Which Cannabis Website Platform is Best? Comparing WordPress, Squarespace, Magento & Others
Every business needs a website, but which platform is right for your cannabis website?
If you are any business, no matter what industry you are in, you need a website. There are no two ways about it, in the modern business landscape a website is not optional. We can agree that you need one, but the real question is: what platform should you build your cannabis brand’s website on?
The reality is, this question is like asking which is a better vehicle, a compact car or a two ton diesel truck. The only logical answer is another question. What are you needing it for?
If you need a vehicle for commuting to and from work, then the compact car is the better choice. If you need to haul building materials or tow a large trailer, the big diesel truck would be the better option.
This is the same answer for which platform is best for your cannabis website: it depends on what you need it to do. Lets start with the easiest platform for non-developers to get started on and go from there.
Wix, Weebly, Squarespace
Cheap and Easy for Beginners – Good For Early Stage Cannabis Startup Websites
While there are differences between these three platforms, these differences are subtle. For a cannabis startup that doesn’t have funds to hire a web developer, these platforms can be a good option. Benefits include:
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Free to get started (or have very cheap monthly plans)
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A variety of basic templates that are somewhat customizable
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Works well if you need to start building a presence on the web.
If you decide to start with one of these platforms, at least pay for the plan that allows you to use your own domain name (yourbusiness.com). Most of the free plans on Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace will give you a subdomain (i.e. yourbusiness.wix.com).
This means that all the traffic finding your site will technically be going to your platforms’ website (wix.com), which won’t help you build any domain authority- a major factor for SEO rankings and online visibility. The plans that allow you to use your own domain name will usually cost you less than $20 a month.
For More Information on Optimizing your Cannabis Website, Check Out “SEO 101 for Cannabis Business Growth” and “8 Important SEO Tips for Cannabis Businesses”
Even with your own domain, these website builders don’t provide as much SEO benefit, because they aren’t as customizable as other platforms like WordPress. While they do have a variety of templates, these can be constraining. This means that your website will end up looking like others built on the same website platform.
Nonetheless, they are good starting points for cannabis businesses that have limited funding for a new website. All three are easy to use, provide a decent level of security, and include website hosting.
WordPress, Drupal, Joomla
Good for small to medium size businesses who have funds to hire a developer to build their cannabis website. Also ideal for marijuana dispensary websites that need moderate functionality.
These three platforms are all all free and open source. They also have lots of templates/plugins for customizing your cannabis website’s design. Unlike Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace though, you do need to have a website host.
WordPress
WordPress is by far our favorite platform. The majority of cannabis websites that we design get built on WordPress for two key reasons:
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Availability of themes and extensions.
Wordpress is one of the most popular website platforms in the world. Because of this popularity, there are lots of both free and paid themes and plugins avialable. These increase functionality and help you build a website that looks unique. -
Ease of use.
This platform is easy for non-technical people to be comfortable with. This means clients can write blog articles and make minor content changes once a site goes live.
So what is the major downside to WordPress? If you are using lots of plugins to expand functionality, it can be rather resource intensive. This is why it is so important to keep your site fast with a service like Cloudflare or a Content Delivery Network such as Max CDN.
Joomla
Joomla, while similar to WordPress, is definitely not as easy to use for non-developers. There can be a bit of a learning curve with the platform, so hiring a developer will be necessary. That said, Joomla can be a good platform to create a social network or eCommerce cannabis website.
A major downside is that unlike WordPress, Joomla has less SEO functionality out of the box. If you are familiar with Joomla websites you can fix some of the SEO shortfalls, but it can take a lot of effort. Joomla is also less popular than WordPress or Drupal, meaning fewer themes and plugins available.
Want to know how to increase your cannabis website traffic? Our article “Marijuana SEO: Grow Website Traffic to Boost Search Engine Rankings” can help.
Drupal
Drupal is a very lightweight platform, and like WordPress and Joomla is free and open source. One of the biggest upsides to Drupal is the platform’s focus on performance. Websites built on Drupal tend to load faster out of the box than sites built on other platforms. Some of the more notable websites built on Drupal are The Weather Channel and Whitehouse.gov.
The two major drawbacks to Drupal are:
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More difficult to use.
The Drupal platform is far more complex than WordPress or Joomla. That means you will need to hire a developer with Drupal experience to build your website. It also means that when you want changes made it will be more difficult to go in and do it on your own. -
Less availability of themes and extensions.
Drupal is the second most popular CMS platform, but only 8% of websites built on a CMS platform are Drupal sites. That’s compared to the 30% built on WordPress. This means there are fewer themes and extensions available for Drupal.
In short: All three of these platforms are free, but you need to have your own hosting. They also can be more complicated for a novice to build a website on than some other platforms, so hire a developer.
