For your eCommerce project, it’s crucial to select the right site builder so that you can create an effective website for your business’s online presence. Here, the market is ready to offer you an abundance of solutions. Many of them are designed to make the development process as easy as pie and almost automatic. The others give you unprecedented freedom in designs and features, but managing such site constructors requires good knowledge of the matter.
In this article, we are going to compare two excellent patterns in both categories. One of them is Bubble, and the other is WordPress. The purpose is to show which one is better for an online shop or any other eCommerce. Both software items attach value to means necessary for the development of this sort of website. However, their approaches are completely different.
Thus, Bubble can be seen as a site-building application that enables the creation of new applications, including those tailored for eCommerce activities. With the help of WordPress, users can build websites – in the true sense of the ‘website’ notion. Which technique is more powerful? Let’s study both solutions in detail to know the answer.
Bubble vs WordPress: General Overview
Bubble is a younger solution than WordPress. It was founded in 2012 when site-building technology moved one step forward and headed towards a high level of usability and no code development.
Bubble software represents a cloud-hosting platform whose main instrument is a visual framework for programming. It’s a kind of programming language, which, however, has an easier-to-use interface. This opens wide opportunities for web design beginners and non-coders since the whole process does not require writing code. The software allows users to create simple applications of any sort. It can be a social network, a portfolio, a service platform, an online shop, and whatever.
Designed for bloggers in 2003, WordPress went through a long evolutionary process. However, its essence remains the same. The CMS platform is an open-source site development software, the website creation on which is based on code manipulations and the use of plugins.
The possibilities of WordPress are literally endless. WordPress users gain absolute freedom in working out designs and structures for their online projects. No matter which purpose a website has, WordPress allows equipping it with all the necessary functions. So, building an impressive, powerful eCommerce site is just within its depth.
Let’s make an initial summary. Bubble is a good choice when a quick and simple solution is required. WordPress is better when you need a complex project to be moved online.
How does this thesis work in online store building? A further head-to-head comparison of the platforms’ key characteristics will define the winner in the Bubble vs WordPress eCommerce battle.
Bubble vs WordPress: Which One Is Easier to Use?
Bubble was initially designed to engage non-techies. The software offers a simplistic building process, in which a user with any level of code knowledge – including the zero level – can cope with all the available instruments.
The Bubble interface is very convenient. Users can find piles of step-to-step instructions on how to build an app like Instagram, LinkedIn, ZenDesk, Shopify, or whatever. It all starts with registration on the platform, after which you go straight to the building process.
The whole job is based on Drag & Drop technology. While your customization won’t be as comprehensive as with WordPress and its analogs, you’ll be able to build a fitting application for an online store very quickly. In the vast majority of cases, there’s no way to make a mistake since Bubble won’t let you experiment too much.
The platform is ready to take care of your app’s security and SEO. You’ll need to apply a minimum of changes. The same can be said about the other options. The platform will supply your online store with hosting, too.
WordPress offers a completely different approach. Here, a user with a certain idea of their online store will benefit the most. No matter how complex and out-of-a-kind this idea is, WordPress has all means to let the developer implement it into reality.
Here, code knowledge is a must. It will let you or a hired expert make avail of the platform’s whole potential. You should have a design idea and know how to make it real by using programming languages. You should work out a plan on how to ensure security, visibility, mobile responsiveness, functionality, and scalability for your project. All this is fully your responsibility.
You’ll get the very website you have planned, and this will be a website, in the direct meaning of the word – not an app. You’ll be able to choose any host and connect the very domain or subdomain you wish.
Bubble vs WordPress: Design and Flexibility
Building a professional online store ready to bring revenues is not as easy as ads claim. Your project needs a professionally looking, eCommerce-oriented, and appealing design in the first place. Then, its functional power plays a crucial role in your success, too. How efficacious are Bubble and WordPress in this respect? An overview of their features and editing capabilities will throw light upon the matter.
Website (PWA) Building
You can easily build an online shop app with the help of Bubble. Even an online store from scratch can be created very fast. The steps you need to take are as follows:
- You define the structure of your future online store. Bubble provides sample databases, which you can modify with extra folders according to your store’s needs.
- You build workflows to make your app tune up the functional capabilities of your eStore application.
- You create the pages of your app and supply them with the necessary elements to define both its design and feature set. All this can be made via Drag & Drop, so no head-twisting activities are involved in this process.
- You add your products and a shopping cart, as well as create the checkout page.
- You connect payment gateways.
- You supply your online store with dynamic blocks to make the app look more effective.
- Your app is ready to be launched.
A total beginner can take a simpler way. They can do with a ready-to-use Bubble template. It’ll be automatically optimized for search engines, mobile compatibility, and general security. A couple of changes in design and several plugins connected will be enough to publish a simple but professionally-looking, fully workable online store.
