Brizy Cloud vs Wordpress
Deciding between Brizy Cloud vs Wordpress
Since I provide 2 Website Setup guides, I'll like you to make an informed decision on what to go for.
- Brizy Cloud (recommended) - Super easy, non-technical, you don't have to worry about hosting, site maintenance and upkeep.
- Wordpress - Need for hands on hosting, maintenance, troubleshoot plugin conflicts, website security. Open source and powers 1/4 of the world's websites.
I would compare using Brizy Cloud to using an iPad, and compare using Wordpress to assembling computer parts to set up your own computer.
It's a decision between "it just works" vs "full control".
Brizy Cloud | Wordpress | |
|---|---|---|
Ease of Use | Super easy to get started and continued updates. | Easy to get started, takes work to maintain and keep up. |
Speed | Hosting taken care of and with global CDNs = SUPER FAST website for your visitors! | Depends on Webhost and price you pay. But shared hosting can be slow. |
Cost | Only $49/year for ALL features. That's $4/mth. | There are some very attractively priced shared-hosting plans - about $4/mth. Wordpress itself is Open Source and free to use. Themes and Plugins have both free or paid options. |
Maintenance | You don't have to worry about it. | You have to take care of EVERY aspect of maintenance. Plugin conflicts, security, backups, website uptime etc. |
Security | Security is taken care of, you don't have to worry about it. | Very prone to hackers. You can install some security plugins. |
Features |
Brizy has the essential features to create websites quickly. Ecommerce features are on the way. |
Wordpress has the inbuilt blog and website functions, and can be extended via plugins (free or premium) to other functionality. |
Multiple Websites | 1 website: $79/ year (~$7/mth) 20 websites: $299/ year (~$15/mth) 100 websites: $379/ year (~$31/mth) | Depends on your Webhosting plan, but some offer multiple websites. |
Ownership | You rely on Brizy's platform to make edits. You can, however, export your site as HTML and host it elsewhere. | You fully own everything, the code, the files, relying on open source Wordpress. |
Recommendations
- Create Websites - Brizy Cloud: My recommendation for majority of newbies creating basic websites and blogs is go with Brizy Cloud as it's just so easy.
- Start a Blog - Wordpress: If you are looking to start a blog for the long term, my recommendation is to go with Wordpress - because despite some of the technical challenges, Wordpress is the best blogging platform right now, and you can follow my Wordpress Website guide on the details.
- Build an Online Store: If your main aim is to create an Ecommerce store, it'll probably make sense to do so on Shopify instead as it has all the Ecommerce specific tools and add-ons you may require. (Online Store Guide)
#1 - Ease of Use
Below are some examples of key activities in which Brizy is a lot easier to use than Wordpress, though Wordpress is usable:
Brizy Cloud | Wordpress | |
|---|---|---|
Installation | Nothing to install in, just sign up an account. | Wordpress can be installed fairly easily by following these steps. |
Creating Webpages | Drag and drop, and easy peasy. | Default editor in Wordpress is not ideal, I'll suggest installing some page builders to create your webpages. |
Brizy Cloud
Creating webpage content in Brizy - select from beautifully designed, pre-built blocks to get started super quickly.
Creating webpage content in Brizy - select from beautifully designed, pre-built blocks to get started super quickly.
Wordpress
Default Wordpress editor isn't truly "Visual".
You edit content in the admin backend, and then go to the front end where visitors view your page.
It's also more limited in functionality.
To make editing content in Wordpress more palatable, considering using one of the external premium page builders: Thrive Architect, Elementor.
#2 - Speed
There are numerous factors affecting speed, and it's hard to explain them all. Factors include:
- Technology: Static sites (like Brizy) will in general load faster than dynamic sites (like Wordpress).
- Hosting: Your hosting provider play a MAJOR role in website speed. If you use a cheap shared hosting provider to host Wordpress, it's likely to be slow as you also share resources.
- Server location: If your server is in the US and your visitors are in Australia, the response to loading your website is likely to be slow.
- CDN (Content Delivery Network): CDNs distribute copies of your website to servers around the world, delivering content based on the nearest available server, resulting in faster page loads.
- Code conflicts: If your code is not optimized, your page may load slowly.
- Images: Images are often the largest content loaded on your website. As a good practice, you should ALWAYS optimize them to reduce the file size and improve page loads. I recommend using Shortpixel.
Brizy Cloud | Wordpress | |
|---|---|---|
Hosting | Hosted on Brizy's fast servers. | Depends on your webhost and price you pay. Could be slow for a cheap shared host. |
CDN | Served from Global CDNs, which is part of your subscription.
Your website visitors from different parts of the world will experience fast page loads. | By default, only served from your webhost. Website visitors from other parts of the world will experience slow page loads.
You can pay for and utilize CDNs, but it's an additional cost and need set up. |
Code Conflicts | Code conflicts shouldn't exist, since it's all optimized by Brizy. | If you install various plugins, code conflicts can and will occur.
Minor conflicts may result in slow page loads. Major conflicts may disable your entire site entirely. |
#3 - Cost
Creating websites with Brizy Cloud or Wordpress are both affordable.
- Brizy Cloud: The costs are largely "all-in" - including the website builder, hosting your websites, pop ups, etc.
- Wordpress: Wordpress is an open source (i.e. free to use) software. What you pay for are 1) Hosting your website, 2) Premium Themes and Plugins (if you opt to do so).
