In today's digital age, building a website is a vital necessity for businesses. Selecting the right tools for this purpose can be a challenge because of all the options available. Below, we share a guide to the tools we've found most effective at Contra Studio, along with our recommendations based on the needs and scale of your project.
WordPress
WordPress, despite sometimes being considered as an outdated option, is still one of the most used tools for creating websites. This tool allows the construction of any type of website from scratch and has a variety of tools and plugins that can be implemented to improve and expand the capabilities of the site. Although there are more modern and advanced platforms, WordPress remains a safe bet for many industries because of its wide range of functionality and ease of installation on many types of servers. Ideally, we recommend WordPress for corporate websites, large informational websites, and websites that need to be managed by large teams.
Webflow
Webflow has gained a lot of popularity among designers and developers for the ease it provides to create and publish websites quickly and efficiently. It offers control over design and functionality without any creative limits or considerable sacrifices in design or interactions (which can happen with other non-code tools). At Contra Studio we have used Webflow in a variety of projects, from creating the website and different landing pages for Lumos, a San Francisco startup, to generating different templates for Breakfast Club, an event, restaurant and hotel company located in Medellín. Although its CMS and e-commerce functionalities may be more limited compared to other tools, Webflow is ideal for small-scale projects, the creation of websites and landing pages for testing ideas, and in general, for any project that needs to be developed in a few days.
Shopify.
When it comes to e-commerce, Shopify is our number one choice. This tool frees us to focus on the design and development of the different product pages, while it manages logistics, products, inventory, orders, etc. However, the cost can be an obstacle if the sales volume does not justify the monthly fee. Despite this, we recommend Shopify for small businesses, startups, or any type of e-commerce looking to improve their sales and have a smooth process for creating a website for their online store.
These are our main tools when it comes to creating and publishing websites, but in the last few months we have started experimenting with different solutions that allow us a little more flexibility and improve our clients' experience when it comes to managing the website. Here are a couple of tools that we have used in some specific projects and that we also highly recommend.
Prismic
Prismic has established itself as our main alternative to WordPress. It offers the ability to handle programming languages other than PHP and configure more robust projects. However, Prismic may require a team with a solid knowledge in development and is not as intuitive to configure and load the website for people without programming skills, but the end result is worth it, as the user interface is very friendly when uploading and editing content. We recommend it for the creation of modern digital projects with specific development needs and where there are teams that can provide constant support to the technological requirements of the company.
Framer
Framer started as a prototyping tool, but has evolved into a full-featured website creation platform. Although it may be limited in some of its features, Framer is an excellent choice for people who are looking to experiment with the latest tools on the market and need creative freedom to create simple websites or personal portfolios.
Bluehost
Choosing a server can be a challenge, as there are many options on the market that can overwhelm anyone. In this case our recommendation is very simple, and is to choose a Shared Hosting, in our case we use Bluehost as we find it very easy to configure and very intuitive for our customers. For more complex projects or with specific needs in user traffic, security, among others, we recommend acquiring a VPS (Virtual Private Server). However, in this case, we recommend that you seek the advice of an expert to choose the right product for your needs.
A tip: most of these services offer promotions, however these apply for the first year, but at the end of this period of time we are charged the full fee, which usually tends to be much higher than the promotional price (the difference is sometimes hundreds of dollars), so it is important to take this into account.
Namecheap
Purchasing a domain is a simpler process. We recommend Namecheap for its ease of use and always suggest purchasing an SSL certificate along with the domain to assure users that your website is secure.
Last but not least, having an expert who can make all the adjustments and integrations between the domain and the server is crucial to have a functional and secure website.
We hope you found this tour of some of the tools we use in the studio useful. Remember that the success of your online presence starts with choosing the right tools. If you need more advice on these topics, do not hesitate to contact us at our email hi@studiocontra.co