Building a Social Network depends on your technical skills, budget and the amount of time you have to spend on its development, to say the least.
You have a choice of deciding which tools you would use. A no or low code tool like WordPress is your best bet. But you can also opt for a solution like Tribe which is a software used as a service (SaaS). Tribe offers great developer experience but requires custom-coding, technical skills and know-how. This, in turn, warrants bigger budgets and longer time to come to fruition.
Biggest Differentiating Factor
The key difference between a website builder like WordPress and a dedicated software builder like Tribe is the functionality and degree of coding required.
WordPress started as a blog publishing tool. After years, and the addition of hundreds of plugins and thousands of themes later. The basic functionality was modified and support was extended to website building.
Whereas software like Tribe was developed solely to fulfil the purpose of the building, running and scaling different type of marketplaces. The beneficial factor with a SaaS solution is that they come with all the necessary functionality out of the box according to your needs.
This difference might not yet help you choose between these two platforms. But it does let you know what to expect from both these platforms.
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Questions to Ask Yourself Before you choose
- How much time can you spend on building?
- How skilled are you technically?
- Your initial budget range?
- What are your audience type (B2B, B2C, P2P) and marketplace type (rental or service)?
- What type of business model do you follow?
- Where do you see your business go ( Scalability)?
Now let’s talk about the biggest benefits and drawbacks for both solutions. Bearing in mind all the answers to the above questions.
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Benefits and Limitations of WordPress as a Social Network.
Benefits
- Free and Cheaper (Plugins and Themes are available in both paid and free format).
- Easy set-up.
- Huge Library of Themes to choose from.
- Features for B2C products out-of-the-box.
- Supports a tremendous amount of models and payment gateways.
- Full and Free access to the entire codebase.
- Detailed FAQ and Discussion Forums for support.
- Easily Scalable.
Drawbacks
- Requires investment upfront for paid themes and plugins (if chosen)
- No dedicated support.
- Requires research, installation, configuration and maintenance by yourself.
Benefits and Limitations of Tribe
Benefits
- Very fast to launch.
- Maintenance, Support and Upgrades handled by the company.
- No technical skills required.
- Dedicated Support.
Drawbacks
- Requires Heavy investment upfront.
- No themes or plugins.
- Less B2C products marketplace.
- Fewer payment gateways support.
- Scalability requires more investments.
To Conclude
WordPress is a self-hosted, open-source solution. Providing a wider array of functionality and freedoms in terms of scalability. With less or no investment upfront depending on your needs. Lack of dedicated support is compensated via the Discussion panels, FAQ’s and various forums on WordPress and Internet.
However, setting up a website via WordPress requires getting a hosting service, continuous maintenance and self- research which is all provided by Tribe.
Now that we have a brief discussion on the above topic. We leave you to decide what’s best for your needs.
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