Brizy Cloud | Wordpress | |
|---|---|---|
Hosting | Starting from $4/mth ($49 / year) | Ranging from $4/ mth to $29 / mth (or higher) |
Themes | Premium layouts are included in this one cost.
You can also style your website in infinite combinations to create the desired look. | There are free or premium themes available. Some examples: Premium Themes: Divi, Themeforest Themes, Astra. Cost ranges from $50-$100 typically. |
Plugins | All elements in the page builder is included.
Pop ups are included in this one cost. | There are free or premium plugins in Wordpress. Some premium options:
Costs
|
Multiple Websites | 3 websites: $49/ year (~$4/mth) Unlimited: $99 / year (~$8/mth)
You also have the option to host the websites externally. | |
Total Cost | One-time cost: $0
Monthly cost: $4/mth ($49/ year) | One-time cost: $184 (assuming $50 theme, plus Thrive Architect + Thrive Leads) Monthly cost: $4/mth (Bluehost) or $25/mth (WPEngine) - cost ranges depending on Webhost |
#4 - Maintenance
The key differences when it comes to maintaining your website:
- Brizy Cloud: Maintenance and heavy listing done by Brizy.
- Wordpress: You need to continually manage and maintain your content, plugins, hosting.
Brizy Cloud
There's really nothing to maintain other than creating content on your website.
Behind the scene, Brizy optimizes the code, offers new capabilities as the platform expands, manages hosting, CDN and all that complicated stuff.
Wordpress
While Wordpress excelled in price and no restrictions, and I have helped numerous people get their own website since 2014, it became clear over time that maintenance, security and speed became a very real limitation.
Heck, I was spending so much time maintaining my plugins, updating them, resolving plugin conflicts, security issues, optimizing my images to increase page loads. Even then, when my websites was buggy, I had to spend a lot of time troubleshooting and reading forums.
You can pay your webhost to back up your website, but I typically used this free plugin Updraftplus to back up my site and store in in a cloud storage like Dropbox.
This is so if anything goes wrong, you can restore an earlier version of your website.
This has happened to me before, usually because of plugin conflicts. You can't tell when plugins don't play nice with one another, it's when your site stops loading or behaves strangely, that you know something is wrong.
If you don't set up a backup and restore process, you're in for a lot of trouble with your website on Wordpress.
#5 - Security
These are the key differences when it comes to Website Security (securing it from hackers):
- Brizy Cloud: Static sites are served, so in general your website is more secure. Just make sure not to share your Brizy login details with anyone. Brizy takes the responsibilities on security and protection.
- Wordpress: Prone to attackers and security is a real threat. Install some security plugins.
Brizy Cloud
Nothing for you to do here. You can sleep soundly at night - let Brizy worry about it for all websites on their platform.
Wordpress
Security is a real issue for a number of reasons:
- Hackers target Wordpress: Since it's the most popular website platform in the world.
- Hackers brute force attack the login page: Since your login page is defaulted to yoursitename.com/wp-admin
This is what happened to my friend's website business. Check out the full article here.
To combat attackers, one of the very first things I do when I install Wordpress is to install a security plugin. I use Wordfence.
#6 - Hosting Multiple Websites
Both options allow you to host multiple websites, depending on the package you opt for.
As vendors continually update their packages and prices, be sure to check what the latest is on their website directly.
Brizy
Wordpress (via Bluehost)
#7 - Ownership of Your Site
This is something that most do not consider when starting their website. But it's definitely important.
When you create a website with Squarespace, Wix or Weebly, you rely on their platform and if you want to move your content elsewhere to host them, you can't do so.
Brizy Cloud
When you create a website with Brizy Cloud, you do rely on their platform to create content.
However, Brizy provides a number of export / sync options, which allows you to host your website outside of the Brizy platform. You can even export HTML of the entire website.
Brizy then forms the "technology", while hosting is decoupled and can be managed by you with other providers.
Wordpress
As Wordpress is Open Source, you naturally maintain ownership of all the content you create on Wordpress. If one day you want to move your site to another webhost, you can do so.
In Summary
I'm not saying that Wordpress isn't good. In fact it is great, and that's the reason why it powers 1/4 websites globally and I continue to provide a guide to Wordpress on Bootstrap Website.
However, there are costs associated with it - and they are more than monetary. They are maintenance required, resolving plugin conflicts, working with developers (if you meet issues you can't resolve).
If all you want to do is set up a simple 5 page website, going through Wordpress just feels "heavy" and convoluted.
In these cases, Brizy is the way to go. It's easy, peasy and breezy.
When do I recommend Wordpress then?
- If you want to set up a long term full fledged blog as your business, Wordpress is a great platform to grow with over time.
- If you want to make use of features not available in Brizy (yet) - e.g. multi-language.
- If you're willing to deal with the hosting, maintenance and troubleshooting.
Feedback on Brizy vs Wordpress
Since 2010, I have been using Wordpress for my blogging site but I don’t like the tremendous effort in order to get used using it. I’m still using it for my blogging purposes till now but I don’t like it.
drwaqipedia
Our team loved the product so much, that we also began using Brizy for wireframing. It takes us 30 minutes to put together a page that otherwise would take a good 5+ hours. Plus, the pages are interactive, responsive and look beautiful out of the box.
