WordPress vs. HTML: Which is Best for Your Website?

Introduction to WordPress vs. HTML

When you think about developing a website, two terms, WordPress and HTML, hit your mind. Both are used for web pages and have their features, advantages, and disadvantages. Building a website for your business needs planning, designing, and launching. But, WordPress vs. HTML, which one to choose?

Today, we will know the difference between WordPress and HTML and what should be considered while making any website or blog.

What are their features and drawbacks, and what expertise do you need to know while using them?

First, we will know what WordPress and HTML are.

What is WordPress?

WordPress is an online tool or Content Management System(CMS) that provides the features to create and run a website without coding skills. It is easy to customize and install, entirely browser-based, and you don’t have to install any software separately.

It can be installed on your hosting service, where you can deploy live websites or make offline websites for knowledge.

WordPress has many plugins and advanced features that make your webpage creation work efficiently.

What is HTML?

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language and is used to create websites. It would help if you had to know the syntax and appropriate tags used in HTML to make an HTML-based website.

Every webpage is made of HTML, including the pages created in WordPress is also HTML page. Developers know HTML makes websites from scratch and use different scripting languages along with HTML like JavaScript, CSS, or PHP.

Does WordPress use HTML?

The simple answer is. Yes, however, WordPress is not written in HTML. It is primarily written in PHP, which is a programming language. It controls how a WordPress website looks and connects it with a database.

PHP runs entirely on a server that hosts any website, so whenever a user requests any webpage by typing its URL, the PHP code requests and pulls the content from your WordPress database and converts it into a readable HTML file.

You can see your web page’s PHP code from WordPress, which differs from an HTML file.

Comparison between WordPress and HTML

So, now you know what WordPress and HTML are and how it works. It would help if you also understood the comparison between them and which is more suitable for a website.

1. Speed

You don’t want to wait long to load a website as a user. A study by Google shows that page load time goes from one second to 5 seconds then the probability of bouncing increases by 90%.

Page load speed is very crucial for any business and SEO.

While making a website, make sure it takes less time to load to reduce the bounce rate. Now, let’s compare the speed of WordPress and HTML sites.

WordPress Speed

The WordPress site runs on PHP, and every time a user requests, it executes PHP code to load the information and show it to the users. It can increase load time and delays.

However, you can use Content Delivery Network(CDN) to optimize and compress the images that will boost your website and show your site’s contents from the nearest server to the visitors.

HTML speed

HTML sites do not require PHP code to execute and retrieve data from the database. So, the codes are already optimized and faster than the WordPress site.

You can optimize an HTML site by eliminating unnecessary CSS, Javascript, white spaces, and comments. Reduce the number of inline scripts, minify images, and more.

2. SEO

You are making a website and investing your time and money so people can see it. SEO is the main focus for any website owner to help rank their websites in search engines.

It helps drive more organic traffic and requires on-page, off-page, and technical SEO. So, let’s compare which site is more SEO-friendly.

WordPress for SEO

WordPress has many plugins, themes, and features that make SEO work smoothly. You can customize your dashboard’s image alt-text, meta description, URLs, and headings without touching a single line of code.

It comes with thousands of responsible and mobile-friendly themes.

You can install and activate them with a few clicks, and you don’t have to be techy. You don’t have to hire developers to manage these works. Several plugins available for SEO, like Yoast SEO and WP Rocket, will handle your SEO-related work.

WordPress is a complete SEO solution because it has many loaded features, and compared to an HTML site; it takes care of this job quickly.

HTML for SEO

To make an HTML site SEO-friendly, you need some knowledge, or you can hire a developer to handle it.

As mentioned above, in a WordPress site, you don’t have to touch any code, but in the case of an HTML site, you have to do it in your HTML code.

You have to add code to your HTML file from image alt-text to an external link, and it takes more time than a WordPress site. You can optimize your site for SEO from HTML, but it needs technical expertise.

3. Ease of use

Every website owner wants that create and manage their site should be easy. So, let’s compare which one is easy to use and more flexible.

WordPress ease of use

If you use WordPress, you will have complete control over your site. Without coding from scratch, you can write and manage content, change your website’s appearance, configure its settings from the dashboard, and extend the functionality using plugins.

