Open-source vs Proprietary Solutions – How hosted CMS platforms can cost you more down the line

18 Oct 2022, by Slade Baylis

When you start down the path of getting your business set up online, the first few steps usually involve registering your domain name, signing up for website hosting, and setting up some email accounts under your new domain. However, one of the more complicated steps is building your website.

It’s not obvious unless you’re already familiar with it, but the website hosting that you purchase is just a “container” of sorts that provides the ability to upload a website to a server so that it’s accessible on the internet. It’s similar to physical property - the domain name is the address, the hosting is the land itself, but the website is the building that you choose to build on that land. It can be a residential or a commercial building, but the address and land won’t be very useful without one.

In the past, building a website was usually done by outsourcing the work to a web developer or website development agency. However, it has become much more common in recent years for people to build their own websites. With the growing popularity of tools like WordPress, Drupal, and other hosted solutions like Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify, business owners are able to take those first few steps themselves and avoid the high costs that used to be required.

With all these choices though, it can be difficult to know where to begin. What’s the difference between open source platforms such as WordPress and Drupal, and other proprietary platforms like Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify? What are the drawbacks of each option? And finally, out of these options, which one do we recommend and why? 

In this article, we’ll aim to answer all these questions, and help get you started on the right foot when you’re taking those first few steps to get your website set up!

CMS Platforms – The ability to modify your website yourself

When it comes to websites that business owners can manage themselves, the first term we’ll need to define is CMS – which stands for Content Management System. CMS, as the name implies, is a software platform that allows you as a website owner to easily manage the content on your website, such as text, images, and more. With these systems, gone were the days of having to pay a website developer on an hourly basis for something simple, like updating text on a page! 

When CMS platforms were first introduced, they quickly increased in popularity – not only that, but the platforms that quickly became the standard and go-to options were all open-source by design. What this means is that the software itself was provided to all without charge and all the code was available for anyone to view and use. These open-source options included WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and more. With each of these platforms, people were able to use this software to build their websites and choose to host their website with whichever provider that they wanted to host with. 

This open-source approach was likely one of the reasons for this increase in popularity and use by so many people around the world. One effect of this high level of adoption was that many developers specialised in building websites that would specifically utilise these platforms. This resulted in there being many different choices for businesses should they want to create something more customised and require a web developer. 

For the first time ever, business owners were able to get a website set up and maintain them without spending thousands of dollars. Not only that, but these platforms evolved to allow even more complicated functionality, primarily through allowing developers to create plugins that could be installed into their platforms. These plugins allowed users to add extra functionality into their websites with just a few clicks and little technical know-how, extending the capabilities beyond what came with these platforms out-of-the-box.

With these plugins, what started as a simple blog or three-page website for a business could evolve into an eCommerce store, an internet forum, or simple social media website for a small social group or sporting association. Almost any functionality that one can imagine could be added through the use of plugins developed by one of the many developers around the world. This shouldn’t come as much of a shock, as currently there are over 455 million websites using WordPress alone! That’s a big potential market for a developer to reach should their new plugin become popular!

However, even with these platforms being much simpler than the alternative of building a website from scratch, in some cases they still require some general IT knowledge to operate. Due to this, in recent years a new trend has caught on – which is the emergence and growing adoption of hosted “site builder” platforms. 

Site Builders – The difference between open-source and proprietary approaches

New platforms such as Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify are quickly becoming more and well known by businesses the world over – the reason for this is pretty simple, their platforms allow business owners to build websites themselves by an even easier interface than those that came with the CMS platforms that came before them. These platforms have even started offering more advanced features out of the box, such as eCommerce facilities, which (as the name suggests) is what Shopify is specifically designed for. 

These platforms aim to make those first steps into the online world simple for entrepreneurs and small businesses alike. The way they do this is by focusing primarily on the user interface and user experience (UI/UX) of their software, to enable people to build websites using a visual drag-and-drop style interface. This approach allows their users to see exactly what their website will look like as they add elements to their website – being able to move things around by just dragging them to the area they would like them to display. However, these hosted site-builder platforms also come at a cost, which unfortunately most people don’t realise they’re paying until it’s too late. 

With their useability first approach, the companies behind these platforms invest heavily in creating systems that are easy-to-use, which require little to no expertise at all when creating a website. Due to this heavy investment though, most if not all of these commonly known site builders have chosen to instead keep their code confidential and keep full proprietary control over it. 

What this results in is a situation in which websites developed using their software can’t be moved to another provider’s servers, as to do so would mean that the code itself would need to be able to move to that new server with it. This means that once a company chooses to use one of these proprietary platforms, they can no longer move to another provider without rebuilding their entire website from scratch. Unfortunately, this is something that most people don’t know ahead of time, only discovering it once they’re already in the position of trying to move away from these solutions.

Due to this drawback, we cannot recommend to any of our clients to use these platforms - as to do so would drastically limit their choice of provider down the track as their business and requirements grow. Instead, other options are available to get the advantages of drag-and-drop style website builders, whilst also avoiding the downside of being locked to a single provider - these options come in the form of “site builder” plugins and themes.

Open-source Site Builders – All of that functionality without being “locked in” to your provider

Even with the downsides associated with those platforms, one thing is clear – they’ve made great strides towards better useability and many improvements in how website owners can both create and manage their websites. It’s for this reason that many other developers took note and started creating their own competing offerings. 

The main development on this front was the emergence of “site builder” plugins and themes – these addons, which can be added into exiting CMS platforms like WordPress, add the ability for their users to build their websites with a similar drag-and-drop interface. Users are able to add various components, drag them to where they would like them to appear, and then customise them as needed. This includes image galleries, sliders, testimonials, expandable accordion sections, and much more – all of which are able to be added and adjusted with ease.

Not only do these addons provide the same type of experience as other more restrictive options, but due to being built for these common open-source platforms, they are also built to integrate with many other plugins that are available. This includes the most popular eCommerce plugin WooCommerce; membership plugins like MemberPress; sales funnel plugins like WPFunnels and WooFunnels; and much more. Not only that, but integrations with external services are also available such as: integrating with email marketing services like MailChimp, ActiveCampaign, and Campaign Monitor; integrating with external video hosting services like YouTube and Vimeo; as well as integrating with CRMs such as Salesforce and FluentCRM.

With this leap in useability, suddenly these open-source offerings can offer the same ease-of-use and flexibility that come with other more closed and proprietary systems, whilst at the same time not requiring their users to sacrifice their future options. It’s for this reason that we recommend this option to any of our customers that are looking to build new websites – as it gives them the freedom to host their websites with whichever provider they want to deal with, as well as the ability to transfer the website without needing to rebuild it from scratch.

In the future we'll be putting out an article on how to build a website using these tools, however for now we'll just mention our usual go-to recommendations for which site-builders we think you should use. The most well-known and widely praised site builders for WordPress are called Divi and Elementor - both are good options for improving its usability and making it simple to build a website. 

Have any questions about building a website for your business?

If you are looking to find out more about building a website or what’s involved, reach out to us on 1300 769 972 (Option #1) or via email at sales@micron21.com.

We’re happy to answer any questions you have and get you started on the right foot!