Intro
In this blog post, we are comparing Newsifier to WordPress. We compare both CMS on several characteristics like the ease of use, SEO, features, and cost to see which CMS is best suitable for news publishers.
What is the main difference between Newsifier and WordPress?
The main difference between Newsifier and WordPress is that WordPress is a general CMS that is a one-size-fits-all solution for business websites, E-commerce companies, bloggers, etc. Newsifier is a CMS that is 100% specialized for professional news publishers who want to grow their news business while not worrying about performance, hosting, SEO, and security updates.So if you are looking to start a business website, a smaller blog or an online store, you should definitely go for WordPress (or another CMS). But are you looking for a CMS made explicitly for online publishers and constantly updated with performance, security, and SEO updates? Then you should consider Newsifier.
90% of our clients made the switch from WordPress to Newsifier, and no one switched back.
So what are the reasons online publishers switch from Wordpress to Newsifier?
We have asked our clients what the main reasons were to switch from WordPress to Newsifier. They told us the following.
- They were fed up with having to update the code and plugins themselves constantly or by a third party developer.
- Their WordPress website was hacked, and they worried a lot about future security issues.
- A high monthly cost of paying a developer to optimize their WordPress website every month while not getting the best performance out of the website because of having to use external plugins for everything.
- Their website could not handle extreme significant traffic peaks around big news events.
- They felt WordPress interface was hard to use and ‘messy’ because of a lot of features in there they were not using.
What are others saying about Wordpress?
To answer this question, we can insert in Google the words “Why is WordPress so” Google then presents us the most asked questions people inserted in Google. So the most asked questions are why WordPress is so slow, hard to use, complicated, and expensive.
Incomplete system means installing a lot of plugins and a slow and insecure website
To understand why WordPress is so hard to use and so slow, we have to look at the history of WordPress and its architecture. WordPress started in 2003 and is written in PHP. Since then, it got many updates, but the core of the system remained the same.
As many different clients (E-commerce, Business websites, Bloggers) started to use WordPress, everybody had different needs. So WordPress started their famous plugin store, where everybody can download plugins for their WordPress websites.
But there are some big problems with using WordPress plugins:
-Installing a lot of plugins slow down your website.
-When you update your WordPress website to a newer version, there is a big chance that a lot of plugins stop working.
-Everybody can make a WordPress plugin, and WordPress is not responsible for maintaining these plugins as the plugins were made by individuals or companies who often stop updating their plugins after a while, which causes performance and security issues for your website.
-The more WordPress plugins you use, the more vulnerable to security issues and hacks your website becomes.
So how is Newsifier different from Wordpress?
Automatic weekly updates vs Slower manual updates
The news industry is ever-changing at an increasingly fast pace. It is crucial to continuously update your software to stay on top of these changes and keep ahead of your competitors.
As Google is constantly updating its algorithms, it can be hard to keep your website technically up to date with Google's latest requirements, for example. At Newsifier, we update our system at least once a week to keep up the performance, keep up with changes in SEO requirements, improve security and add new features.
When your website runs on WordPress, updates are available less frequently, and you have to update your website yourself manually.
Integrated news SEO features vs SEO plugins
Optimized on-site SEO is of vital importance for news websites that want to grow their organic traffic. WordPress does not have any built-in SEO tools (you have to rely on third-party plugins for this), whereas Newsifier has several built-in SEO features tailored for news websites.
Our system alsp allows publishers to connect their Google Search Console with their website, which gives you incredibly powerful SEO insights by combining search data from Google itself with data from your website. It is like you have a paid SEO consultant and your disposal 24/7.
Native mobile apps come with Newsifier
If you use WordPress as a CMS and want to offer mobile apps to your readers, you need to hire an expensive external mobile app developer to build native mobile apps that connect with your CMS. After these mobile apps have been created, you have to keep paying developers costs to constantly update your mobile apps to meet the newest requirements from Apple and Google.
Newsifier comes with a mobile app solution that gives you two native mobile apps (iOS & Android) that have your design and are continuously updated. This way you can offer high-quality mobile apps to your readers to download from the app stores and don’t have to worry about updating your mobile apps.
Security and peace of mind included
As WordPress is so popular for all kinds of websites, it is also really popular with hackers. Constant manual security updates are needed to keep hackers out. A lot of installed plugins also mean a lot of possible vulnerabilities for hackers to take advantage of. Research shows that most hacked WordPress websites were hacked by hackers taking advantage of plugins of third parties. Also the fact that the Wordpress code is public makes it much more sensitive to hacks.
At Newsifier, we don't use plugins, all features are natively integrated into the system, and we take care of all needed security updates to keep your website safe.
