Wagtail CMS vs WordPress CMS – which to choose?
You need a content management system (CMS) for your business… okay, great! Now you’ve got the tougher decision of Wagtail CMS vs WordPress CMS – which to choose? In this piece, we’ll break down each CMS by how easy they are to use, customise, secure and rank with. Hopefully, by the end, you’ll have a clear leaning one way or the other. (And don’t worry, we can help you make the website or application of your dreams on either platform.)
Ease of use
Let’s start with how easy they are to use. WordPress probably wins here. It’s known for user-friendly admin, quick setup and extensive plugins that most of your team will probably already know how to use. Wagtail offers a clean editor experience, but it is more developer-centric with customisations via Python/Django that your people (if they need to use it) will probably need some training on.
Customisation
Next, let’s think about customisation. WordPress offers a good amount of flexibility via its themes and plugins, but it can become bloated. At the core, all you’re doing is reskinning WordPress and tweaking what’s available out of the box. On the other hand, Wagtail is cleaner, leaner and designed for custom content models using StreamField. Here, most everything is bespoke, designed to be exactly what you need with no filler by experts like us. Just have a look at what that meant for the Angling Trust’s funding application process here.
Security
Both options are fairly secure as standard, but WordPress has a large plugin ecosystem that can slow down sites or introduce vulnerabilities. That being said, you can keep these risks at bay by having an agency like ours maintain your website properly. We can make sure everything is updated, patched and the plugin stack is kept trimmed. With Wagtail, you don’t need to do as much maintenance, however. It’s leaner by design and uses Django’s security standards, so there are fewer open doors and less inherent risk.
SEO
Lastly, we want to look at SERP. WordPress has a strong SEO plugin ecosystem with providers like Yoast, but it relies on third parties. That’s not a huge problem if that’s what your team knows and they’ll keep it up-to-date. Wagtail, on the other hand, is customisable SEO that requires a little more SEO skill, but you can build that into the content management workflow in more intuitive ways.
Who is WordPress better for?
We recommend WordPress for bloggers, small businesses and rapid-launch websites where you need a presence fast and want to do most of the management yourself. It’s great for internal teams who can manage it with little dev know-how and have generally smaller data environments.
Who is Wagtail better for?
Wagtail is needed for businesses like agencies, governments, universities and enterprise teams; places where you have dev skills you can tap into and are dealing with complex functions and big data. It’s also the recommended CMS if you need to adhere to more strict regulations and compliance standards around your security practices.
Want to use Wagtail or WordPress in your organisation? We can do either! Talk to us today about how we can support you.
