Google Sites vs WordPress: The War of the Website Builders
Both WordPress vs Google Sites (even if you were to code) are the types of websites that not so long ago would have required you to build and maintain the site by yourself. Among 43% of all sites running on the WordPress platform as an open-source techie, Google Sites is just a drag-and-drop website builder. The crucial difference is that while you have to host the latter on a server, you can use Google Sites without incurring any additional costs.
Which is superior, though? You will evaluate and assess both platforms’ features, which will guide you in making a conclusive choice.
An overview of Google Sites and WordPress
Let’s begin with a brief summary of WordPress vs Google Sites before comparing the two systems.
WordPress
WordPress (2003) is not an online simplicity but a development movement that aims at a better internet life to design much more than just websites. It was a wish for an advanced, stylish, GPL-enabled blogging platform with a customizable system, PHP, and MySQL. This open-source CMS has come to the fore as probably the most widespread global web-based content management system, enjoying high patronage of more than 43% of the existing websites.
What has really made WordPress successful is the very active WordPress community, which has played the main part in its success. Initially, it was only a few lines of text, but now it has developed into a massive community of developers, designers, bloggers, and owners of digital agencies. The plethora of tools, illustrations, and assistance that this community provides makes it easy, and anyone can quickly build a site that fits their requirements.
Using WordPress has several benefits, some of which are:-
- Customizability: Internet users will choose from thousands of themes and plugins. They can customize their websites the way they want them to be.
- Availability of plugins: In total, there are over 59,000 plugins, and each one of them helps to add a new feature to a website, so without needing to know how to code, users may do this on their own.
- SEO-friendliness: To give another example, Yoast SEO plugins, sitemaps, and permanent links are just a few of the features that make WordPress an SEO-optimized platform.
- Security: Security is one of the areas where the efforts of the WordPress developers are evident. They dedicate themselves to promptly repairing any security loopholes, as well as updating their versions.
To put it briefly, WordPress is a platform for creativity, innovation, and community development that makes you stand out from the competition rather than just a website builder.
Google Sites
Google Sites’ concept is making it possible for everybody to create their personal websites without technical hassles. It debuted in 2008 as one of the services in Google’s suite of applications, which competes with other productivity tools. Initially, Google Sites was simply a platform to create web pages. After that, it introduced itself as a user-friendly website builder with tremendous popularity for building webpages. These are part of the Google Workspace package, and one can do so without having a lot of technical experience.
The following are some main advantages of Google Sites:-
- Simple to use: Google Sites’ drag-and-drop website creation interface makes it simple to build websites rapidly and effectively. Anyone can build a beautiful, functional website using Google Sites.
- Integration with Google Workspace: It is an invaluable asset to any company using Google Workspace because of its smooth integration with other Google Workspace capabilities. Thanks to this connection, users can increase productivity and cooperation by adding Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides to their websites.
- Collaboration features: Google Sites has strong collaboration tools that let several people edit a webpage at once. Users may assign different permission levels to manage who can access and modify the website.
- Free hosting: For websites made with the platform, it provides free hosting. Users may now stop worrying about server management and site hosting costs.
What Differences Google Sites from WordPress?
This platform has been in existence since 2003. It has been robust with its vast collection of themes and plugins, hence becoming a platform of choice. Conversely, Google Sites is the latter that just emerged recently, but it gives a high priority to the use and mind of everything Google worked on based on Workspace. Let’s now examine these two website builders’ differences in more detail:
Style and customizing
It is of the utmost significance to design and create a website that would effectively reflect your business and attract visitors. Modeling a website with WordPress vs Google Sites differs in terms of design approach and customization freedom. However, both systems have their own advantages.
Theme
Themes with which WordPress is provided are up to millions already and they range from modern and extravagant to lighthearted and joyful. By utilizing these themes, you have complete freedom in the design of your website as you can alter from the layout to the color palette and arrange it as you wish. Contrary to Google Sites, pre-made templates in Google Sites are less diverse in terms of complexity and encourage simplicity.
Customization Options
After adapting WordPress, you’ll find little to worry about, as you can easily administer your website’s appearance and features to suit your needs. This agility will demand extensive technical erudition and be a bit complicated. Compared to Google Sites, Blogger requires a certain level of web development skills that many users might lack. Therefore, those users who need a fast website launch consider Google Sites a better alternative.