High performance hosting
Optimal hosting is essential for the security of your website and to make sure your website is always fast and keeps online when facing big traffic peaks.
When running your website on WordPress, you have to take care of the hosting and all the DevOps work of upgrading your servers and running security updates yourself. All of this can be a lot of hassle and cause security issues when you don’t upgrade your servers on time.
With Newsifier, we take care of high-performance globally distributed hosting, upgrade regularly and scale with your traffic. This means zero hassle and a lightning-fast website that makes your visitors happy and optimizes SEO traffic.Facebook like community features vs Comment plugins
Facebook like community features vs Comment plugins
When you have a business website or an online store, there is not much need to build up a big community and offer the possibility for visitors to leave comments, etc. But for news websites building up a big community can be essential for its success.
A big community means a lot of direct recurring traffic, which is a more reliable traffic source than traffic from Google or Facebook, and Instagram, which can decrease dramatically with an algorithm update.
But also for making money with your news website, building up a community of registered and active users is vital. Especially now that Google Chrome announced that they will block third-party cookies in their browser by 2023. So it will become harder for online publishers to monetize their visitors if they don't register at your website.
Newsifier has a lot of built-in features to build up a community on your website:
-There is an advanced comment feature that stimulates our users to leave comments and can process 220 comments per second at peak traffic moments.
-Users and visitors can give likes to each other comments. Just as on Facebook or Instagram, users receive an instant notification on the website or in their email (they can select this option in their profile) if someone likes their comment or replies to their comment.
-There is a community page available with leaderboards based on site activity like number of comments and number of likes
-There are extensive profile pages within Newsifier’s websites where users can change their preferences but can also enrich their profile page with information like their favorite football player, favorite phone, etc.
There is a built-in forum feature with which site owners can start a forum on their website, create and close topics, etc.
All of these features help to get more registered visitors, which will significantly increase recurring traffic and revenue.
WordPress has no built-in community features. You would have to use external plugins for this, which don’t offer all the community features Newsifier offers.
Use the power of data-driven publishing to grow your business
In today’s online publishing world, data-driven publishing is essential for news publishers who want to grow their companies and stay ahead of the competition.
The fastest-growing news publishers are the ones that have made data an integral part of their workflow.
That is why Newsifier offers actionable data insights so you can make confident decisions based on data rather than just a gut feeling. Like the possibility to perform A/B tests on your headlines and see extensive data on your best-performing articles and authors.
WordPress does not have these data features, and there are also no plugins that offer A/B headline testing or the same data insights.
Rich editor makes publishing fast and easy
We have used all our experience in professional publishing combined with all the feedback from our clients to build the perfect editor for professional news publishers. With our block editor, publishing becomes easy and smooth. You can add related articles, social posts, and even polls with literally one click.
By offering a world-class editor, we make sure editors can easily publish rich and SEO-optimized articles and can publish faster than the competition in the case of breaking news events.
The editor of WordPress is not optimized for news websites. You have to add plugins to add related articles automatically, and to add social posts you have to use special embed codes.
So what is the difference in cost between Newsifier and Wordpress?
You might wonder what the difference in cost between WordPress and Newsifier is? Below we are comparing the monthly cost of both Newsifier and Wordpress.
Why people hesitate to change from Wordpress to Newsifier (and why they shouldn't)
We'll end this comparison by looking at the reasons why some publishers are hesitant to switch from WordPress to Newsifier and why they shouldn't ;-).
Question: "I am scared to be locked in when I use Newsifier."
Solution: We want to bind our clients by giving them the best CMS and service to build their news website, not by locking them into our system. That is why we explicitly state in all contracts that we are obliged to help our clients if they want to transfer their website’s content from Newsifier to another CMS.
Question:" I am afraid I will pay more than with WordPress"
Solution: As hosting comes included with Newsifier and you will spend less money buying plugins and hiring external developers and SEO consultants, you will end up paying a lot less per month.
Question: "I don't want to run the risk of losing all my SEO traffic when I move to Newsifier."
Solution: We are experts in SEO migrations and have made our own redirect manager within Newsifier, so there are no dead links or strange redirects created when clients move from WordPress to Newsifier. So new clients who move to Newsifier never see a significant drop in their SEO traffic, but almost all clients see steady growth from the 2nd month they have moved to Newsifier, and Google starts to pick up the changes.
Conclusion
To conclude. WordPress is definitely interesting for business websites, E-commerce, or smaller publisher for which SEO, monetization, or building a community is not important. Especially if you don't mind doing your websites' software and security updates yourself or hiring an external developer for this, but if you are a more ambitious publisher who wants to grow his business with a CMS specialized for news publishers, you should definitely consider using Newsifier.
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