives solutions for their clients.

WordPress alternatives: The most popular website builders outside of WordPress

There are plenty of cloud-based page builders in the market today. Cloud-based would mean you cannot host your site on any hosting but only with that page builders' own cloud-hosting. Here are a few examples of cloud-based webpage builders

1. Webflow: Has been a popular one because of it's ease to build websites really quickly either with existing templates or Figma to Webflow integration. Like other cloud-based website builders, Webflow would only allow you hosting your website withing Webflow environment. In terms of pricing, you pay for the website AND for each user seat (if you add more). When it comes to animation Webflow has plenty of options but with features, you can hit the bottom really quickly as it is not fully customizable. So let's say you want to add additional features to Webflow site, you'll have to speak to their Enterprise sales team which will try to sell you a package priced at thousands of dollars. This is also why WordPress dominated the market for over a decade as it allows you to build fully customizable features and websites.
2. Wix and Squarespace: I'll cover both these page builders in one as they're quite similar to each other. Similar to Webflow, you MUST host your site within these platforms. Which means if you choose to pause your site for a month, you still have to keep paying them to keep your data. With features, similar to Webflow, you can run into examples where you'll not be able to fully customize the functionality of your site. With Design and ease of use, these page builders are super easy to build pages on, and you can utilize templates.
3. Shopify: Has primarily focussed on Ecommerce stores instead of other website types. Shopify has a large number of Ecommerce features. But when it comes to page building experience, or making custom designed sites, it is lesser flexible than the above mentioned alternatives.
4. Framer: Almost similar to Webflow but priced a bit better than Webflow.

With all the above mentioned cloud-based website builders, there are similar limitations. With features and adding custom functionality, you hit the bottom really quick. This is the reason why for feature-friendly or large-scale sites (such as NASA or WhiteHouse as mentioned above) developers wouldn't choose such out of the box platforms.

Other limitations with cloud-based webpage builders include the fact that your data and site is dependant on these providers' fee and rules. In another example, Kanye Wests' Yeezy was recently shutdown by Shopify due to on-going controversy and comments by Kanye. This shows how your entire business data and control is on mercy of these platforms' decisions.

This is why WordPress outshined for years, as it allows you to own your entire website data, host it anywhere, on any domain at anytime you like.

What is WebStudio page builder

In June 2023, WebStudio public beta was launched. The first thought that comes to my mind when I hear of a new page builder is that it might be just another page builder which will live in one of those two buckets (WordPress or Cloud-based).

WebStudio offered a Lifetime Deal up until early 2025 (you could purchase a license for a flat price and use it forever).

It was mid 2024 I came across one of WebStudio's promo YouTube video. When I furthered looked into it. These are the key features of WebStudio that I found:

• WebStudio is a cloud-based website builder. Similar to what we discussed above (but with a twist which I'll mention below)
• It offers similar page building experience as other cloud-based page builders.
• You can copy paste elements from other spaces such as from Webflow
• Like other cloud-based builders, it will host the site for you (but also with a twist). Means the builder and hosting all in one product.

How WebStudio stands out from other page builders and does things differently

Now this is what makes WebStudio stand out against many other page builders in any of those two buckets (WordPress based or Cloud-based)

🔑 No hosting lockdown

WebStudio, like Webflow and Framer, allows you to use their cloud-based page builder and host the site within the WebStudio environment BUT it also allows you to not use their environment at all. Instead you can install WebStudio on your own server and use it for completely free. Once you have designed your site, you can then host it on any platform of your choice such as Netlify (allows free tier), Vercel or many others.

You can also use the WebStudio builder, as a cloud-based webpage builder, and then export the site to any other (not related to WebStudio) hosting if you like. This is one of the cons we have with large-scale builders like Shopify, Webflow and others that you're locked with them. WebStudio does this differently and lets you host your end product anywhere you like. Similarly to that, WordPress (with any WordPress page builder) gives you similar advantage.

🏎️ Hosting and performance on auto-pilot

If you do choose to host the site within WebStudio (which I do) your site will be deployed with Cloudflare Workers. Now I'll not get into much detail of what that is but in short, your site is deployed to 270 locations worldwide, which means it will load superfast for any user, anywhere in the world. This natually means no mode CDN configurations, and Caching configurations (you'll know it if you're a WordPress user). It's all done with one click on the 'Publish' button within the WebStudio builder.