Plugins
After WordPress’s adaptable characteristics, there is little to worry about, as your website’s appearance and features can be easily used to curb your needs. This agility will demand extensive technical erudition and be a bit complicated. Compared to Google Sites, Blogger requires a certain level of web development skills that many users might lack. Therefore, Google Sites is considered a better alternative for those users who need a fast website launch.
SEO and Analytics
In terms of statistics and search engine optimization (SEO), WordPress and Google Sites are not the same. There are variations in the degree of control and customization offered by the built-in SEO capabilities and plugins on both systems. This is how they contrast:
Features & Plugins for SEO
Because there is an extensive group of users and a lot of choices to be made, WordPress is number one in SEO plugins. XML sitemaps, content optimization for targeted keywords, and customization meta titles and descriptions are some of the functionalities that become available via popular plugins All in One SEO Pack and Yoast SEO. Then again, Google Sites may not just have applicable SEO functionality, but it might be a problem for users who might prefer to have more control over how their website ranks in search engines.
Integration of Analytics
The two provide easy access to Google Analytics which enables you to link analytics data. Undoubtedly, WordPress prevails in the online space and produces more profound information and understanding! The user experience of WordPress is remarkable because it includes a plethora of statistics: bounce rate, page views, sources from where the traffic comes, and many more. Conversely, Google Analytics’ main analytics service displays just the more basic data and information instead of statistics as deep as Google Sites.
Online Shopping and Payment Methods
WordPress vs Google Sites provides different alternatives for e-commerce and payment methods. Let’s examine the best e-commerce plugins for each platform in more detail, as well as the alternatives for integrating payment gateways.
E-Commerce Add-ons and Configurations
Consistent with the choice of WordPress e-commerce plugins, among the best are BigCommerce, MemberPress, WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, and Shopify. The amazing eCommerce plugins give you every tool under a shop sun, from storefront customization to multiple possible payment options, inventory control, and some other nonsense. At this time, Google’s capable integrated e-commerce features are quite limited in terms of their range. However, Ecwid comes with your own shopping cart for better efficiency.
Integration of Payment Gateways
WordPress is used as a platform, and payouts are through Stripe, Square, and Authorize. By integrating Google Pay, Apple Pay, Netflix, and PayPal, the payment process has never been easier. This feature nourishes endless opportunities not just through Google Sites but also includes a well-protected payment channel connection. Yet Google Sites does not have specific options for payment gateway integration at the moment. On the other hand, adding the payment gateway connection is not readily available on Google Sites. This feature enables you to incorporate third-party technological solutions for online payment processing via some links, like payMyPage (PMP).
Cost of Web Hosting
The prices and hosting open certain paths and may be a factor between WordPress and Google Sites. Let us see whether the cost of hosting and domain price on the two platforms are different to each other.
Pricing & Hosting Options for WordPress
You can make a website with free, open-source software from WordPress. However, you must pay extra for things like domain registration, hosting, and security in order to create and maintain a WordPress website.
You have a wide range of WordPress hosting choices. We went into great detail about them in our review.
The hosted version of WordPress, WordPress.com, has many price tiers with varying functionality and storage capacities.
The 6 GB of storage comes with the $4/month Personal plan, and the 13 GB of storage comes with the $8/month Premium plan.
The $25 monthly Business Plan offers 200 GB of storage for companies in need of extra space. All plans are invoiced annually, while the Commerce plan for eCommerce sites costs $45 per month for the same amount of storage.
Pricing and Hosting Options for Google Sites
The Google Workspace toolkit, which also includes Gmail, Drive, Meet, Docs, Slides, and Forms, contains Google Sites. Although Google Workspace is also free to use, there are several price tiers with varying features and storage capacities to meet your needs.
With a one-year commitment, the Business Starter plan costs USD 6 per user per month and offers 30 GB of storage per user.
For $12 per month (paid yearly), each user may access up to 2 terabytes of storage space with the Business Standard plan.
Each user gets 5 TB of storage under the Business Plus plan, which costs $18 per month and requires an annual commitment.
One of Google’s domain hosting partners is where you may get a custom domain if you wish to utilize one for your website.
What’s the best platform for you?
