Website builders and store platforms, from Wix to Tilda

A website builder is a service where pages are put together from ready-made blocks and the site lives on the platform. Shopify adds a store.

Why there are more than WordPress

WordPress asks you to look after hosting, updates and security. Many people want the opposite: a site in an evening and nothing to maintain. Two kinds of product answer that, and both sit beside WordPress rather than replacing it:

• website builders, such as Wix, Squarespace and Webflow, where you assemble pages from blocks in the browser and the company hosts the result;
• store platforms, such as Shopify, where the catalog, the checkout, the payments and the orders come as one service.

A third relative is WordPress.com, the hosted version of WordPress: the same editor and ecosystem, with the hosting and much of the upkeep done for you (more in the WordPress lesson).

Russia grew its own versions of both, and they are good examples of the same trade-offs: Tilda is a block builder, and 1C-Bitrix is a paid CMS and store system that links to the accounting program 1C. We’ll meet them below, as the Russian market’s story.

Builders: a site made of blocks

A website builder works in the browser. You pick ready-made blocks (a cover, a menu, text, a form, a gallery) and stack them into a page. The blocks adapt to a phone screen on their own, and the design looks good by default. For an unusual layout there is a free-form canvas where text, pictures, buttons and forms are dragged into place: Webflow is built around this idea, and Tilda calls its canvas Zero Block. Wix and Squarespace started in the mid 2000s as simple do-it-yourself tools. Webflow (2013) is aimed at designers who want something close to hand-written CSS without writing it.

What you get: a site done in an evening, forms, analytics and payments built in, and no servers, updates or break-ins to worry about. The price of that comfort is its limits:

• the site lives on the platform and on your subscription: it works while you pay;
• code export depends on the builder and the plan. As of this writing, Webflow can export a site’s code on paid plans, though its form handling and CMS content then need replacing. Squarespace exports text content in a WordPress-format file. Wix has no real export of a finished site. These rules change, so read the current help pages before you commit;
• you can’t add server logic of your own (a customer account, an unusual calculation), only what the platform offers or a marketplace app adds;
• your data, including visitors’ inquiries, passes through the platform, and as the site’s owner you answer for it to your visitors (see privacy by design).

The Russian case: Tilda

Tilda Publishing is the Russian market’s best known block builder. It was created by the designer Nikita Obukhov and runs on a free plan plus paid subscriptions. The plans differ in the number of pages, the ability to export code and access to an API. It has the same trade-offs as the Western builders: fast launch and good defaults, against living on the platform. Its forms and payments connect to Russian services such as Yandex Metrica (an analytics counter, see part 14) and local payment systems.

Store platforms: Shopify, and 1C-Bitrix in Russia

A store has needs a brochure site doesn’t: a catalog, stock levels, a cart, a checkout, payments, taxes, shipping and orders. Shopify (founded in Canada in 2006) sells all of that as one service for a monthly plan, with an app store for extras and a fee on payments unless you use its own payment service. A small store can be running in a day. The trade-off is the same as with builders: your store, checkout and customer data live on the platform. You can export products and customers, but the theme and the apps’ settings have to be rebuilt elsewhere.

1C-Bitrix: Site Manager is the Russian counterpart in spirit, but a different kind of product: a paid CMS from the Russian company Bitrix, on which companies build corporate sites, online stores and portals. It comes with forms, a promotion (SEO) module, mailings and web analytics. Its main advantage is that it can exchange data with 1C, the accounting software that most Russian businesses use: the catalog, prices, stock and orders move between the books and the site in a ready format, with nothing typed twice. For a store with hundreds or thousands of products, that is the deciding argument. Western stores solve the same problem with accounting apps and APIs.

Don’t confuse it with Bitrix24, a separate product of the same company, a CRM and workspace for a team. When someone says “Bitrix”, ask which one.

The price: the license is paid (there are editions for different jobs), and you need hosting and a developer who knows the system. The upkeep is yours too: like any popular self-hosted CMS, it has vulnerabilities, and outdated installations are a frequent target. The lesson on what WordPress really costs holds here as well.

Three paths side by side

Answer a few questions about your project and see how the answers rank the three paths. The diagram adds up points by simple rules, and shows the typical limits of the winner.

What to remember from the comparison:

• Who edits. An owner with no technical skills? A builder. A team with a developer? WordPress, or a store platform.
• A store. A small one fits all three; a big catalog with stock is a store platform’s job.
• Accounting software. If the books must sync with the site, look at a store platform (in Russia, 1C-Bitrix) or custom work.
• Logic of your own. If you need special functions, WordPress with plugins or code, not a builder.
• Budget. A builder is cheap to start and paid forever. A store platform costs a plan plus fees and apps. For WordPress the cost is in the upkeep.

Personal data in inquiries

Whatever you choose, visitors’ inquiries are personal data, and you answer for them. The questions are always the same. Where is the data stored: on the platform’s servers (a builder), on your host (WordPress, Bitrix)? In which country are those servers, and what are the platform’s data processing terms? Where does it go next: an email, a spreadsheet, a CRM, each with its own responsibilities? Next to the form you need a privacy notice and, where the law asks for it, a separate consent.

Which law applies depends on your visitors, not on your platform. For visitors in the European Union and the United Kingdom, the main rules are the GDPR and the UK GDPR. In the United States there is no single federal privacy law for this, but several states have their own, such as California’s CCPA as amended by the CPRA. Russia’s Federal Law 152-FZ is the stricter case: it requires the personal data of Russian citizens to be recorded and stored first on servers in Russia, which is why Russian site owners always ask a platform where its servers are. The rules are laid out in the lesson on privacy by design and, in full, in part 15.

This is general information, not legal advice. Look for the answers in the platform’s help pages and its data processing terms, and ask a lawyer or your data protection authority, such as the European Data Protection Board’s national contact points or the California Privacy Protection Agency, rather than guessing.

A year’s cost, and the way out

Count the cost of owning for a year from four lines: the platform or license, hosting, the domain, and support and changes. For a builder, hosting is in the plan; for WordPress it is yours; for a self-hosted system such as Bitrix there is a license on top. And think about the way out at once: what can you carry away if you have to leave? The text and pictures you always have. The code, the forms, the store and the inquiries can’t always be taken out, and you should find that out in advance, not when the platform changes its terms.

Practice

You are in the era of 2010, and WordPress now has alternatives. You choose a platform for your project like a modern client. Fill in the decision table: whether each platform fits, what you chose and why (name the main action and your services), where the inquiries are kept, which page personal data requires, what it costs a year and how you could leave.

What was wrong before

In 2010 the choice was simpler and riskier. Many businesses ordered a site from a studio on the studio’s own system: nice and quick, but when the studio closed or raised its price, the site couldn’t be taken away. Builders and open source CMSs cure this, provided you asked in advance how to leave.