Sitecore vs WordPress - Which Is the Best for Me?

There are many high-quality CMS platforms out there on the market that you can choose to build a website. Two of the most productive CMSs are Sitecore and WordPress that each offer the best WordPress website design. But, which one is a better choice? Let's find out the answer by comparing them in different topics.

Sitecore vs WordPress: Overview

What Is Sitecore?

Sitecore first released in 2001 and was one of the earliest CMS platforms available. Till now, it has evolved in many ways and users can use it to edit content, create workflows, manage users, and almost everything else a CMS platform can do.

For enterprise-level businesses Sitecore is a popular choice and it shines at large-scale websites because of its collection of features. But for that reason, it is much more complicated to use.

However, for those at the enterprise level, it is excellent if you can afford it. Although Sitecore has a 30-day free trial, you should pay more for the core experience.

Enterprise-level businesses could spend tens of thousands of dollars on their license.

What Is WordPress?

WordPress is an open-source CMS that was first released in 2003 as a simple blogging platform. As it evolved through time, its popularity increased because of its robust tool kit and usefulness plus flexibility in custom WordPress website design.

Nowadays, many website owners take advantage of WordPress to build any kind of website. More than 40% of websites are built by WordPress.

WordPress is excellent for all sizes of businesses, and because it is free, it can save you a lot of money. WordPress is especially great for Excel beginners because it doesn't require any coding knowledge.

Instead, by using different useful plugins and themes you can add all the features you require with just a few settings.

The Difference Between Sitecore & WordPress

Sitecore is more popular among enterprise businesses, while WordPress is more popular with small to midsize businesses. Generally, WordPress is much more popular because it is easily accessible to a large community.

Moreover, WordPress is free but Sitecore can cost several thousand dollars.

Sitecore vs WordPress: Ease of Use

Many users consider the difficulty of learning the platform a deciding factor. Although a platform may have some extra features, it’s useless if you do not have the skills needed to run the platform, or if you need to spend more time to learn the skills.

Sitecore Accessibility

Sitecore makes use of the .NET framework. This offers developers more freedom in selecting a coding language. Nonetheless, you have to learn coding if you want to take the best advantage of Sitecore.

But, as Sitecore's intended audience is at the enterprise level, these are companies that can employ the needed workforce.

Therefore, it’s not really challenging for most. The bright side is that the platform grants users a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor, meaning that for creating content, no coding is actually needed. And the editor itself provides everything you require.

Another ideal feature of Sitecore is content reusing. With this feature, you can easily generate pages with particular reusable items. But, aside from the editor and content reusing, Sitecore is not an easy platform for beginners.

WordPress Accessibility: Winner

When it comes to accessibility, WordPress is much more popular and it is usually considered as the industry leader. This is  notable in its most recent updates.

In the brand new reiteration, users can access site-wide editing tools and make global changes within some seconds.

You can do all these without writing a single line of code. On the contrary, there are many plugins available to add any feature you may require. For example, for improving your SEO, you just need to install the Yoast SEO plugin.

The main editor of WordPress, Gutenberg, is a block-based editor, meaning that you just add a block that consists of the needed features, very similar to a plugin in that regard.

For instance, to add an image you just have to add an image block.  Very simple; isn't it?

Results

WordPress is the clear winner in accessibility. As software, the WordPress installation is very simple, but Sitecore is a much more involved process because it serves enterprise-level businesses.

WordPress is far more accessible for non skilled users because it does not need any coding knowledge. However, you can surely make coding adjustments if you know how.

This is one of the reasons why WordPress is so widely-used. 

Sitecore vs WordPress: User Management

In any team environment, you have to make sure that users have the necessary permissions to do their daily work. Both platforms have their own systems in place that make them productive.

Let’s see which offers a better user experience; Sitecore or WordPress?

Sitecore User Management: Winner

Since Sitecore is an enterprise software, it actually shines when it comes to managerial tools. It includes a very hefty selection of user management tools and there are even more options to select from.

One of the greatest differences is that an approval system is built into the platform.

Usually CMS platforms are very basic and make roles that can do particular tasks, without a review process. But Sitecore natively includes this.

Higher roles must confirm content before it can be published, which is significant for larger websites.

Team members can simply share information and templates with the Sitecore Experience Accelerator (SXA). Thus, the environment was built for teams, and it is apparent at every level of the platform.