Magento
Ideal for large eCommerce cannabis websites that sell a lot of items with lots of options. Would be good for a multi-state marijuana lifestyle brand or cannabis distribution website.
Magento is an eCommerce platform created for companies that sell lots of products. It especially shines with products that have many variations. Large companies like Coca-Cola, Land Rover and Ford built their websites on Magento.
It does a great job of handling SEO issues that can occur on other eCommerce platforms. While the Magento community edition is free, it is by no means an easy (or cheap) platform to build a website on.
Magento is complex. VERY complex. This complexity means that you will need to hire a professional developer to get your site built. It also means that it will be more complicated to use when you finally get handed the digital reins, so be prepared.
There are many themes and extensions available for Magento, but most cost quite a bit of money. Most premium themes cost $100 or more, and a premium extension can cost you $300-$1,000.
The platform allows you to display versions of a website based on a users location or language. This feature makes it ideal for companies looking to market and sell their products in more than one state. Using this feature you could display market specific website versions in different regions.
There isn’t one perfect website platform
Choosing the right platform for your cannabis website is no simple task. Such a choice should consider many more factors than talked about here. This should at least give you an idea of where to start, though.
If you are starting out and don’t have the funds to pay a developer, Wix or Squarespace can be a short-term option. If you are more established with a modest budget, the flexibility of WordPress is a better choice. If you have a big budget and sell a large variety of items with lots of options, a Magento website might be right for you.
Try reaching out to an experienced development team. Discuss your situation with them and talk about what you need from your website. A professional developer can help you choose the platform that will be a good fit for your needs.
Mac Jackman
Posted at 16:17h, 26 JulyWe use wordpress with woocommerce
Scott Alan
Posted at 14:48h, 02 AugustWe use WordPress for the majority of our website builds as well. It fits the needs of most of our clients’ needs and the flexible functionality of the platform lends itself well to a variety of uses. It also is quite easy and intuitive for our clients to use, which is always a big plus. How do you like the WordPress/Woocommerce setup, is it working well for your business?
Nelly
Posted at 03:01h, 14 SeptemberThanks for your detailed post. Unfortunately, many customers do not know how to choose the right company and what questions to ask. I hope your article will help them make right choose.
Christopher
Posted at 15:31h, 22 FebruaryI have always like going with WordPress on my own when working with any of my websites and that is my personal favourite the other ones are ones I find hard to use. Just wanted to let you know I tried Joomla before it wasn’t good.
Scott Alan
Posted at 17:23h, 02 MarchThe vast majority of the sites we create are on WordPress as well and it is by far my favorite CMS platforms. We have found that it is the easiest for our customers to use on their own post-build, and with all the plugins available you can make a website that can effectively perform a wide variety of functions effectively. In my opinion it is really the Swiss Army Knife of website platforms!
Jamie
Posted at 21:09h, 27 Septembersquarespace uses stripe or paypal to process payments. Neither of these allow CBD purchases.
Scott Alan
Posted at 17:25h, 01 OctoberHey Jamie,
You are absolutely right, and bring up a solid point!
Squarespace can be a fairly quick and relatively cheap option if you are just getting off the ground and trying to start building up your domain authority.
There are certainly a few downsides to Squarespace, though, one of which is that Squarespace only allows for Stripe and PayPal as payment gateways. It does not support additional payment gateway integrations like Authorize.net or PMI.
If you are trying to sell CBD products online you will want a variety of payment gateway options depending on what system your payment processor uses.
For online CBD retailers I would definitely recommend setting up a more flexible and scalable system, like a WordPress website running WooCommerce.
WooCommerce supports a number of additional payment gateway extensions that are used by payment processors, some of whom do allow CBD sales.
Autumn Carter
Posted at 09:33h, 17 OctoberMy web site sells CBD products and Word Press is shutting me down, I dont know what host to go to. It does not have THC so Im am not certain of the issue
Scott Alan
Posted at 15:35h, 17 OctoberHi Autumn,
I am sorry to hear that WordPress hosting is shutting you down, but there is at least some good news!
Because WordPress is a CMS platform separate from the WordPress hosting (unlike Squarespace) you can migrate your WordPress website from WordPress hosting to another host that doesn’t have an issue with you selling CBD products online. I would suggest migrating your WordPress website over to Stablehost for hosting.
Stablehost is one of the hosting companies that we tend to recommend to our customers because they are relatively cheap, they typically don’t overload their server nodes as much as some of the other hosting companies, and their customer support is both responsive and quite knowledgeable.
We have also had a number of our CBD clients use them for hosting and as far as I am aware they have not run into any issues selling their products online while hosting their site with them.
I hope this helps, and wish you the best!
Rick Jordans
Posted at 06:59h, 26 JuneI’ll go for wordpress for its flexibility and resource availability in terms of tutorials and online help.