Site Builders vs CMS – Which Should You Choose?

When it comes to the creation of your own site, the process can be daunting if you have no first-hand experience of coding, understanding of the internet’s technicalities, or the skills involved in broader central coast web development in general.

Nevertheless, it’s a choice that most individuals who need an online presence need to make at some point – for any entity intent on building their brand beyond physical engagement, establishing a site on which they can build brand property on is Ground Zero for any means of interaction, whether that’s business-to-business or direct to consumer.

Webmasters on this end will often come across the first major tie-breaker that needs to be made in the journey of building their online identity; what platform should I build my site from? Typically, the debate becomes informed by metrics like popular use, site affordances, features available, and whether its design language / interface is synonymous with your brand values / work economy.

Broadly speaking, platforms distinguish between two categories, these being content management systems (CMS) and website builders. At Website Guy, we break down the nuances between the two, in the hopes that you have an easier decision to make!

Website Builders vs Content Management Systems 

Although similar in the way that both are capable of handling content to some extent, both variations specialise on the users’ end in differing ways.

A website builder, as the name suggests, largely focuses on the creation and publication of websites, built on the convenience of not needing prior coding knowledge for its development into a fully functioning webfront. As a natural consequence of this, the user interface of most website builders tend to have a focus on being user-friendly, typically allowing for users to dedicate their efforts more specifically on design and aesthetics ends. Drag and drop functions, as a prime example, make for site edits easily augmentable, while maintaining an insular design language that is difficult to disrupt.

The CMS, by comparison, tends to have more in-depth functionality with a focus on handling content – its format, types, engagement with users, interactivity with libraries of plug-ins, and more. While both the CMS and site builder push content onto a front-end for users then to browse, the CMS includes much more in the way of customisation of code across the stack, online marketing, e-commerce and extensions designed to personalise your site. 

Hosting and domain real-estate is also left for users to claim on their own outside the scope of the CMS, with a less holistic range of services that look to maintain your hosting obligations for you.