WordPress User Management

WordPress makes use of user roles to help administrators give access to particular areas of the website. It’s really inherent fundamentally. If someone writes content, you can assign them as an author and a manager of the content department, and is considered as an editor.

Someone who should have full control over all aspects of the website, can be assigned an administrator role.

It’s a simple but productive role system. Where WordPress actually excels is when you use plugins to create custom roles that have more certain scalability in mind.

For instance, you can adjust a role to have access to particular plugins on your website, and limit content for others. You can even add a plugin that needs approval before content is published.

Results

Sitecore is absolutely the winner in the user management area, but WordPress can prepare the same experience after adding various plugins. With Sitecore sharing content between users is more easy, thus it is perfect for team environments.

Sitecore vs WordPress: Design

Your website should be both a fully functioning website and a good-looking one. Thus, you have to take advantage of all of the available design options.

Although both platforms offer tools, there is a clear winner here. Read more to find out which one is the winner.

Sitecore Design

In the design area, Sitecore is no slouch. It offers users a feature-rich canvas to build their website the way they want it to be, of course, if they have coding knowledge. Thus, new users are not Sitecore’s target audience.

One can customize the frontend layer however they want in Sitecore, but it takes some time for development. As you might understand, the more compounded you make it, the longer it is going to take, and for those who are in a rush, it can be a great problem.

Again, the target audience is important here. One can customize the page layouts into anything or save these layouts to use them again. This can save a lot of time when making similar pages.

WordPress Design: Winner

With WordPress you can create all kinds of websites, from a single landing page for a product to a full-fledged online store. And in spite of what you make in WordPress, it will usually look pretty good because of the theme you use. Many web developers customize the theme and page layout to be equal to what they want.

In WordPress, you are not restricted to the tools and you can also use page-builder tools to enjoy new sets of functions. There are a ton of them you can select from.

This is a distinctive superiority over most platforms that restrict you to just one set of design tools. And now with the full-site editor, WordPress has made it even easier to make global changes to design components such as colors and fonts.

Results

Although both platforms can bring about high-quality web content, WordPress is the winner in comparison to Sitecore. WordPress has more options when in the design area because of being compatible with page-building tools like Elementor.

Above and beyond all other considerations, designing content for WordPress can be done faster, and this can reduce development costs.

Sitecore vs WordPress: Pricing

No doubtedly, price is the most common deciding factor when choosing anything. In this case, WordPress is the winner. Let’s check out the affordability of Sitecore and WordPress.

Sitecore Pricing

Sitecore has licensed software meaning that you have to pay for license renewal annually. That fee is not small, and for its target audience, you could spend $75,000 just on the license fee each year.

Evidently, this is too expensive for most small and medium-sized businesses or those who just want to have a blog.

But, enterprise-level businesses can usually afford the annual fee.

Moreover, the actual cost of development should be added to this fee. However, WordPress is much easier to use, actually, a lot of platforms are much easier than Sitecore.

That means developers who know it are going to cost more. Therefore, the whole development costs from just labor will be much higher than other platforms. Because of the complexity, even maintenance is more expensive.

WordPress Pricing: Winner

WordPress is an Open-source CMS, meaning that it is free to use. The only actual cost to WordPress is web hosting, and it applies to all websites. But, there are some other costs that can come up when using WordPress. Just keep in mind they are not obligatory.

For instance, there are thousands of free plugins and themes to choose from in WordPress. But there are also thousands of premium options you can use as well.

Usually, these are extremely low-priced by themselves with the average cost being around $50 for a premium tool. But if you utilize a lot of premium tools, the costs can add up fast.

Do not forget that there are plenty of top-end plugins that can save you a lot of money.

Buy WordPress VPS Hosting to upgrade your WordPress website performance.

Results

No doubtedly WordPress is the winner because it is free and Sitecore will cost you thousands of dollars. Moreover, hiring web developers who are familiar with Sitecore is much more expensive than doing the same for WordPress.

Thus, If you want to save money, choose WordPress. 

Sitecore vs WordPress: Final Results

WordPress appears to be more advantageous over Sitecore.

Although Sitecore offers more out of the box, that's not absolutely a positive point because you may not need everything.

On the contrary, with WordPress, you can add the features and tools you require by installing different plugins. You can also create the best WordPress website design using different themes. This is why WordPress is simple and accessible to beginners. Plus, it is notably cheaper to design content for.