| Feature or issue | Wordpress | Lumnar Swift |
|---|---|---|
| Cutting edge tech | WP plugins and features focus on a more conservative set of features, and any cutting-edge tech aspect needs a more or less stable plugin that is not always fully compatible with the rest of the features. For example, wp does not work well on latest php version. | At the moment of implementation, we integrate and optimize the site for the latest tech trends and cutting edge features, such as http 3 protocol, CDN content delivery, latest php and mysql versions, etc. All this is optimized at the core and not given as an add-on feature. While WP is for the masses, LS is for the leading niche. |
| Open source code | Plugins and themese found in WP are open source, this means anyone anywhere can have a look at their code and spot vulnerabilities. This is why if you don't update eveything weekly, you risk getting infected and serve malicious content on your server without even knowing. | Our sources are not public, but we do provide full source code to the customer, so they can manage maintenance and development themselves if they require to do this. |
| Incompatibilities between plugins | On the WP market, each plugin is done by someone else, and may or may not be compatible with the theme. If your website functionality depends on a plugin that is no longer developed, you will get stuck and need to change a lot of things to replace that functionality | We also support plugins, but all our sources are coherent and done by us, either by me directly, or by long term collaborators. Everything in this platform is designed to work well with everything else. |
| Consumed resources | Due to the nature of the WP architecture, up to 20-30 times more files need to be loaded per request, for showing a single wordpress page. The wordpress platform is designed with the end-user in mind, but this comes at a terrible performance cost. This cost translates to much slower load times, and less maximum visitors possible on a website. | Lumnar Swift is designed with the developer in mind, and the end user to have just the things he needs to operate the site. Many things that do not require customization by the end user are not wasting resources because they are hard-coded during the customization/setup process |
| Micro optimizations | WP plugin or theme developers do not care how many resources their code consumes. WP design standards force coders to follow coding standards that are not performance oriented, because they need to focus on creating a platform where may different developer can contribute. Performance issues are then handled via cache plugins and other partial solutions. | We do not have this sort of limitations, since Lumnar Swift is not designed to be developed by lots of different people. Everything is in one place, under one design logic. The code is optimized for top performance, because we know that if one thing is not fast, the entire site looks slow, and its nobody else to blame for that. |
| Performance comparison |
We compared two pages with identical content, on WP and LS (realestate page with medium-heavy content load) Load time: 2.407 seconds | Avg memory: 138724KB. | Peak usage: 138Mb More consumed resources mean slower load speeds and less customers served in realtime. |
These numbers are achieved on our optimized hosting (at a competitive market price) Load time: 0.03 seconds | Avg memory: 522KB. | Peak usage: 0.52Mb Less consumed reasources mean much faster load speeds and a lot more customers on same hosting plan. |
| Image delivery and consumed storage space | Big problem with WP regarding storage space is that it stores all versions of a picture, and loads hundreds of 3rd party libraries. A medium realestate site can take anywhere between 10Gb to 40Gb due to this. Huge websites like this are difficult to back up periodically, and a nightmare to investigate in case of issues. | We store images on a 3rd-party service (cloudflare), to optimize space but also maximize load speed. Images no longer consume server bandwidth, but are delivered directly from the CDN, distributed allover the world. An equivalent wordpress site that takes ~20Gb space, consumes just under 150Mb on Lumnar Swift. Small storage space means possibility to backup things more often and cheaper. |
| Security concerns | Wordpress is a very secure website, however it is also the easiest to hack because you can not control sources and who codes them. Cleaning an infested wordpress site is difficult, and there are specialized tools designed specifically to infest wordpress sites and obfuscate their sources, making the task even harder. | Lumnar Swift prioritizes security by implementing industry-leading standards and utilizing the latest, most secure versions of PHP and Apache. A much smaller code base ensures much easier security reviews, and less risk of vulnerabilities. Nothing online is unhackable, however he never had a single case of hacking or malicious code injection on this platform so far. |
| Cache and delivery techniques | There are countless cache plugins available for wordpress, paid and free. They all adopts a single cache philosophy, making a static copy of the page. | We do things differently. Since actual speed tests show that running php does not consume any significant load time, and it is the database that slow things down, we cache just the database queries, and only code segments that require this. Like this we can achieve sub-second load times |