The creative process on WordPress is more complicated. You need to have a hosting plan and a domain to install the WordPress CMS on it. Many hosts offer a one-click WordPress installation into the proper directory folder via your domain interface. The software itself is open-source and can be downloaded from the official website for free.
The further process is all about customizing your website’s design by editing code. You can opt for a free theme, but a premium one will be more capable of making your online store truly professional and attractive to potential customers. Chances you’ll need to add a number of eCommerce plugins, for instance, WooCommerce. Your possibilities here will be endless.
You’ll also have to care about your site’s visibility, security, etc. yourself. After this, you can publish your website. In case something looks or works wrong, you’ll have to go back to editing and rework the issue. So, it’s important to know what you want and what you do to succeed with WordPress.
eCommerce Features
An online store created in the form of a Bubble application is a workable solution. It’s a big plus that the platform offers workflows. Thanks to this function, you can streamline all the processes on your app. You can add extensions and multiple APIs so that it can accept orders and payments, as well as do everything a standard online shop can.
But do not expect too much, especially when you are not going to touch a line of code. Your abilities on Bubble will be quite limited, then. On the other hand, when ready to code, why not choose a more powerful means like WordPress? No matter how many plugins Bubble offers, it will never beat WordPress, the top-preferred platform in the world with tons of eCommerce-oriented addons.
Thus, you can initially base your WordPress online store by connecting the WooCommerce plugin. It is designed for building effective eCommerce projects and providing them with features like these:
- whatever payment gateways;
- inventory management tools;
- drop shipping options;
- a shopping cart;
- the abandoned cart recovery instrument;
- email marketing plugins;
- tax calculators, and numerous others.
Bubble cannot boast the same level of integrations. The software is great when you have your own tools created by yourself or by an expert for you, and you need to shape them into a dedicated application. WordPress will let you build a store website, and you can provide it with as many WordPress and third-party plugins as you wish.
Template Editing
The limited functionality of Bubble is clearly seen in its templates. And this is not only a problem with their number. Bubble templates are simple to customize thanks to the Drag & Drop editor, but they all have too unspecified designs. You can customize your own by opting for a blank template, but basic web design skills and coding will be necessary. Instead, the modifying process might seem tricky to you.
One more downside here is that you choose a template for your app forever. That is, you won’t be able to change it with another when it is necessary. With a poor choice of ready-made templates for eCommerce purposes, Bubble is not a good choice for an online store.
Inversely, WordPress offers an avalanche of themes, official and released by independent WordPress users. Their number is 31,000+ at present, and about a third of them are free. There’s not a site builder that can offer you the same choice of professional eCommerce themes, available for free or premium ones.
Want to create your own template from ground zero? You can surely do this on WordPress. You cannot do it on Bubble. The latter will only let you use a blank template and fill it in with available blocks and elements in a more or less free way.
Bubble vs WordPress: General Pricing Comparison
Bubble offers four paid plans and the free one. The free plan is very limited in features, so it would scarcely suit even the simplest online shop. The paid plans include the following packages:
- Personal: $29/mo.
- Professional: $129/mo.
- Production: $529/mo.
- Custom: managed pricing.
The more functions you wish to have on your Bubble app, the more expensive plan you should choose.
WordPress is a free platform. That is, you can download, install, and use the software without spending a penny. There are no paid plans in this version of WordPress (though they exist in the WordPress.com version).
What you’ll need to pay for here is hosting (WordPress is self-hosted), a domain, pro themes, and premium plugins. In theory, you can limit your expenses to hosting and a domain since the platform offers countless options available for free.
Bubble vs WordPress: Which One Is the Best for SEO?
We found Bubble SEO options insufficient and too tricky for beginners. Although the app allows modifying your app’s search engine settings, you should touch this section of the app only if you know what you’re going to do.
With WordPress, you’ll also have to care about your SEO by yourself. However, you can connect truly effective SEO management plugins like Yoast to your website and make the whole process simple and fast. It will let you make the following manipulations:
- edit your pages’ URLs, meta titles, meta descriptions, headings, and so on;
- use analytical tools to check how SEO-effective your content is;
- get suggestions on how to improve your SEO settings;
- get suggestions on key phrases;
- create advanced sitemaps;
- check and enhance the pages’ readability, etc.
Comparison Conclusion: Which One Is Better?
Let’s summarize. Bubble will only suit you if you plan to launch a truly simple eCommerce. The software will be great when putting your project in the form of an application is important. You’ll also benefit from Bubble, if this app should be based on a feature or two developed by yourself. For a large online store, Bubble’s functionality may be insufficient and too pricy.
WordPress will let you build a full-size eCommerce website with as many functions as you wish. You’ll have complete freedom in your choice of design solutions, a theme, a number of plugins, plugin specifications, theme/app prices, and even hosting. With WordPress, you can build anything, from a small site for selling a product and accepting payments to a massive eCommerce with numerous services. The platform is free, but even with a solid investment in your eStore site development, you’ll make every invested penny work for your profit.