For the platform’s flexibility, you must spend time, effort, and money on updated software, themes, and plugins. You have to make your site safe and compatible. However, it will not take day-to-day management.

You can easily use WordPress because it has all the menus and options and can be managed from a single dashboard. You can add, modify, delete, and update anytime without hiring someone.

HTML ease of use

As you see that WordPress has all the functionality for managing any site and how it looks- HTML is not lucky enough. You won’t get any dashboard with built-in features, themes, and plugins to automate your task.

Instead, you have to write HTML or CSS scripts for that, and if you don’t know how you have to pay someone who knows.

If your website does not need frequent updates, then HTML can be your choice because it requires fewer server resources. It will be cheaper and easy to build, and you don’t have to worry about updating software or extensions.

4. Pricing

Pricing can be a significant factor for someone who wants to build a website. Building a website may include design and technical knowledge but not in the case of WordPress. Now let’s look at a pricing comparison for WordPress and HTML sites.

WordPress price

WordPress is open source and free to download and use. You only have to pay for your domain and hosting service, where your WordPress site will live and be available worldwide.

However, WordPress provides premium themes and plugins and free themes and plugins. It depends on whether users want to use the premium service or not.

At the same time, free resources won’t affect your site’s appearance and ranking.

Building a WordPress site can vary because hosting services and domain name registration vary in price. Also, it depends on the subscription of themes and plugins installed.

So, building a WordPress site can cost hundreds to a couple of thousands of dollars and, depending on the website owners, how much they want to spend.

HTML price

Building an HTML site means building it from scratch. You must hire professionals if you don’t know how to write HTML codes and other scripting languages used in website building.

You may have to hire experienced individuals in different fields like HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP to complete building your site.

Also, you can hire freelancers at an hourly or monthly rate. Some will charge based on pages, design, appearance, responsiveness, SEO, etc.

So, estimating the cost of building and maintaining an HTML site is problematic because it depends on the developers and their willingness to charge.

Also, you must pay extra if you want to make site changes.

Some studies show that a responsive website with ten pages built with HTML will cost around $7,000 to $10,000. It is more compared to a WordPress site.

Also, remember that the price depends on the owners of an HTML site and how stylish, responsive, and SEO-friendly they want to make it.

5. Blogging

If you like blogging and want to publish regular content, then it is more likely to rank on search engines. Blogs are beneficial for getting information regarding anything just by typing some keywords.

So, which one to choose for blogging? WordPress or HTML? Let’s compare.

WordPress for blogging

WordPress is helpful in many ways, but it was initially made for blogging. It has lots of built-in functionality to create, modify and update contents which is very useful for any blogger.

Its editor helps compose posts, add media files, schedule, publish, make drafts, and delete and update commands. Also, you can moderate comments, make your posts and pages public or private, or even secure them with a password.

Without editing any code, you can do everything from the dashboard. From a blogger’s perspective, it has many features that make blogging easy.

HTML for blogging

You can create even more complex posts from HTML than WordPress. It needs some knowledge of codes, and you can make any post or page per your requirement.

But, it will take longer than WordPress because you will not have menus or drag-and-drop editors.

You will have complete control over your content and how it should look, but it needs in-depth knowledge of CSS, Javascript, or PHP. So, if you want to make a blog and publish regular updates, WordPress will be a good fit for you rather than HTML.

WordPress vs. HTML – Final Verdict

The short answer is- It depends. It’s up to the person and the type of website they want to make, whether they want frequent updates, posts, or changes on their site.

Also, it depends on whether website owners want to hire developers to create and manage their site or take control of the whole website through a platform.

It’s up to you who decides whether you want to build it from scratch or need any website-building platform. Your decision can be anything, but a website’s main goal should be to provide your visitors with relevant and valuable information.

Small businesses, Gyms, and Restaurants may find HTML more appealing if they have infrequent changes. Whereas Ecomm stores, companies looking to grow their brands and customer base can choose WordPress.

Also, the website’s cost will determine which one will suit you. So, there is no winner or loser for website development. It depends on how people want to make their site and how it should look, perform and serve information and services to any visitor.