WordPress vs. OpenCart vs. Hand Coding Websites – What Should You Choose?

As a rule, after making a decision to order a website, before contacting specialists, a customer tries to figure out what kind of website is needed to solve his or her business goals and tasks. But while determining a website type is not a difficult thing to do, choosing the website engine often leads people into a dead end.

The most popular CMSes are WordPress and OpenCart. Our customers often ask us which of these two systems would work best.

CMS (content management system, often called an engine) is a system that supports the creation and modification of the digital content of a website (articles, photo albums, reviews, etc.).

Another frequently asked question is if a hand-coded website built from scratch is better than CMS one.
And the answer is that it all depends on what type of website you have chosen for yourself.

If you still have not decided what type of website you need, you may find this article very helpful — https://web-systems.solutions/en/blog/website-types/26

If this is a business card website, a blog, a corporate site, or a landing page, don’t even hesitate and choose WordPress.
This engine was developed specifically for blogs, but thanks to many modules and flexibility of the platform, WordPress is a perfect option for all kinds of websites.

Among the advantages of this content management system are:

1. It is free. This means that its source code can be used and improved for free to create the right website for your needs.
2. It’s quick and easy to installs and set up.
3. Flexible. This content management system can be used to create different types of websites whether it’s a personal blog, business card website or e-commerce websites.
4. Search engine friendly.
5. Safe and secure.
6. Customizable. Because of the thousands of plugins and themes that WordPress offers the website can be customized to appear and function as you would like.
7. Easy to use. Administering your website will bring only pleasure. Plus it will take only a few minutes to learn how it works.
8. Lots of support. WordPress community provides ongoing support for users. You can troubleshoot any question or concern online.
9. Hosts multimedia. You can upload different kinds of multimedia (photos, videos, audio etc) to your WordPress website.
10. Mobile friendly. Responsive design will perfectly work with this platform. WordPress responsive website will look and work nicely on any devices.
11. Integration. E-mail campaign, payment system — these services are easy to integrate with WordPress.
12. You’re not committed to one hosting provider. If you decided to change the provider it is not a problem, WordPress website works with pretty much every server.
13. Development and improvement. WordPress website is easy to maintain and upgrade as your business grows.
14. Management. A big advantage of the platform is the management opportunities it offers. There’s a very good possibility that you’ll have to rely on multiple people to keep your site up and running. WordPress is aware of this and has made it easy for you to assign different roles to different individuals.
15. Permanent development. WordPress has been existing for years already. And it never stopped improving to keep up with the times.

As we’ve already mentioned, WordPress is suitable for creating various types of websites: catalogs, galleries, portfolios, business card sites, and even simple online stores. But if you need a full-fledged multipage online trading platform with a lot of goods, it’s better to look for some other specialized engines. And that is when CMS OpenCart should be considered. 

OpenCart is an online store management system. Just like WordPress, it is open source and free.

Among the advantages of this system are:

1. Easy installation and operation
2. Ability to add an unlimited number of products, sections and categories
3. Convenient built-in order form and shopping cart.
4. Supports a variety of payment methods.
5. Supports multiple languages and different currencies.
6. Allows implementation of Google Analytics.
7. A huge number of additional inexpensive or free additional extensions thanks to which you can expand already extensive features of the OpenCart website.
8. Scheme of work with client orders is implemented in accordance with all requirements of modern usability. It is built in such a way that the visitor of your website just won’t be able to miss necessary information, and the order will be made as quickly and comfortably as possible.
9. An important administration feature is the ability to create a copy of your store’s database. It can be especially useful in case of active processing of your resource or if the problems with hosting appear.
10. Compatible with all popular browsers.

And finally about hand-coded sites. There is an opinion that a website made from scratch is always better than a resource built using WordPress or another CMS.
Although we develop sites of different complexity (including hand-coded ones), we would try to dissuade the customer from creating a business card website or another simple site from scratch in order to save his or her money and time.

But sometimes it is better to code from scratch. The hand-coded website is always an alternative, especially if your project is atypical, something really non-standard in terms of design and/or capabilities. For example, a job search website, an online auction or charity portal, even an online store with original design and functionality may be a reason why it is worth considering the option of creating a hand-coded site.

See a hand-coded online store in our portfolio.

Unfortunately, there is no CMS which would cover all cases. It is a hand-coded Internet resource that allows you to meet all individual needs and wishes.
Something else that is good about the hand-coded website is its level of security. Hand coding website code is private by default, and therefore it will be much more difficult to detect vulnerability in it.
Speed is another advantage of hand coding Internet resources. One of the reasons why it may work faster is that such a website contains functionality required only in a particular case, whereas CMS website includes a basic set of functions which can’t be changed. This does not necessarily mean that CMS website always works slower, rather a hand coding allows you to speed up the work of resource.

We hope that you found this article worth reading. And it answered most of your questions. If for some reason it did not or something should be clarified, please, feel free to write, call, or come and see us. We’ll be happy to help.