🧩 Connect to any headless CMS and build the front-end with WebStudio interface

(Most favourite)

This is game changing. None of the multi-million dollar cloud-based page builders yet allow that. With Webflow, you need to buy their built-in CMS package (more $$$) to use CMS features. With WordPress in most cases you'll use WordPress CMS. The heavier the content gets, the more data you'll have to worry about with your WordPress site backups.

WebStudio lets you connect to almost any CMS platform you want to use to manage your content (such as posts, pages or anything). You can even continue to use WordPress as headless CMS and build the front-end with WebStudio. Or you can use CMS platforms like Contentful, Hygraph, Baserow, Strapi, or anything else.

The connection and data binding procedure used to scare me. Part of the reason why I never went too far using WordPress headless-ly by myself. But it always intrugued me when I saw how composable and efficient headless CMS are (such as Contentful or Hygraph). Until now. WebStudio has prebuilt templates in the builder, to connect popular CMS platforms. There are YouTube tutorials on how you can pick the API and paste it in WebStudio and all your data will be fetched from a headless CMS into WebStudio front-end.

This de-couples the site from a monolith (WordPress) into two parts the Back-end(CMS platform containing data) and the Front-end (WebStudio). This means, super-fast loadtimes (without back-end data and queries slowing your website down), better security and more scalability.

Soon there's an integration with Shopify (as products catalogue and CMS) coming up too.

Design Tokens instead of CSS classes

If you've worked with CSS, you know, it's fun but they can get too many when you have multiple variables and CSS classes to maintain. Design tokens are the newer way of doing it. You can set them once, and modify, rename, duplicate them anytime you like without worrying about CSS conflicts.

Pricing structure that is not greedy with one free website

WordPress is practically free to use but then you have to find a hosting where you'll pay anyway. Other cloud-based alternatives such as Webflow has greedy pricing methods, where they'd charge per seat, or functionality based pricing tier. And again, really quickly remind you to the next bigger package.

WebStudio prices their product in a more simpler manner. A free tier, that lets you host one website completely free. With custom domain, and on Cloudflare networks, which almost no server-based hosting can compete with. In the free tier you cannot use CMS features. But if you're looking to get host a simple website for free, without CMS content, WebStudio offers that for free.

The paid tier of WebStudio is just plain $20/month (as on date of writing this article). The pricing is plain and simple. When you pay $20/month you can create host unlimited websites and use CMS features as well. No seat-based or feature based licensing. A plain and simple $20. This is very unlikely to any other cloud-based SaaS products or web page builders, and honestly one of the most simple pricing tiers to understand (unlike Webflow, Framer and others' pricing methods which has confused the hell out of a lot of the clients too)

Bricks Builder vs WebStudio: Comparasion of features and ease of use.

Now that we have explored the basics of different options being WordPress, and Cloud-based WebStudio. We pick one of the most efficient WordPress website builders' to compare against WebStudio.

These comparasion notes are general observations, and based on actual hands-on usage while building different sites, side by side in both platforms.

Building the site navigation

When building the site navigation (menu) Bricks Builder gives you two options, Nestable menu and a simple menu. In both options, you can enable features like Mega menu and Dropdowns. Bricks automatically converts them to a mobile side menu (to a base styled version) which you can further stylize as needed.

Bricks utilizes WordPress's menu capability to pull menu items from there. Which later makes it super easy to cusomize your menu items.

Making a menu in WebStudio is a bit different. You can use a template based Radix menu, but working with items, you still need to create it in boxes, and containers in a whole nestable manner. Unless you connect to a CMS there's no other way to dynamically control these menu items. Because ofcourse WebStudio is front-end only. It gets a bit more tricky when we go responsive. To make a mobile menu, you'll have to add a new element called "Sheet" inside the sheet you'll now drop your menu items again, and make your mobile menu from scratch. You can utilize "Slot" element which basically let's you use data in many places, but change-able from one Slot, but overall usage of slot with-in sheet and creating a mobile menu from scratch, isn't as intuitive and simple as it is with Bricks menu.

