Which website platform should you use?
Framer, Webflow, WordPress, Shopify, custom code or a DIY builder? Answer nine quick questions and get an honest recommendation, with the reasons, the trade-offs and the scoring laid bare.
- Free, no signup
- Runs in your browser
- Nothing is uploaded
- 1Type(current)
- 2Editors(not started)
- 3Design(not started)
- 4Content(not started)
- 5Selling(not started)
- 6Logic(not started)
- 7Budget(not started)
- 8Timeline(not started)
- 9SEO(not started)
Question 1
What are you building?
Pick the closest — the main job of the site.
Live ranking
Answer the first question to see the platforms move.
- Framer—
- Webflow—
- WordPress—
- Shopify—
- Custom code—
- Squarespace / Wix—
Every answer adds or removes points for each platform. The full scoring table is on the result screen, so you can see exactly why one wins.
How it works
How to use the website platform picker
- 01
Answer nine quick questions
What you’re building, who edits it, design ambition, content, selling, logic, budget, timeline and SEO. One click each.
- 02
Watch the ranking move
Every answer adds or removes points for each platform, and the live ranking updates as you go.
- 03
Read the reasons and trade-offs
Your top pick comes with the reasons tied to your answers, the honest downsides, and a runner-up worth comparing.
- 04
Check the maths, then share it
Open the full scoring table to see every point, and copy a link that reopens your exact result.
There is no best platform, only the best fit
Most ‘Framer vs Webflow vs WordPress’ debates go nowhere because people argue about the tools instead of the job. A five-page startup site, a publication with three thousand articles and a store with eight hundred products need different things. The platform should follow from what you're building, who will run it, and how much content, selling and custom logic it carries.
I build on all of these, so I have no reason to push one. This tool encodes the questions I ask on discovery calls, and it is happy to tell you to use WordPress, Shopify or Squarespace when they fit better.
The options at a glance
| Platform | Best for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Framer | Marketing sites, launches and portfolios with custom design and motion | Simple CMS; no native store or user accounts |
| Webflow | Designed sites with lots of structured content and SEO control | Learning curve; plan costs grow with CMS and ecommerce needs |
| WordPress | Large content libraries, editorial teams, plugin-heavy sites | Updates, security and hosting are your job |
| Shopify | Stores of any size, from a few products to a full catalogue | Monthly apps and fees add up; content is secondary |
| Custom code (Next.js) | Web apps, SaaS products, logins, dashboards, programmatic SEO | Higher build cost; developers needed for changes |
| Squarespace / Wix | Solo businesses that want to launch cheaply and quickly, alone | Template look; limited SEO and integrations |
The questions that actually decide it
- Is it a website or an application? Accounts, dashboards and your own data model mean custom code. Builders can host the marketing site for a product, not the product itself.
- Is selling the main job? If yes, start from Shopify and only move away for a strong reason.
- How much content, and who publishes it? A blog and a few collections suit Framer or Webflow. Thousands of pages with several authors is WordPress or a headless CMS territory.
- Who edits day to day? If marketers must ship pages without a developer, a visual builder pays for itself quickly. If everyone writes code, a custom build has no editing bottleneck.
- How distinctive does the design need to be?Templates are fine for many businesses. If the site is part of the brand's first impression, choose a tool that won't fight a custom design.
Mistakes I see often
- Choosing what your developer already knows. That optimises for the build, not the next three years of running the site.
- Over-building. Custom code for a five-page brochure site means paying a developer for every copy change.
- Under-building. Squeezing a product with logins into a DIY builder ends in a rebuild.
- Ignoring migration cost. Moving later is rarely a button. Content, URLs and SEO all have to come with you, so a little extra thought now saves a lot later.
Think in running costs, not just build cost
The cheapest platform to launch on isn't always the cheapest to own. Framer, Webflow, Squarespace and Wix bundle hosting, security and updates into a monthly plan, so the cost is predictable and nobody has to patch anything. WordPress software is free, but hosting, premium plugins and someone to keep it updated are not. Shopify adds app subscriptions and, on some payment set-ups, transaction fees on top of the plan. Custom code costs the most to build and needs a developer for changes, but has no platform limits or per-seat fees. Add up three years of plan, hosting, maintenance and the cost of changes you'll want to make, then compare.
How the scoring works
Every answer gives each platform between −5 and +5 points. Dealbreakers score hard: a full store pushes Framer down by 4 and Shopify up by 5; logged-in users push custom code up by 5 and the builders down. Softer preferences such as timeline or SEO move things by 1 or 2. The totals rank the platforms, and the result screen shows the full table so you can disagree with a specific weight rather than with a black box.
Close call between two? Read the side-by-side comparisons: Framer vs Webflow, Framer vs WordPress, Webflow vs WordPress and Framer vs Shopify. When you know the platform, I can build it: Framer, Webflow, WordPress, Shopify or a custom web app. Then put the scope into the design brief generator.
Common questions
Website platform picker: FAQ
Framer is faster to design and launch in, with animation built in, and suits marketing sites and portfolios edited by non-technical teams. Webflow has a more structured CMS and finer control over HTML, CSS and SEO, so it pulls ahead when a designed site also carries a large, structured content library. For a typical startup marketing site, both are good choices.
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