Choosing a website platform is less about finding the “best” platform and more about finding the one that fits the job. For most businesses that need a flexible, owned, extensible website, we prefer WordPress. But Squarespace, Shopify, and Webflow each make sense in specific situations.

WordPress

Choose WordPress when you want a flexible business website that can grow with your organization and remain under your control.

WordPress is especially strong when a site needs custom content types, structured content, integrations, search, custom functionality, or a design system that isn’t constrained by a hosted platform.

That’s why it’s our default.

A well-built WordPress site does require maintenance. We consider that a reasonable tradeoff for control and flexibility.

Squarespace

Choose Squarespace when you need a small, straightforward website and don’t expect to outgrow its built-in capabilities.

For a solo practitioner with five pages, limited content, and no interest in touching code, Squarespace can be the right answer.

We would rather tell someone that than sell them a more complicated WordPress project they don’t need.

Shopify

Choose Shopify when ecommerce is the core business and inventory, tax, payments, shipping, and fulfillment are central requirements.

Shopify is built around commerce in a way that general-purpose website platforms are not.

For a serious online store, that specialized infrastructure can be more valuable than WordPress’s flexibility.

Webflow

Choose Webflow when visual design control is the primary concern and you want a hosted marketing site without managing WordPress infrastructure.

Webflow can be a strong choice for design-led marketing sites where the content model and application requirements are relatively straightforward.

What about WooCommerce?

WooCommerce is powerful, but it isn’t automatically the right answer for complex inventory and fulfillment.

If a business has complicated inventory rules, fulfillment systems, taxes, shipping logic, or operational integrations, a specialized commerce platform may make more sense.

Which platform is cheapest long term?

There isn’t one universal winner because build costs, subscriptions, maintenance, transaction fees, and development requirements vary.

A platform that looks cheap at launch can become expensive if it can’t handle what the business eventually needs.

Look at the three-year cost, not just the monthly subscription.

Can you move platforms later?

Usually, yes, but portability varies considerably by platform and by how the site was built.

Content can often be exported, but layouts, functionality, integrations, and custom features may need to be rebuilt.

This is another reason we favor keeping content and technology as separate as practical.

Who owns the site?

Ownership depends on the platform and the agreement with the person building the site.

With our WordPress projects, the client owns the website, content, and domain. The domain is registered in the client’s own account, and owned assets can be handed over if they leave.

What we build

We build custom WordPress websites using a block theme, the native block editor, and a deliberately limited set of dependencies. For why we take that approach, see our post on the native block editor versus Elementor and Divi.

Data to verify before publishing: current platform pricing, transaction fees, portability details, and any claims about platform limits should be checked against current documentation.