Visual example: WebStudio menu building experience could have been easier if it Mobile version could be adaptable from Desktop version. The fact that you cannot (yet) expand the left navigator panel, makes it even harder to access the nested items.

🏆 Winner: Bricks Builder

💰Pricing

Bricks builder prices itself starting from $79/year for single site, all the way to $249/year for unlimited sites or even $599 for lifetime. But with since Bricks runs on WordPress, you'll also need to cater in for the webhosting price.

WebStudio has simple and two price tiers. A free tier which lets you Built+Host 1 site for free and $20/month unlimited sites (Build and Host, two in one)

🏆 Winner: WebStudio if you need 1 completely free site and free hosting

CMS data management

In Bricks, you can utilize WordPress's own as well as ACF powered data management to use custom fields, posts, pages, and display that data in front end. That is a benefit of WordPress to have the CMS capabilities within.

WebStudio doesn't have CMS capabilities, but it allows you to connect to any Headless CMS platform, and manage your blog or CMS data there. Completely de-coupled from the front-end of the site. You can then bind that CMS data to your webstudio front end. You can even connect multiple CMS based platforms (or even WordPress) to single WebStudio front-end. (Checkout WebStudio Headless CMS finder to see the list of all CMS that you can connect) This approach is widely used for large scale sites as it comes with various benefits:

1. Scalability: with headless CMS you can scale data to any level. You can even connect multiple data sources to WebStudio site
2. Composability: Headless CMS platforms allow you to compose your data as you like. Imagine ACF of WordPress but alot more flexible. You can even connect 3rd Party applications and sources that can feed into your Headless CMS.
   
   For example: The cover image of each post in this website, is not hosted in WebStudio or even the CMS (Hygraph) but it is originally uploaded in a DAM. Then that DAM is plugged into Hygraph CMS, and then Hygraph CMS sends the Image to WebStudio, to render on the Front end. And this is how you can modular-ly connect any service and then render it on a Remix-based front-end with WebStudio.
3. Performance: Since there's no database connected to front-end, your website loads much faster. Contrary to WordPress based websites.
4. Security: If your website for any reason gets compromised, your data is safe in a seperate place (the headless CMS). These modern stacks also are alot more securer than working with WordPress plugins and their never-ending updates.

Something to consider here though, is that connecting the headless CMS to front-end of Webstudio is an additional step. But WebStudio has pre-made templates for those connections, so a non-techie like me also managed to connect a CMS for this site.

🏆 Winner: Tie. Both platforms have different use cases. Bricks benefits from WordPress's built-in CMS whereas WebStudio allows you to connect any CMS and build a composable system though that requires alot more effort than a WordPress setup.

Backup management

Bricks based (WordPress) site can be backed up super easily, via server or in-site plugin-based backups. You can backup those sites in multiple locations or even take offline backups. Resore a backup with single click

WebStudio, as of now does not have backup feature. Neither do alot of free-tier of Headless CMS platforms. The only workaround to this would be to clone/duplicate your project to have a copy of it.

Note: WebStudio is thinking of branching system that may be coming out sometime soon and may solve the problem, especially if we can roll-back to previous versions.

Winner: WordPress + Bricks

🔎 Filters and Search functionalities

This is where Bricks has clear advantage. Setting up search and Ajax based filters in Bricks builderh would hardly take 30 minutes. You can use ACF / Custom fields to filter, categories, or almost any filter system. Similarly, you can add Search element to your Bricks site and it will work out of the box.

In WebStudio (let's take an example of it connected with Hygraph CMS) you'll really need to configure search. This can take hours. Or days if you're a non-developer like myself. You'll need to match the URLs, understand the GraphQL query. For Hygraph, WebStudio template now includes search, but still if you need to add filters, I don't know I still havn't been able to fully figure out yet even after watching filter example YouTube video (Where John connects BaseRow content and filters it in WebStudio front-end) It's defenitely not a breeze as it is in Bricks. This has also held me from completely migrating my large-data sites to WebStudio.

🏆 Winner: WordPress + Bricks

Web animation and effects

Bricks on it's own doesn't have much of animation controls. But you have plenty of plugins that help you animate almost anything. This could be Bricks Forge, Motion Page and many others.

