Online Website - Have you ever wondered what are the differences between online platforms and websites? Are you confused about choosing the right solution for your business? We have prepared a suggestive imagination exercise to help you better understand how an online platform can help you and what advantages it can bring you in the long term compared to a website.

Imagine you're standing on a stage with a loudspeaker in your hand. Your Name Is X and you are a coach in a certain field, for example. The scene represents your site, how you manage to tell your story or share your knowledge. In the hall, in front of you are a crowd of people sitting on chairs listening to you.

At the entrance there is someone who notes all the participants of the event on a paper with a name, surname, e-mail address and no. phone. You can liken this person to the autoresponder on an online platform – think of him as a tool that automatically collects this data for you.

To get to your event, people were informed of its existence through your Facebook page, integrated on the website. Both autoresponder and social media are elements that transform a simple website into an online platform through which you make your business known much faster.

Online Website

Online platform vs. website

A website is a collection of web pages interlinked and organized into a certain structure. For example, a personal blog can have several pages – contact, about us, etc. If you need to create a blog, e-commerce platform or freelancer profile, a simple website is enough and will meet all your requirements.

Websites comprise a static collection of pages, which is why the type of content they host is static. And you can choose from various technical solutions. For example, you can opt for a one pager website, or a classic multi page site.

The online platform, on the other hand, is a dynamic system, a collection of code written in one or more specific programming languages, used to generate dynamic web pages.

Simply put, an online platform contains all the resources you need to create a website, but a website does not have the resources to create a platform.

Differences behind an Online Website

Incidentally, this is also the main difference between the two concepts – the possibilities that an online platform offers users are much greater than those that a website offers (applications, autoresponder, integration with social media, increased interactivity, etc.)

The online platform involves to a significant extent the relationship and interaction with users and is the creator of communities. Some examples of popular online platforms are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Blogspot, WordPress, etc.

WordPress, for example, is the most popular open-source platform used for creating presentation sites, online stores, blogs, and others. On our blog you can find more information on how to use it – from this point of view you can check the WordPress guide.
Maintenance process

Maintenance of an Online Website

And in terms of maintenance and costs there are some significant differences between a website and an online platform – the platform costs more than a website and requires constant updates and a team of web designers to manage it. A presentation site, on the other hand, is less expensive and can also be managed by one person.

If you are interested in the topic of maintenance, find out that it directly influences the evolution of a website. Organic indexing, site performance, indexing issues, and more can only be managed effectively if a monthly maintenance is followed. Of course, depending on the platform used these activities may vary. Because it's different to providing WordPress maintenance than PrestaShop maintenance-and this is a simple example.