Rebel Insights

7 Reasons Why RebelMouse Is Better Than WordPress in 2024

RebelMouse logo with red headband holding pride flag points to title

Understand why RebelMouse is the best CMS in 2024.

WordPress is one of the most well-known and widely used traditional CMS options. Their open-source technology makes them popular among a large ecosystem of developers looking to build customized web experiences. But their decentralized model means that each site has to be upgraded and iterated on independently to have the new features, security, and performance needed to keep up with the digital industry.

WordPress is better suited to small bloggers and low-traffic or value sites with simpler needs. This means that if your site is integral to your business, running on WordPress requires an enormous amount of time and investment for temporary tech resources to cobble together a site using plugins you can't trust and solutions you can't maintain. The end result still doesn't give your content a fighting chance to truly win SEO, maximize social reach, and see meaningful and sustainable traffic growth.

RebelMouse is built to power high-value, enterprise websites. The content lifecycle is fluid in nature, and users are only going to become more picky about consuming content where they feel the most comfortable. Keeping tabs on the modern user is a tireless job, and most publishing technologies like WordPress cannot keep up with the rapid speed of the industry.

Here are SEVEN reasons why RebelMouse is a better choice than WordPress in 2023


1. RebelMouse Is a Cloud-Based, Multi-Tenant Platform. Keeping Your Site Modern Is Part of Our SLA.

RebelMouse was built from the ground up to keep high-value sites modern in a cost-effective way. Keeping a WordPress site up to the standards that Google, Facebook, and consumers expect costs millions in talent alone. Every Core Web Vitals update, every format like AMP, and every feature like signed exchanges that Google releases requires custom development. WordPress is built so that each individual instance stands alone, which means that each instance also gets old, tired, and degrades alone.

RebelMouse’s service-level agreement (SLA) isn’t just about super high availability, redundancy, and speed — we keep all of our clients modern through our next-generation cloud-based architecture as well. You can customize RebelMouse completely to match your enterprise needs while keeping things modern. This is fundamentally why RebelMouse was started, to keep high-value sites on the open web modern, fast, and built to compete for attention from the big tech players.

2. RebelMouse Is the Most Secure CMS on the Web

RebelMouse is a centralized CMS, unlike other common web solutions like WordPress and Drupal. Since WordPress follows a decentralized model, it requires every platform update to be completed independently. This means that — of the millions of versions of WordPress that are currently live on the internet — each update has to be implemented one by one.

Operating your business on a decentralized model is a big security risk. Every time there’s a security threat, the core developers at WordPress must deploy patches in the form of product updates. From there, it’s up to the managing developers of each individual site to deploy and configure these updates to avoid breaking custom code and plugins. And breakage happens a lot.

flow chart of RebelMouse\u2019s databases and security offerings

RebelMouse delivers 99.99% uptime with maximum performance, stability, and security.

Since RebelMouse operates on a centralized model, every update on our platform is deployed at once, and sometimes multiple times a day. Usually our clients never experience an interruption. We protect the data of our clients and make sure their sites are not only risk-free, but also operating at continuous peak performance.

But this doesn’t mean that our platform is closed off by any means. We use the languages of the open web, and any developer can easily learn our platform to create high-quality work without the burden of relying on unstable and fragmented WordPress plugins and updates.

Click here to read more about our immense security safeguards.

3. RebelMouse Outperforms WordPress on Core Web Vitals

The key to unlocking user retention lies completely in site performance. Currently, WordPresss publishers are trying to build optimized websites that translate easily across devices and platforms, but fail to deliver an experience that checks all their boxes and prioritizes their readers. It takes less than a second of delayed load time to turn away a user. This is why Google has made page speed a top ranking factor on search, and shepherded the entire open web's newfound prioritization of site performance.

Google cemented its seriousness about performance with its announcement of the page experience update in 2020, which encompassed its Core Web Vitals measurements in Google Search Console. Core Web Vitals are three specific metrics that Google uses to determine a site's overall usability. Click here to learn more about this make-or-break update.

