When it comes to building a website with less coding effort, the two most preferred ways are always discussed, which are website builders and website templates. Both of them are easy, convenient, and have their unique advantages, but sometimes website templates have a slight edge over website builders. Before discussing reasons to choose website templates over website builders, let’s understand their basics.
Website Templates
Website templates are pre-designed website layouts that generally come equipped with user-side (front-end) development, helping you reduce your website design & development efforts. Businesses can perform necessary server-side development and make customizations to suit specific business demands. Most commonly, web templates come with pre-built elements such as headers, footers, and content blocks (containing text or media) that can be modified easily. Such templates are commonly built using HTML and they can be purchased from online marketplaces.
Website Builders
Website builders are online platforms that mostly provide a drag-and-drop interface. This type of interface lets businesses visually construct websites without needing extensive coding language. Some popular website builder examples are Wix, Squarespace, and Weebly.
10 Reasons to Choose Website Templates
1. Better Customization Abilities
Both website builders and website templates are customizable, but customization options with website builders are limited. Where you can customize a few components, sections, or elements inside a website builder, you can entirely customize a website template. You can tweak individual components, and adjust colors, fonts, and layouts that can help you match your brand identity.
Imagine building an online website builder where you have limited color and font options. That may prevent you from keeping a unique identity for your website, which is not the case with website templates. Now imagine building a website with an HTML website template, where you can literally customize everything and give your website a unique look and feel.
2. Code Access
Website builders may not offer the source code underlying the website, but simple website templates do. This source code gives you the flexibility to make advanced modifications or integrate custom features. Again, the source code increases customization options to offer your website a unique look, especially from competitors, which is not the case with website builders.
3. Cost-Effective
Some good website builders may look affordable initially, but it may not be the same in the long term. If you own a website built using a website builder and you’re planning to add functionality to it, you will need to find compatible plugins for the same. Some of them are free of cost, some are paid.
Keeping the cost of website builders aside, such plugins may not accurately match your requirements. You may need to compromise on some options, which is not the case with website templates. The source code offered by websites lets you add any functionality you want with the expected accuracy, allowing you to build a feature-rich website without compromises.
4. SEO-Friendly
Most website templates are optimized for popular search engines. You can look for responsive website templates if you want to get noticed in Google’s eyes. Also, website templates are considered ideal for including best SEO practices. This can be also done on websites with website builders, but they might not be as accurate as custom website templates.
5. Faster Development
Now, this is subjective, but we think that web development with website templates is faster than with online web builders. As they come with a pre-designed website layout, you can focus on developing the back end, adding the content and customizing the design.
On the other hand, building a website using website builders may look easy, but you will be developing it from scratch, adding the brainstorming part for everything, which may consume a lot of time. You can also get some pre-built themes that are compatible with such builders, but you may need to settle with limited customizations. That’s why, we consider that website templates offer faster web development compared to website builders.
6. Scalability
Website templates are designed to be scalable with your business. They can flawlessly grow with your business. You can add more custom pages, features, or content whenever you wish to upgrade your website. Website builders may not offer this level of flexibility as you may need to settle with available page and feature options until your chosen theme or platform gets upgraded, even when you wish to upgrade your website.
7. Professional Looks
Just like development times, looks are subjective. However, in this case, we also think that website templates help you give a professional look to your website. Many templates are created by experienced and professional designers, ensuring a polished and professional appearance for your website. This can help you gain credibility and impress first-time visitors.
8. Support
Reputable and reliable website template providers believe in guiding customers in using such templates with proper readme files or any other similar solution. However, there is a comparatively larger community of HTML developers to help you out with any query related to HTML website templates.
However, such communities are also present for website builders. So, community support in both cases cannot be doubted. So, website templates take a slight edge in support as they are based on widely popular technologies like HTML, React, etc.
9. Web Hosting
Website builders generally come with a dedicated web hosting provider, while website templates give you the freedom to choose the best web hosting provider that matches your budget and requirements.
10. Long-Term Value
Investing in a website builder may be good for the short term, but investing in a high-quality website template can provide long-term value. However, the cost of using both of them is nearly the same, but a website template can serve as a foundation for your long-lasting online presence, helping you easily upgrade your website, achieve your business goals, and attract new customers.
Conclusion
While website builders offer a convenient way to create a basic website, templates often provide greater customization, flexibility, and control. If you’re fine with limited customizations, you can go with website builders, but if you want more flexibility and control, website templates can be the best code-free solution for your business.
