New website in 2025? 5 questions you must answer before choosing a platform
Choosing the platform for your company's new website can feel like navigating through a jungle. You've heard of WordPress, seen ads for Wix and Squarespace, and maybe caught some buzz around more modern tools like Webflow and Framer. All promise good results, but which platform actually gives you what you need to grow in 2025?
The truth is that the choice is less about the platform's feature list and more about your company's needs, ambitions, and resources.
Instead of a dry technical review, let's turn it on its head. Here are five key questions you should ask yourself. Your answers will likely point you in the direction of the platform that is best suited for you.
Question 1: How important is unique design and branding?
Your website is your digital face to the world. Should it be a simple information board, or a living expression of your brand?
Wix & Squarespace: Simple, but limited. These platforms are built on templates. It's undoubtedly the fastest way to a beautiful and functional site. The downside is that you will always operate within the template's boundaries. For a company that really wants to stand out, it can feel limiting.
Conclusion: A solid choice for simple sites, startups, or industries where a clean, standardized appearance is sufficient.
WordPress: Flexible, but often chaotic. With a giant ecosystem of themes and "page builders" (such as Elementor/Divi), the flexibility is theoretically limitless. In practice, it can become a complicated mix of a theme and various plugins that do not always work optimally together. Achieving a genuinely tailored and stable design usually requires an experienced developer.
Conclusion: Still relevant for those who need a specific feature only available as a plugin and have technical resources.
Webflow & Framer: Full creative control. Both these platforms allow professional designers and agencies to start with a blank canvas and build exactly what they envision, without writing code. These are tools for creating unique, visually rich web experiences. Webflow has a somewhat steeper learning curve, appealing to those who think like developers. Framer, with its design tool background, has an interface that often feels more immediate and efficient for those with a visual background.
Conclusion: The best choices for businesses that view design as a central part of their branding strategy.
Question 2: How much time and money are you willing to spend on technical maintenance?
A website is not a one-time project; it needs upkeep. The question is whether you want to take on the responsibility yourself, or whether you want the platform to handle it for you.
WordPress: The big time thief. This is WordPress's most well-known drawback. You are responsible for hosting, security, performance, and constant updates of core files, the theme, and all plugins. It's manageable, but it requires time and discipline. For a busy small business owner, this can become a source of stress and unforeseen costs.
Conclusion: Best suited for those with time, technical interest, or a budget for a continuous expensive maintenance agreement \cough* that's why so many other marketing agencies sell WordPress sites *cough**
Wix, Squarespace, Webflow & Framer: The worry-free model. All of these are "all-in-one" platforms (SaaS). This means that hosting, security (SSL), maintenance, and updates are included in a fixed monthly price. The platform takes care of all the technical aspects, allowing you to focus on content and business. This is a significant advantage for most companies.
Conclusion: The most sensible choice for anyone who values their own time and desires predictable operating costs.
Question 3: How crucial is speed and performance?
In 2025, a slow website is a bad investment. Load time affects everything from customer experience and conversion rates to ranking in Google.
Wix & Squarespace: The performance is generally good for simple pages, but you have limited control to further optimize.
WordPress: The performance depends entirely on the effort. With a lightweight theme, quality hosting, and proper optimization, it can be fast. But with a heavy theme and many plugins, it becomes a laggard.
Webflow & Framer: Built for speed. Both platforms are constructed on modern architecture and deliver pages via global CDNs (Content Delivery Networks). This ensures very high performance right out of the box. Both Webflow and Framer are at the absolute top here, providing a solid foundation for good SEO and user experience.
Conclusion: For companies that rely on organic traffic and want to deliver a first-class user experience, Webflow and Framer are the safest choices.
Question 4: Who will update the content on the page?
A static website is a dead website. Who will post news, adjust service pages, or change a headline? Usability for the one managing the site is critical.
WordPress: The classic admin panel is powerful but can feel unintuitive and overwhelming for non-technical users.
Wix & Squarespace: Highly user-friendly for simple changes. Designed for the "do-it-yourself" market.
Webflow: Offers a good "Editor Mode" for clients, allowing them to change text and images directly on the page. Very functional, but major design changes require an expert in the more complex "Designer Mode".
Framer: Offers similar and very intuitive "inline" editing. Because the whole tool is built more like a visual design program, many find that the threshold for making even simple content updates is very low.
Question 5: What is the true cost over time?
Don't be blinded by the starting price. The real cost is the sum of subscriptions, plugins, developer hours, and your own time over several years.
WordPress: The software itself is free, but the operation is not. Hosting, premium themes, premium plugins, and not least unforeseen developer costs, make WordPress an option with potentially high and unpredictable costs. And as mentioned earlier; many marketing agencies sell this because it looks cheap at the outset, but they can set up expensive maintenance agreements over time.
Wix & Squarespace: Predictable, low prices. You get a solid but simpler solution.
Webflow & Framer: Higher monthly price, but the price reflects an "all-inclusive" service in the premium segment. You pay for a solution with top performance and security, which reduces the need for external help.
Conclusion: From a sea of choices to a strategic choice
Every platform has its place and represents different philosophies:
WordPress is the open and flexible (perhaps slightly older) workhorse that requires technical oversight.
Wix & Squarespace are the accessible and user-friendly tools to get started quickly.
Webflow is the industry standard for complex, professional sites built without code.
Framer represents the newest wave, with a strong focus on design efficiency and performance.
Our journey in wud mirrors this development. We have extensive experience building on all these platforms. In a constantly evolving world, it is absolutely critical for Norwegian companies in 2025 to have a website that is visually strong, lightning-fast, worry-free, and that converts.
To deliver that combination most effectively, we have phased out WordPress from our provider list. As one of only four certified Framer Experts in Norway, we have seen enormous effects for our customers in the new era of websites. We believe this provides our clients with the best foundation for digital growth.
Ready for a website built for the future, not the past?
2026