After reading this article, you will be convinced to scrap your long time favourite website building tool WordPress and instead use Cloud CMS AppDrag dedicated to web professionals. If not, we commit ourselves to offering you a free trial to test our solution.

In life, there are two categories of people: those eager to explore innovative options in technology often called “early adopters” and those who are skeptical and wary of newness.  Depending on where you stand, it might require some time before you change your mindset and habits, especially if you’ve been used to working with industry standards for years. The only thing we may ask from you right now is to open your mind and be tolerant to criticism. We will adopt a methodological approach in comparing two website builders, the “darling” of open source CMS WordPress you might be very familiar with, and a Cloud CMS new player AppDrag. If you can put yourself in the shoes of your clients, it will surely help.

Let’s start with one basic question: “How long does it take to design a website with WordPress? What about with AppDrag?”

The longer hours you devote to a website project, the less you make yourself available for other stuff. Time waste often results in sunk costs. As a freelance web developer, you probably invoice per worked hour, and don’t get into project billing as a web agency would do. While it comes as no surprise that WordPress requires substantial time for wireframing, home page and interior page design, back end development and deployment. On the contrary, AppDrag makes it super easy to create, manage and publish content to web sites and mobile applications in just a few clicks. Because you only need to log in to the platform, edit, save and change contents and make your website go live. Period.

Let’s take a concrete example with figures.

Let’s say you plan to design an 8 page website for an estimated budget of $1,500.  Based on the experience of web professionals using Wordpress, set up average time is around 4 hours, design time approximately 4 days and production time around 2 hours. Indeed, when you want to insert footnotes in the text, add a picture or an image file, how long does it take you to code? With a Cloud CMS, these commonly used features are easily accessible. Therefore, you can get your brain in gear for real priorities. On top of this, you need to take into account at least one hour per month for maintenance.

Now, let’s compute the costs for the same project using AppDrag. Obviously, set up time is nil. Creation time is divided almost by 3. Why? AppDrag provides more than 100 templates and 1,000 ready to use drag &drop sections. Production time is close to, if not, zero. Last but not least, maintenance is spared since AppDrag offers fast and reliable cloud hosting enabling you to channel your energy into design and content. With a Cloud CMS such as AppDrag, you don’t have to worry anymore about installation processes and software updates.

The second question you might be aching to ask is: “What is the equation in money terms?”

It is quite a cliché to think that an open source platform is free and generate no costs at all. Some even say that you can benefit from goodies and freebies created by the WordPress community. If you have been using this CMS, you know for a fact this assertion doesn’t hold true. Because in order to get it work properly, it is almost compulsory to include additional costs in your calculations. 4 types of charges at least should be identified: web hosting in order to store your website, templates to create beautiful designs, API, extensions and plug-ins to automate anything, communications tools to attract the right audience (blog, email marketing, e-boutique…). And some of these costs are recurring.

While expenditures for set up, design, production, hosting and maintenance total up to $1,095 with WordPress, the bill is cheaper with AppDrag at $372.

So, in summary…


 

This article hasn’t even touched on awkward questions such as security, SEO optimization, SSL certificate, scalability, translation, domain name purchase and transfer, mobile app, support, blog… where AppDrag ensures hassle-free implementation and operation.

As a web developer, you might freak out going down the road of using off-the-shelf Cloud CMS. I can hear you asking yourself trick questions such as “How do I keep the control of my website? How do I customize it the way I want? How can I add more functionality? ”. Once again, in whose interest do you work for? Yourself or your clients? Knowing that your customers will be happy without having to call on you for regular updates or content change should be a reason good enough to go for AppDrag which doesn’t require any technical knowledge. Providing your buyers with the ability to enter and edit content once a website is up and running is a strong business case.

At the end of the day, the debate between WordPress and AppDrag is a bit of a David and Goliath situation. But, most importantly, the final decision whether to opt for the first or the latter lies in your hands. What you cannot disagree on is twofold:
1/you need to make money,
2/your clients have limited time and budget. With WordPress, you can achieve an efficient web development framework. With AppDrag, you offer more to your customers in less time and allow yourself to optimize your resources.