There are lots of options out there for building your website nowadays, but choosing a website platform can be overwhelming. In fact, you might feel like you don’t even know where to start or what the choices are. Let’s take a look at 3 of the post popular options:
(Anothr option is Blogger, which I talk about here.)
Website Builder:
Options are: Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace.
Pros:
Relatively easy to use if you want simple/ common things.
You can add on eCommerce, email lists, etc. for extra fees.
Cons:
If you pick one of these, you’ll need to pay continuously to keep your website online. If you stop paying, your website will come down and you likely won’t be able to keep your content.
These sites can be difficult to customize, and you might end up having to hire a developer anyway.
WordPress (.org, NOT .com) & a free theme.
Pros:
A huge portion of the internet is built on WordPress. It’s been around forever and there are endless options and resources.
You can have e-commerce, email lists, blogs, ads, pretty much whatever you can think of.
Cons:
It can be overwhelming, especially getting started.
It’s overwhelming trying to pick a theme.
You’ll likely lneed to create your own child theme, which requires coding.
If you don’t use a good theme, it can be really complicated and require code to customize.
You’ll need annual hosting, but there are tons of options and you can usually negotiate a good price.
WordPress & Divi (my recommendation)
Pros:
Eliminates some of the ‘cons’ of working with WordPress.
Kind of fun to play around with.
Same tools the professionals use, but accessible for even the tech challenged.
Super easy to update if you want to make changes or additions in the future.
Cons:
Requires a one time fee of $250, or there’s a one year trial version for $90 that you can later upgrade.
Little bit of a learning curve, but there’s tons of tutorials, resources, and customer support to help you.