WebStudio doesn't do plugins, ofcourse. But is working with a much longer term vision. There's a new Animation engine in works as well as there's easy integration of animation libraries like GSAP, Swiper JS (For banners and things). WebStudio is doing everything that Webflow is, but better and with longer-term vision. So Not yet, but it seems like in near future Webstudio will support advanced animations.

With Bricks builder's supporting plugins, animation is alot more easier and accessible to anyone without much of technical knowledge.

🏆 Winner: Bricks builder with use of third-party plugins eco-system

🗣️ Localization

Bricks, having the benefit of being on WordPress, has a large eco system of plugins for localisation. Polylang is a popular one that works really well with Bricks to make multi-lingual sites. Polylang will automatically setup URLs and shift layout (right to left for RTL languages) and do alot of heavy lifting.

With WebStudio, there are no native localization tools. You can duplicate a page and give it dynamic URL for a different language. When you connect it to a CMS you'll also need to make some adjustmnets to GraphQL query to ensure you pull correct language data.

So again, WebStudio may not yet be there for localization as Bricks / WordPress is. However, being able to connect to Headless CMS (as discussed above) does open a lot of possibilites for multi-lang data. For example if you set things once, you can connect a langauge translation platform to your CMS and let it do the job. For static content (living in WebStudio) there's not dedicated multi-lingual feature, except duplicating pages. And for RTL languages, you'll also have to shift the layout manually.

🏆 Winner: WordPress + Bricks

🛍️ Ecommerce features

Bricks / WordPress works smooth with WooCommerce or SureCart. WebStudio again, is a standalone page builder hence doesn't yet have Ecommerce functionality. But WebStudio is working on a Shopify Integration, which I assume will work similarly to their CMS connection capabilities. This would allow users (in future) to make headless ecommerce stores, which will be way faster than any WooCommerce store.

Winner: Future WebStudio will enable users to make headless ecommerce stores. Which will be alot more advanced than WooCommerce which already struggles with large traffic hits.

🔐 Security and Hosting

With WebStudio, your website is hosted on a serverless infrastructure. That can auto-scale when needed. WebStudio uses Cloudflare workers to make this possible. This means unlike in WordPress, you'll not have to worry about hosting, updates, server security, speed and performance, high volume traffic spikes and other things.

This also means, you're leveraging the best in class security for your websites. Without having to install and research security plugins (such as in WordPress) or worrying about server / hosting resources and security.

Bricks builder however has plenty of built-in security features, such as code reviews. But it still runs on WordPress and is only as secure as your WordPress core and Hosting.

🏆 Winner: WebStudio

🚀 Performance

As briefly mentioned above, with Bricks you can get great performance on your websites, but the constraint can still be your hosting or server. With WebStudio all that is taken care of by Cloudflare workers. WebStudio front-end also runs on Remix framework, which is way faster than PHP based platforms.

With WebStudio, you'll get better performance out of the box. With Bricks + WordPress you can still get great performance but tweaking + additional plugins + caching + CDN + high performance hosting is required.

Winner: WebStudio

🤝 Support and Community

Bricks builder has a very active Facebook group. Community members as well as Bricks team is very engaging with their customers. Updates are announced in group and on changelog pages. Community members are mostly professionals and would have solutions to most of your questions. There's a fair amount of content creators as well who create regular ontent about Bricks buider features.

WebStudio runs a Discord group. Where mostly it is the WebStudio team that will be responding to any of your queries. The usual response time is within a few hours mostly. WebStudio also takes users' input in both builder design and new features based on use cases. WebStudio team is making effort to create regular content but since the eco-system is much smaller at the moment and the product is fairly new, there are some gaps with content and tutorials which hopfully will get levelled up as user adoption grows.

🤔 If you are still confused...

If you are, then make sure to subscribe to this blog below, so as there are new developments in these two and other similar products, I'll send out an email to you with a fully researched article about it.

Soon, I'll also be launching multiple courses on mastering Figma (Yes, I have been working on and with Figma since the inception of Figma) and beginner tutorials for designers to be able to develop ANY design into a fully functional website. If you're interested in all of this, check out the details on Homepage