What Is the Best Web Design Platform for Your Site Type?

For that's the proper question to ask yourself: "What is the best web design platform for my own use case?"

For your own context, which is made of specific:

needs
constraints and limitations
business goals and objectives
particular budget
level of technical know-how
type of website that you need

And this last factor is, by far, the most important criterion to use when you evaluate the most popular web development platforms.

When you try to identify the best one for you...

It's also the criterion that we'll use in today's post to highlight for you the best web design platforms in 2019.

Just scan through the different types of website listed here below, spot your own type, and see which platform makes your best choice.

1. If You're Building a Low-Maintenance, User-Friendly Website...

Say you're not planning to "take over the world" with your new website and you need to be able to keep its maintenance and upkeep to a minimum.

Then you opt for Squarespace...

And here are the top reasons why you would want to choose this particular platform for web design:

you get a conveniently simple interface
it ships with a load of modules to choose from
it provides you with eCommerce functionality

It's true, though, that you don't get that much customization freedom as you'd get with other platforms, but it does the job if it's a:

user-friendly
low-maintenance

... website that you're planning to build.

2. If You're Building a Visually-Appealing Website...

In this case, your 2 best options are WordPress and Drupal.

The first "spoils" you with so many great templates to choose from to create a visually-stunning website. Not to mention the heavy load of WordPress plugins that you can use for custom-tuning your site to fit your aesthetical needs perfectly.

Whereas for Drupal (and particularly Drupal 8), you just can't ignore its built-in responsive design capabilities.

Note: one of the aspects that might discourage you from choosing this CMS to create a great looking website is the lower number of Drupal developers compared to the "deep" pool of WordPress talent. That's why we've focused an entire post on the topic of "hiring Drupal developers" and "stuffed" it with tips on where exactly to find the right Drupal talent for your project.

3. If You're Building an Enterprise-Level, Complex Website...

Drupal "rocks supreme" on this category:

it's equipped to withstand floods of traffic and massive volumes of content
it's designed to handle complex, multi-user content creation and management systems
it's robust enough to power heavy multi-site infrastructures
it ships with tons of modules to extend its functionality even further

In short: Drupal's an "enterprise-ready" platform; it's built precisely for large, high-trafficked websites (think Tesla.com, eBay, NASA, Harvard University's website).

Where do you add that Drupal stands out as the best platform for responsive web design, as well...

4. What Is the Best Web Design Platform to Rank High on Google?

If out-of-the-box SEO optimization features are your top priority, then you'll need to choose between WordPress and Drupal. They both ship with robust plugins, respectively modules, aimed at helping you make your website SEO-friendly.

WordPress

The system's already ideally optimized with regards to SEO:

it's coded so that search engines can easily crawl in
managing heading and title tags is dead-simple
creating and updating content's highly intuitive

Word of caution: WordPress's ease of use and SEO-friendliness does come at a cost: being so popular makes it particularly "tempting" for hackers, too. You don't want to cut down on preventive maintenance costs on your future website.

Drupal

Its SEO modules — Pathauto, Yoast, Global Redirect — are designed to streamline all your SEO efforts, from optimizing your meta tags to... setting up your SEO-optimized URLs.

5. If You're Building a Fully Customizable and Scalable Website...

"What is the best web design platform for me if I want complete freedom of customization and if I'm planning to scale my website over time?"

It's... Drupal, again.

From all the most popular web development platforms out there' Drupal sets itself apart as:

the most flexible one: there's a module for any customization work that you might want to do on your website
the most scalable one: Drupal's designed to scale up, seamlessly, to accommodate huge loads of content and traffic

6. If You're Building an eCommerce Website...

What platform should you power your eCommerce goals with?

Well, it depends greatly on whether it's a powerful "selling machine" that you're planning to build or an online store for your start-up business in eCommerce.

Magento

If you have a huge product inventory (maybe even a multi-source one), Magento's your best option. Here's why:

it's robust: Magento's built to cope with an intricate and heavy infrastructure of multiple stores, currencies, languages...
it's feature-packed
it's scalable: feel free to start with a small online store and to grow it into a complex multi-store network; Magento's designed to accommodate your growth plans, no matter how ambitious

Shopify

If you need a website for your start-up eCommerce business and you don't want to get tangled up in customization, a hosted platform like Shopify is the best option:

it's SEO-friendly
it provides you with unlimited bandwidth
it adjusts to your specific eCommerce business model: POS, dropshop, subscription-based...
it provides affiliates capabilities, purchase buttons, Facebook selling support, etc.

Word of caution: do keep in mind that, if you decide to migrate your online store to another platform, it's just your product information that you can export from Shopify.

In other words: don't expect to be able to transfer your user interface and your website design, as well.

7. If You Need a Beautiful Site but Have no Web Design Experience...

"What is the best web design platform for me if I want to create an eye-catching website but... I'm a non-developer?" you wonder.

"Oh, yes: and I want to build it fast and easy, if possible?" you ask.

It's Wix.

From the best web design platforms in 2019, Wix suits your needs and limitations perfectly:

you get a user-friendly WYSIWYG interface
it "spoils" you with a rich template collection
it's easy to learn and even easier to use
it "tempts" you with both free and low-cost options

In short: Wix is for anyone with close to zero web design experience who wants the freedom to set up, customize and further update his visually-appealing website himself.

8. If You're Building just a Small, Reference-Driven Website...

What if you just need to put together a basic business website to showcase your services? Nothing fancy, just a small website that should provide more detailed information to your potential new clients.

And that should fit your budget...

Then, what you need is the best website builder software that helps you get your site up and running in no time and grants you full control over its code and design.

And there are quite a few great ones:

Site Manager
Weebly
SiteBuilder
Shopify if it's a no-fuss eCommerce website
Wix, again

The END!

Have you found that type of website that you're planning to build listed here?

Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash

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2. If You're Building a Visually-Appealing Website...

3. If You're Building an Enterprise-Level, Complex Website...