Back in 2009, I had a conversation with someone who was seriously considering building a website using Microsoft FrontPage. Even then, the idea made my skin crawl. Now, nearly two decades later, the comparison is not even worth debating, but the underlying question people were really asking still matters: what is the best way to build a website if you are not a developer?
A Quick History Lesson
Microsoft FrontPage was a desktop application for building static HTML websites. It cost around $100, required installation on your computer, and produced code that web developers loved to hate. Microsoft discontinued FrontPage in 2003 and replaced it with Expression Web, which itself was eventually discontinued in 2012. If you are still running a FrontPage site in 2026, you are working with technology that has been dead for over two decades.
WordPress launched in 2003 as a simple blogging platform and has since grown into the most widely used content management system on the planet, powering over 40% of all websites. It is free, open source, and backed by one of the largest developer communities in software.
Why WordPress Won
The reasons WordPress dominated are the same reasons it still dominates. It is web-based, so you can log in and manage your site from any device with an internet connection. You do not need to install software on your computer or worry about compatibility. If you hire someone to help with your site, they can log in from anywhere in the world.
WordPress is also free to use. You pay for hosting and your domain name, but the software itself costs nothing. Updates and security patches are released regularly, and most can be applied with a single click.
The plugin ecosystem is massive. Need an e-commerce store? WooCommerce. Need better SEO tools? Rank Math or Yoast. Need a contact form, a membership system, or a booking calendar? There is a plugin for that. This extensibility means WordPress can be as simple or as sophisticated as your business requires.
What About Modern Alternatives?
In 2026, the real question is not FrontPage versus WordPress. It is whether WordPress is still the right choice compared to newer options like Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, Shopify, or even Substack and Beehiiv for content-first businesses.
The answer depends on what you need. If you want maximum control, flexibility, and ownership of your content, WordPress remains the best option. If you want something simpler and do not mind trading some control for convenience, hosted platforms like Squarespace or Shopify are solid choices.
What I would not recommend in 2026 is building a static HTML site by hand using any desktop editor. The web has moved on. Content management systems handle the technical complexity so you can focus on your business.
The Bottom Line
If you are still on FrontPage or any static site builder, it is long past time to migrate. WordPress gives you a modern, maintainable, SEO-friendly foundation that can grow with your business. And if WordPress feels like too much, there are simpler options that are still light-years ahead of hand-coded HTML from a desktop application.
The tools have changed, but the principle has not: choose a platform that lets you focus on creating value for your audience instead of fighting with your technology.
WordPress is great for all sorts of small(ish) web sites including Internet Marketing type sites, whether or not you need the blog features. The product is under continuous development and the recently released version 2.7 is, to me, another step forward.
If you need a feature that it does not have there will probably be a free plugin for it. Whatever you want it to look like there will probably be a theme available free or at relatively low cost.
Clive
Hey Mark…this is my first visit to your blog and wow!!! Thanks so much for the comparison between the FrontPage and WordPress. Most of us at Arizona SEO work remotely, so WordPress is extremely convenient.
We’ll be checking back with you for more great info!!
I personally still have about 20 Frontpage based websites (If it ain’t broke don’t fix it). I do not develop anything new on Frontpage. I use Joomla and WordPress, both open source CMS. If there is any reason to NOT use frontpage, it’s not the cost. Lets assume it is free. The main reason is it is a tedious product to use in terms of SEO friendliness and getting your site indexed and listed in Social Bookmarking and the Blogshere.
WordPress plugins are available to help even the most novice of users create good looking sites that are SEO Friendly with little or no real knowledge of SEO in record time. Write your post, and fill in the blanks. Frontpage requires tedioius editing on each page to insert an appropriate header tag and description tag. And I’ve yet to see any Frontpage site that was even close to validating proper html. Work in Frontpage’s WYSIWYG editor and you get a ton of code bloat! Sure it’s a dead product, but Expression Web might as well be dead too. Microsoft really needs to grasp hold of the open source community and start supporting standards. If they don’t Google will keep pounding away at them until their market share makes it essential.
In summary, I concur, I can think of no good reason to start a website in Frontpage. And the proprietary web extensions (Frontpage Extensions), bungled code, hard to implement CSS, just make matters worse.
I am struggling with WordPress at the moment. It’s new to me. Like the last guy, I have something over 20 FrontPage websites. Thus, I don’t believe for 1 second that he uses FP. Nobody who has built a lot of sites with FP would ever talk about it like that. Folks who haven’t used it say stuff like that all the time. Actually the Frontpage Extensions make the product work as smoothly as silk and a pleasure to use. Waaaay more friendly than goofy FTP. In Frontpage, it’s one click and then sit back and see all the changes. Likewise, the WYSIWYG page builder is simplicity in itself using tables. You can do things in Frontpage in about 1/10th the time you can in Expressions Web with modernistic CSS. More, you can do whatever you can imagine. Unless you are a code genius you must use templates in WordPress, which means structurewise, most sites look like they were shot from the same gun. Only the text and pics change. And code bloat? So what??? Most of us build for high speed any more. Codebloat simply IS NOT an issue. And bungled code? Sure, you have to learn the uh ohs with Frontpage, but once you do, this is not a consideration. If your pages look great on all the browsers, what more in the world can you ask?
