"WordPress alternatives" is four different questions wearing one search box, and the lists that rank for it answer with the same six names regardless: Wix, Squarespace, Webflow, Ghost, Shopify, Framer. Useful once you know which of the four you are asking, so sort yourself first.
- A blog with subscribers. Ghost was built for exactly this, and it will be better at it than anything else here.
- A storefront. Shopify. Commerce is the product, not a plugin.
- A site somebody else has to edit visually, forever. A builder: Wix, Squarespace, Webflow.
- Ten pages, a contact form, and no plugins. That one does not need a CMS at all, and it is what this page is about.
One prompt: try the site without a CMS
If the fourth line is you, paste this into Claude or ChatGPT.
Build this as a static site: index.html plus one style.css, separate .html
files for the other pages, no build step, no framework, no client-side router.
Pages: [list them, for example home, about, services, contact].
What it is: [one sentence]. Who it is for: [one sentence]. The one action:
[what you want them to do].
Style: [two words], and specifically oversized headline, high contrast, one
accent colour, generous whitespace, system fonts. Use my real copy, no
placeholder text.Then time it against setting up WordPress: hosting, install, theme, the plugins you always end up adding, the updates you will be doing next month. Yours is the number that matters. The prompts that publish the result and collect a client's remarks are in AI website prompts.
What WordPress.com's plans actually gate
Worth knowing before you decide between the hosted and the self-hosted route, read at their pricing page on 2026-09-08:
- The plans are Free, Personal, Premium, Business, Commerce and Enterprise.
- Quoting them: "Plugin installation is available on every paid WordPress.com plan — Personal, Premium, Business, and Commerce." So the plugin ecosystem, which is the main reason people choose WordPress, is not on the free plan.
- "All annual and multi-year paid plans include a free custom domain for the first year." Monthly plans do not.
- And the one people discover late: "Free sites display WordPress.com ads to visitors. Upgrade to Personal to turn them off." The free plan also comes with 1 GB of storage and basic 7-day stats.
The self-hosted route has none of those gates and adds the obvious cost instead: you own the hosting, the updates, the backups and the security. That trade is the real WordPress decision, and it has nothing to do with which alternative you pick.
If you need what WordPress is for, this is not us
- You need plugins. There is no plugin system here at all.
- You need the parts a CMS is made of: WordPress runs on a server with a database behind it, and that is what makes an admin panel, user accounts and dynamic pages possible. Birta serves static files, so it has none of the three.
- You need several people editing with different permissions. Birta has project sharing, not editorial roles.
- You need a content model: post types, taxonomies, a hundred articles with categories. What we publish is files.
- You need a store, memberships or gated content. Taking payments on your own site is not something Birta does yet.
- You need comments on your posts. Ours are review remarks on a version, for the people building the page, not a public comment thread.
What replaces it when the answer is "ten pages"
- Publish from the same conversation that wrote the site, and get back that version's own permanent address.
- Versions and rollback, the closest thing here to a backup, with no plugin.
- No updates. Static files have no admin panel to break into.
- A review link that needs no account. Send it to the client, they pin remarks to the element, your agent reads the numbered threads and fixes them in the same draft. It cannot reply or resolve.
- A declared lead form, with submissions in the panel plus an email digest roughly fifteen minutes after the first.
Free tier: up to 50 projects at 25 MB each, 10 form submissions per project per month, the badge stays on, and a custom domain needs Solo or Pro.
The honest alternatives
| Instead of WordPress | What it is for | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| Ghost | Publishing with paid subscriptions | Purpose-built for the blog-with-members case, and better at it than a general CMS |
| Wix | Everything in one visual suite | Store, bookings, apps; the broadest swap |
| Squarespace | Design-led sites and simple stores | Its export is partial: text and images out, design does not travel |
| Webflow | Designer control with a real CMS | Closest to WordPress in capability, steepest to learn |
| Shopify | Selling as the primary job | If commerce matters most, start here rather than adding it later |
| Framer | Marketing sites with motion | Fast for a designer, thin as a CMS |
| Google Sites | Internal or simple public pages, free | Free custom domain, and Google documents no agent path into it |
| Your agent plus Birta | Ten pages and a form, no plugins, no updates | No content model, no plugin ecosystem. That is the trade |
If two rows fit, pick by who maintains it in a year. WordPress's real cost is rarely the setup.
Publish a site with nothing to keep updated
Static pages, versions with rollback, and a review link that needs no account.