| Multiple languages | If you are serious about multi-language content on a WP site, you have only 2 plugin options, each with its well known performance and compatibility issues. Wp has severe design issues when it comes to multiple languages, and most plugins have severe performance issues or are simply not compatible with content in multiple languages | We designed multi-language functionality from ground up, to be part of how the platform operates, and managed to minimize its impact on performace. You may have as many languages as you want, and on top of this, you have integrated auto-translate features in admin |
| AI powered features | Some wp plugins have integrated AI functionality, but there is no way to customize them to your needs. | We are crazy about AI. We can integrate AI features the way the customer needs. From self-writing articles, to auto translated language fields, or ai-image analysis. This is all part of the initial setup and base price! |
| Developer friendly | Wordpress is very user friendly, and allows all of the customizations to be done from the admin interface, but this is not always a good thing. However if you need custom functionality, you need to pay big money for someone to create and maintain a custom wp plugin. | Lumnar Swift is designed to be friendly to the developer first of all, because the reality is that all major changes and setups should be done by a developer not a secretary. People that operate the website should not be the same with the people that develop the website, so we made things simple for the operators, and clear for the developers. This results in faster maintenance response times, that translate in cheaper maintainance |
| Custom integrations | Good luck finding someone that will do a custom integration between wordpress and a CRM or internal database or proprietary management platform. | Because we are not limited by any design reuirements, developing custom features and integrations on LS is as easy as developing any other features, and is charged at the same hourly rate. |
| No hidden costs | WP is cheap to setup, but on the long run (first year) is alrady more expensive to maintain and develop. Good plugins need monthly payment to run, and customizations depend on the availability of those plugin creators or freelancers that work at various prices and charge more mid-project. You do have free options, but like with anything free, its a gamble. | Lumnar Swift has a high initial setup price, but this price covers everything needed for the site to run and be stable as discussed with the customer. Additional development time is charged at a fixed hourly rate, and only needed for later additional features or changes that are not discussed from the start. You can know exactly how much the site will cost, and how much it will cost to run it. |
| Required feauture | Wordpress | Lumnar Swift |
|---|---|---|
| Uncertain development direction | When you are not sure what you want, its better to stick to a huge plugin market and community that WP offers. There is a plugin for everything, and most are free. | We design features for specific client needs, and development of a custome feature or plugin, costs in general more than buying a ready made plugin on the WP marketplace (about 3 to 5 times more expensive) |
| Dynamic and continuously changing dev team | Its easier to look for work force for a specific platform, and offers are more diverse. | A new developer needs time to adapt to a new platform, and while we really try to keep things clear and simple for any developer, some devs might be scared of working on vanilla php projects. |
| You need to copletely manage the website yourself | Most, if not all, of wordpress can be managed via an admin interface, by anyone that worked with wordpress before. While this is not the wisest choice, some prefer to do things this way, mostly due to budget concerns. | We offer maintenance starting at 50eur/mo. Its not free. |
| Theme variety | Its super easy in wordpress to change the look of the site, and switch to an other theme. Themese are fairly cheap too. | In our pursue to achieve maximum performance, we opted not to use themese. A wesbite design change, means a lot more work (time and cost), and can not be achieved by a simple click of a button like in wordpress. |
| Budget limitations | Wordpress can run with free plugins and self-maintenance. You do pay more on wp optimized hosting, but you can skip any other payments. | Lumnar Swift needs monthly payment for the image delivery system (about 15$/mo) and if you opted for other external services, you need to pay them (such as ai features, mailing services, etc). Roughly the run costs of a site can amount from 15-75$/mo, depending on what services you will use. All this is paid directly to those service providers, we do not resell. (optionally we can strip out external paid services and bring the platform to zero costs, but if you run a serious business you should really consider these small costs, for their added benefits) |
| Non-admin users | Wordpress does a great job at allowing outsiders to post content. Its in their design philosophy to handle multiple user rights the best way possible. | Our platform in the default price range, is not designed to allow access to outside content providers or users, without presenting a possible risc to allow malicious users to abuse the site. If your project requires non-admin users, and can not use WP for that purpose, we can discuss further customizations and provide a custom version tailored on your use needs, but priced differently. |
| E-commerce webs | WooCommerce for WP is a good option for small to medium shops. It has lots of options and ready-made payment integrations. | A good e-commerce website needs constant adjustments and various payment integrations, it is an entirely different ecosystem. Lumnar Swift is not designed for this kind of activity, because we focused more on other aspects and needs, since e-commerce solutions are already well covered by other providers. |