In short, Google says that it will always consider informative, quality content as its number one search signal. However, if two websites both have quality content, but one site has better Core Web Vitals, the site with a better page experience will always outrank the site that isn’t optimized for performance.

At RebelMouse, performance isn’t just a goal, it’s a pillar of our culture. Our platform outperforms WordPress, and other major publishing solutions on Google’s Core Web Vitals. The proof is in the data.

HTTP Archive, a tracking platform that crawls the web to identify trends and record historical patterns, keeps track of how top content management systems perform on Core Web Vitals through the creation of its Core Web Vitals Technology Report. Combining HTTP Archive's wealth of data with Google's Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX), this new dashboard provides a look at how major CMSs stack up to Google's strict rules around site performance.

Here’s how RebelMouse performs against the competition, including WordPress:

RebelMouse tracks better performance on Google's Core Web Vitals than major competition

RebelMouse outperformed WordPress on Core Web Vitals in 2023. From HTTP Archive.

4. RebelMouse Is a CMS Built for Search

drastic increase in search traffic occurs after publishing on RebelMouse

Search performance surges after launching on RebelMouse.

RebelMouse's Entry Editor features SEO functionality that's designed to help you optimize every post to give it the best shot at winning a targeted search phrase.

Through the creative use of APIs, we ensure writers and editors are armed with the right information when optimizing content for SEO. In the example below, the drop-down list is suggesting search phrases that are already performing well on Google. The number next to each recommended phrase is its monthly search volume.

RebelMouse provides real-time search volume data from its Entry Editor

Content creators can see search volume data through RebelMouse’s Entry Editor in real time.

Once you have identified a search phrase, content creators can continue to use the SEO feature to customize the article’s URL slug, metadata, and even breadcrumb URL to optimize it for Google’s crawler. Historical search data from previous posts is available right from within our Entry Editor, too. We also show creators how their content’s key phrases are performing on search, including the amount of clicks, impressions, and search position.

RebelMouse's entry editor show realtime data on search performance

See search performance data directly from RebelMouse's Entry Editor.

Click here to read more about our game-changing search technology, where no plugins are required.

5. Better Distribution Tools

Producing quality content is only half the battle — after all, there’s no point in publishing engaging content if nobody is around to read it. This is why dynamic distribution is so important in order to succeed in today’s digital world. And the good news is that tackling this doesn’t have to be a solo effort. If you want to publish seamlessly across platforms on WordPress, it’s going to take research into which content distribution platform is right for you. Luckily for RebelMouse users, we are the content distribution platform.

Our digital publishing platform has deep integrations into the social distribution graph, providing publishers with an enterprise-level suite of publishing tools. This includes direct integrations with distribution formats such as Google AMP and Apple News.

Our channels of distribution are always changing. We keep iterating and improving the platform, adding all of the latest technologies and optimizing for algorithm changes at no additional cost.

Click here to read more about RebelMouse’s distribution platforms.

6. Modern Authoring Tools

WordPress’s built-in editors were originally created when the internet was made up of simple bloggers, and the platform hasn’t been able to catch up. Whether an editor is too simple or too complicated to make sense of, it’s hard to create content on WordPress with ease.

We believe that the content creation process is sacred. Most publishers know writers, editors, and curators are the heartbeat of every site's success and continued growth. At RebelMouse, we're dedicated to supporting writers with a robust editorial suite designed for modern publishing. Creators on RebelMouse have access to real-time insights, dynamic layouts, and proprietary social and SEO technologies, directly from our editing interface.

Additionally, we put the power of design back into the hands of content creators with our easy-to-use layout options. Site designs that look like they require hours of developer work can be created by editors in just a few clicks. And our Layout & Design Tool makes every website's design, structure, and ad placement easy to manage. Users can drag and drop design elements easily, as well as test them in real time to identify the site design that resonates most with their readers.

dynamic, multi-media articles can be designed by content creators on RebelMouse

Dynamic site designs look dev-heavy, but are actually put together by content creators. Example from RebelMouse client PAPER Magazine.