Just like in the case of clothing for fashionistas, everything means going with the trend or style; here, a choice between Google Sites and WordPress is aimed at someone who is modern and focuses on ease of use or preferences. Hence, a platform that fits your site’s needs must be selected by checking the types of features certain platforms have. In light of this, bear in mind the following five points: Therefore, concerning this matter, consider these fundamentals:
The Website’s Objective
Whether you are building a website with Google Sites or WordPress, the decision will be tough. It makes no difference whether you choose this or that; you need to plan well to know what your web page should accomplish. Because it is cheap and easy to use, landing pages and portfolio sites would find Google Sites one of the best options for their so small websites. In WordPress, a site designer can build from a blog to corporate websites and even e-commerce storefronts due to its powerful function and flexibility, which is especially used for complex sites like large blogs, corporate sites, and e-commerce storefronts. Using Programmable plugins and themes, you can make your site as per your wants.
Expenses
Any factors such as hosting, domain, theme, plugin, and payment gateway need to be taken into consideration before planning the cost of any platform. The Google Sites is a free choice that can save some money since you will not need to pay to host it. WordPress, although it is more costly to host, provides greater choices, such as both premium themes and free plugins. As such, the value of money for a long life spent on the platforms where WordPress offers additional functionalities with high searching and customization options makes it more appealing to companies compared to other platforms.
Technical Proficiency
WordPress is more technical, being more suited to people who already know their way around websites, while Google Sites is more convenient for those who are not very experienced with technology. Google Sites does not require technical proficiency or coding experience to be started as there as it comes with a user-friendly interface. WordPress has to be used being aware of the fact that it is more demanding and requires more special skills, but less technical expertise while using it is enough. Nonetheless, the functions of the WordPress platform include a great community and some technical issues that are helpful for problem-solving.
Needs for Design and Customization
WordPress offers you more freedom when designing the website with more features if you need more control. WordPress has totally free and paid themes and plugins of around ten thousand to actualize your site as you want. However, through the use of Google Sites’ drag-and-drop feature, customization of this website becomes more effortless.
Needs for Analytics and SEO
Any website that is going to make it has to have both SEO and analytics. Several plugins for WordPress can be used for SEO and analytics purposes to follow up on visitors’ activity on websites and optimize your website for search engines. Even though Google Sites provides some stats and SEO, it definitely is not as powerful as WordPress. Assuming you are going to promote your website through SEO and analytics, then you should choose WordPress.
How Can Readers Choose the Right Platform with Knowledge?
Knowing the applications for which WordPress and Google Sites are most appropriate is essential to making an informed choice between them. These tips will assist you in making a decision:
Use Cases with WordPress
WordPress offers an accommodating approach to many different kinds of websites. WordPress is ideal for those individual bloggers who seek to add a personal aspect to their writing, owing to its simplicity and myriad of customization features.
The offer of job boards, farm data tools, e-commerce features, and reliable customer service will be appreciated by farmers.
To begin with, artists and designers can attract their advocates by having private membership websites for their followers and using glamorous visual portfolios to showcase their artworks. The numerous use cases around WordPress can cater to the needs and demands that might feature in your website design, be it a podcast, an online course, or a recipe database.
Applications of Google Sites
Google Sites will help you to create simple and stylish sites with a cool design. It is just what you need! Google Sites is versatile and can be used in a wide range of cases.
Google Sites features an intuitive user interface that is ideal for people who are organizing their trips or websites. It is a resource that small organizations can utilize for providing the necessary information like contacts and hours, or for creating the landing pages. It may be applied by educational institutions to demonstrate student work or to make online educational resources that students can use. Using it, you can build up a basic web portfolio website where you can share the link with others.
Conclusion
To have a clear-cut understanding of WordPress vs. Google Sites, close scrutiny of the benefits of each over the other is imperative, and they are apt for particular categories of websites. WordPress is a multi-purpose platform that can handle the needs of e-commerce sites with frequent influx of visitors and personal pages without problems. The first, on the other hand, is Google Sites, which is a basic platform that works well for simple websites.
The eventual choice between WordPress and Google Sites is mostly a matter of personal preference and your preferred functionality. Nonetheless, if content and ease of management matter, WordPress is a better deal for the website owner.
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