How to convince my client to switch to Processwire from Wordpress

[nickngqs]

Are they any stuffs that I can say to make them switch over from Wordpress. Almost every clients I encountered, seems to just assume Wordpress = CMS, CMS = Wordpress. At the very least in the simple informational sites (market).

I'm trying to build a deck to convince them to use Processwire over Wordpress. If anyone got any statistics, that would be better. Since most clients won't understand the terminologies etc, it would be great to have visual stats to make them more inclined for the switch.

For example, security wise or speed wise, is Processwire statistically better than Wordpress? Feel free to suggest any advice you guys might have when persuading your clients for the switch  First post!

[szabesz]

Hi, I do not think there are solid statistics to showcase but we have good blog posts you might use to pick the info you can use to persuade clients:

• https://processwire.com/blog/posts/building-canongate/
• https://processwire.com/blog/posts/cms-critic-powered-by-processwire-again-case-study/
• https://processwire.com/blog/posts/new-2.8-version-current-projects-and-pw-usage/
• https://processwire.com/blog/posts/roadmap-2017/
• etc...  

Also, you can find good case studies here:

• https://processwire.com/talk/forum/9-showcase/
• https://processwire.com/talk/forum/16-case-studies/
• https://weekly.pw/ (site of the week)

Hope this helps.

Edited August 22, 2017 by szabesz
typo

[Mike Rockett]

There are a couple of things that can shine out above all else. One of these things is cost-reduction. I've often said to my clients that using ProcessWire over WordPress is farmore cost efficient due to its simple flexibility. Naturally, this depends on the client and their needs, but, at the end of the day, putting together a site with PW is easier and far more straight-forward, and this needs to be communicated to the client.

Unfortunately, I don't use WordPress at all, and so I don't have any statistics for you. What you really need to do is take all the known considerations and put them into context. Present it as a document, and you can win the client over.

I'm surprised the WP=CMS mentality still exists...

[Tom.]

1 hour ago, nickngqs said:

Are they any stuffs that I can say to make them switch over from Wordpress. Almost every clients I encountered, seems to just assume Wordpress = CMS, CMS = Wordpress. At the very least in the simple informational sites (market).

I'm trying to build a deck to convince them to use Processwire over Wordpress. If anyone got any statistics, that would be better. Since most clients won't understand the terminologies etc, it would be great to have visual stats to make them more inclined for the switch.

For example, security wise or speed wise, is Processwire statistically better than Wordpress? Feel free to suggest any advice you guys might have when persuading your clients for the switch  First post!

Hello, 

We have all our clients on ProcessWire. Even EIZO, a huge monitor manufacturer. Statistics won't make them switch, or any other thing. The only person that can make them switch is you.

So what does the client really want? Just to update their website? That can be done faster and easier with ProcessWire. This is how I usually sell ProcessWire in. 
 

Quote

WordPress is a great piece of software. It's very good at doing what it was built for, a blog. However, if you want something more than just a blog. We have to start hacking around with WordPress is to achieve what you want. Usually this means longer development times and higher costs, it also means the product isn't the best that it could be. 

We find that if you want a website that you can manage all your content quickly and easily, then ProcessWire is the way to go. ProcessWire is built for managing content and not built for managing a blog. What is also beneficial to using ProcessWire is security, there hasn't been a document hack yet. However, WordPress is consistently needing updates to remain secure. This can break your website which will come at a cost to fix.

Personally I would argue that ProcessWire is for professional websites, while WordPress is more for hobbyists. We have plenty of really happy clients using ProcessWire and have found it the easiest system they have ever worked with.

 

[dragan]

1 hour ago, Mike Rockett said:

I'm surprised the WP=CMS mentality still exists...

Well, considering the numbers, it's actually not a big surprise...

Quote

 

WORDPRESS POWERS 28% OF THE INTERNET

 

bottom of https://wpisnotwp.com/

And like with most things, people who have never seen / used anything else, they can't even imagine that there's so many other options out there.

Another reason is perhaps that those people in charge of choosing a CMS are hardly ever the people who have to use the system. The people who have to use a CMS on a daily basis are almost never asked about their opinion. Mostly, it's just a tiny part of their job, which they loathe. It's probably dull copy-and-paste-from-Word, 9 times out of 10.

[bernhard]

Hi @nickngqs and welcome to the forum

It totally depends on your client and his needs and you are the only one that can know that

if you want some stats: https://blog.sucuri.net/2017/01/hacked-website-report-2016q3.html

but that may help you or may not... 

Quote

As we’ve mentioned before, this does not imply these platforms are more or less secure than others. Often the compromises analyzed had little, if anything, to do with the core of the CMS application itself, but more with improper deployment, configuration, and overall maintenance by the webmasters.

 

[nickngqs]

Thanks everyone for your advice, it's extremely helpful.  Will update if I managed to convince my next client for the switch

[SamC]

On 27/08/2017 at 3:49 PM, nickngqs said:

Thanks everyone for your advice, it's extremely helpful.  Will update if I managed to convince my next client for the switch

So what happened @nickngqs I'm really interested in this. I need to find a way to convince people too.

[Kiwi Chris]

I've encountered the same problem with many people specifying that any bids for a web site must be Wordpress.

I come from a database development background, mostly doing Microsoft Access desktop apps, but also some web development, and even made my own CMS way back when Wordpress was only a dream waiting to happen.

I'd describe Processwire as being data driven, whereas Wordpress is content driven. By that I mean that Wordpress revolves around posts and pages, whereas although Processwire calls them Pages, Processwire pages are really totally different beasts to Wordpress pages, and are really a less nerdy name for what are really objects, which can have any properties you like, and may not even be 'pages' in the publishing sense at all.

If you want a blog using an existing theme, Wordpress is the way to go.

If you want a web site that has to deal with pretty much any data structures you want to throw at it, Processwire is the way to go. Wordpress needs a plugin to do custom field types, and plugins to do lots of other things, and those plugins don't necessarily peacefully coexist or have consistent UIs.

With Processwire, you start off bare-bones but can build anything you like quickly and efficiently.

The development process for me is far more like building something with Microsoft Access, in that you design you data structures (fields, and I believe with Profields, you can actually do tables, but I haven't had enough work to justify that yet) and then add them to templates which are like forms or reports in Access.

Site profiles are a bit like predefined Access templates for specific tasks. Perhaps it would be good to work towards a wider range of free and premium site templates available, but rather than modelling them on Wordpress themes, model them on Access templates, then people will see that Processwire is more of an app platform than just a web site CMS. Processwire can't really have 'themes' in the Wordpress sense, because those rely on assumptions about what data structures you have, whereas with Processwire, a site profile has to define data structures as well as presentation, as Processwire doesn't have any inherent data structures like posts or pages in a Wordpress sense.

The reason Access was, and still is so wildly popular amongst a small group of developers is that it is the quickest way to develop a desktop front end for pretty much any kind of database app you might want to build, even if it has some inherent issues that IT departments don't always like.

There are a few things I wish Processwire did differently, eg I'd like referential integrity at the database level, and I'd like to be able to use other database systems other than mySQL/MariaDB, (eg PostgreSQL, SQL Server) , but the reality is it's the most efficient tool I've found for quickly defining and presenting any kind of data on the web.

With Wordpress, structured data is an afterthought, with Processwire it's core.

[dotnetic]

I am working on an article right now, that covers this topic, it´s called "Why ProcessWire is the best choice for your website (not always, but in most cases)". I hope I can publish it in the next few days. But first it is only available in german and will be translated afterwards (via DeepL and some manual corrections). I will post a link here in the forums, when the article is up.

[dotnetic]

The article in German is up. Please see this post for details