Frontpage is dead. Long live Frontpage. So, I am learning Expressions and I’m experimenting with WordPress. It’s more tough to get the music out of these two programs. But, they are the future. Tell you one thing though…If I had started out with WordPress years ago, I shudder to think what kind of problems I would have had porting massive websites over to continuing updates of WordPress, Joomla, etc. At least for the time being, Frontpage works just as well in 2009 as it did in 1998….the same pages.
Lastly, I will put my Frontpage SEO against anybody. My stuff GETS GREAT placement. Keep it simple and build for search engine approval, and it will come. No more complicated than that.
@Norm — thanks for your comments. Most of the discussion around software like this tends to be non-technical and emotional. If you are a killer front page developer, of course you love FrontPage. After all, it’s an excellent tool with lots of great features that people have used to make fantastic websites for years. If you are an open source software junkie, of course you love WordPress. After all, tons of people have embraced WordPress and is now the most popular way to get content on the Internet.
If you’ve got a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
As far as SEO is concerned, you can have terrible SEO results with either piece of software. SEO has a lot more to do with how people are linking to your content that does what the actual content itself. I would go so far as to say that you can get exactly the same results with a text editor that you can get with either FrontPage or WordPress, all other things being equal. What really counts are back links.
The real issus is that many people these days are trying to build blogs, and I can definitely tell you that an approach that uses a database to store content is much better for blogging than any approach that could be easily implemented under front page. Yes, I know you can add blogging like features and database capabilities to FrontPage webs, but is a total pain in the butt.
Thanks for your comments. I really am glad that you have had so much success with FrontPage. It was a super big deal in its time.
Regards,
Mark
Interesting conversation you guys are having here. I’m a big fan of CMS/Blog applications and encourage all of my clients to integrate a WordPress, Drupal or Joomla CMS platform. If optimized correctly, these can be very useful in drawing in traffic, link building, etc… 8)
Hello,
I saw your article with great interst. I am from Italy, Florence.
I manage my web site with Frontpage and this is going quite well.
But now I would like to create my own blog and I am in a dilemma !
What have I to do ? Do you think the best for me is to use WordPress ? Or there would be the possibility to manage also a blog with Frontpage ? I am not a professional but with Frontpage I was able to manage my web site but now I really would need an advice 🙂
If you re-conform me that I have to use WordPress for my new blog I will be more convinced towards this direction. Thanks ! Paola.
Paola – I definately recommend the free software at WordPress.org for all new websites unless you have a VERY specific reason for using something else.
Hi
I really like your article but the comments are way to complicated for me to understand. I have several websites which I build with a webbuilder from the hosting site, I’ve just discovered wordpress.com recently and must say that I love the way the sites look, how easy they are to work with.
Aly
I too have been using FrontPage for years and I do have about 20 websites I developed in FP. I do have Expression Web installed but haven’t used it yet as I’m trying to make time to teach myself EW, Dreamweaver, WordPress and DotNetNuke. So I could really use some expertise from those of you who use these development tools. While I’ve loved using FP for years, I recognize the need for my clients to be able to access their own site and upload pictures or update content. Yes, I know the biggest advantage would be for me to learn HTML so I don’t need an editor, but that’s probably a much bigger task than these more user-friendly development tools.
So my first question is, Can I easily incorporate a WordPress blog site into a FrontPage website?
And the second question is……of the programs I mentioned that I need to teach myself, I welcome your thoughts on the priority in which I should learn them?
I just stumbled upon this site while researching WordPress, so please excuse me if you’ve already covered this topic and I missed it. Thank you SO MUCH!
MZim
good posting.thanks
I have enjoyed Front Page for many years and have found it so easy to navigate. Word Press on the other hand, I have had nothing but issues with trying to use. I have a couple of Word Press sites that I am almost in fear of making changes to due to fixing is a nightmare if something goes wrong. I am not referring to just making a post but adding widgets and advanced links etc.
Front Page and now Expression Web4 is just so much easier to navigate and fix when you make an error.
I have used wordpress for over 5 years. I program in PHP and know CSS and HTML. Just now I am trying editors like BlueGriffon and Kompozer. In all honestly, I like them much better than WordPress and I like the idea of static websites over dynamic ones due to security advantages and less server load which translates into less cost. The only problem I see with these programs is the link management. If you plan on having pages with links to other related pages you may have to update every page with the new link which is created when you create a new page. This is only problem I have. Perhpas I will simply put a comment in the place where I want to put links and then use a niffty self created PHP script to update the links section. Anyway, only time will tell how good these editors are compared to WordPress. Might be end up being one of my many fads I usually have!