Still, every content team is different. Most CMS platforms have a one-size-fits-all approach to their editing interface, and creators are forced to work around the confines of those systems. Many times, writers and editors will say, "I like my CMS, but it would be great if it did this."

Our intuitive Entry Editor not only fixes common issues, but is completely customizable based on what your team needs. We can change the layout of our editor to fit your site’s content and your desired workflow.

RebelMouse\u2019s Entry Editor customized with post fields for recipes

A custom Entry Editor for recipes on RebelMouse.

Click here to read about how you can sculpt your own editorial suite.

7. RebelMouse Offers Easy-to-Understand Analytics

It’s important for you to manage your writers, see their performance, enable them to learn from each other, and help them become data-driven. RebelMouse analytics provide you with a clear view of who is performing, what posts are working, and where that content is gaining traction.

RebelMouse offers unique, customizable dashboards through Google Data Studio that provide key insights into the metrics that matter most to publishers. We give our clients the ability to quickly understand the performance of their sites so that they can then make important decisions on the fly. Click here to read more about our custom analytic offerings.

RebelMouse creates custom Google Data Studio dashboards with metrics concerning users and pageviews

Example of a custom Google Data Studio dashboard built by RebelMouse.

Additionally, our CMS operates on a data-driven product cycle. Everything we release at RebelMouse is subjected to a small percentage of traffic and A/B tested for performance impact. Our testing includes how each version affects page speed and user experience. We then take the results and check to see how they correlate with bounce rate, time on site, pages per session, and conversion to goals — such as shares, subscriptions, and

purchases. We also take big data and distill it into easy-to-consume insights that you can quickly act upon. You can view how each post is performing on search and social, right from within our Entry Editor.

stats about each article\u2019s pageviews are available to users from RebelMouse\u2019s Entry Editor

View real-time statistics about each post from within RebelMouse’s Entry Editor.

A Note on Publishing From RebelMouse Founder Andrea Breanna

The huge gap between current CMS offerings and what the world needed occured to me during my time as CTO of The Huffington Post. When The Huffington Post was acquired by AOL in 2011, I inherited 53 properties built on dozens of different content management systems. It wasn’t long after that I soon realized they were all built by IT people who didn't fully grasp the concepts of traffic and distribution. That’s why in 2012, I launched RebelMouse as the first platform to create the "social front page" — a hub where users could aggregate social feeds all in one place. It went viral with eight million users worldwide. The viral success made me realize that there wasn't a CMS to bring it all together, yet.

One of the main reasons I launched RebelMouse was because I recognized that a huge shift in advertising would happen, and that content would become marketing very quickly. And it did.

Today, I am extremely proud of the powerful product we've created. RebelMouse was built to solve the complex intersection of product, engineering, editorial, and revenue. It's allowed us to create a next-generation CMS unlike any other — backed by some of the best venture capitalists in the world — and is responsible for launching some of the biggest media sites, such as Axios, Raw Story, and Protocol.

But our team still sees plenty of sites — including brands, publishers, and personal influencers — not reaching their full potential. A lot of the time it’s because they’re bogged down with a clunky CMS like WordPress. We’re all trying to publish and make money in a competitive industry that’s always changing. But to be frank, WordPress isn’t keeping up with the industry fast enough. There’s a lot you need in and out of a CMS to survive and succeed in this digital climate, and we’ve created a solution that quickly responds to every industry shift and algorithm curveball.

Let’s Start Working Together

RebelMouse’s content migration process from WordPress to RebelMouse is simple. And once it’s completed, we don’t waste any time optimizing your site for performance. From there, we restructure your content strategy so that you can see results at scale.

We migrate sites from WordPress all the time, and it’s a fast process. Even if replatforming isn’t an option for you at the moment, we can still offer you our creative agency services to make sure you’re reaching your biggest audience possible. Let’s create something together.

Request a proposal today and let’s start publishing together.

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