Testing website editors for performance on GTmetrix

Flipsite is the most light weight website editor that lets you create full fledged complex websites, just like Wix, Wordpress, Framer, Squarespace and Webnode. A smaller page load results in faster sites which improve technical SEO. But the pages still have to include possibility for advanced content management and design with animations and images.

Weve covered how pages built with Flipsite differ from other website editors technically (all designed from the ground up for readable and performant HTML with browser native animations and no dependencies on 3rd party libraries). But lets test it out in real life.

How did we test?

Google Lighthouse tests are the grand standard for testing. But its direct links to the tests expire after a while, so it wont be too transparent as a test.

Instead well use a more simple test that just boils down to one number and maintains links for a longer duration, namely GTmetrix.com. GTmetrix offers a free account so you can monitor your own website over time with it easily.

All Website Builders always boast about performance on their frontpage – but often fail due to people wanting more than the "pre built" stuff that comes only if you pick a particular template. So we thought, surely these builders will build their own website with the best of the breed. That should be a fair comparison. So we ran all website builders own websites frontpage through GTmetrix.

Which website builders did we test?

We tried to pick a variety of website builders. Even though they are all technically the same, the have several differences; some tie you to hosting with them and thus leaving them later is either hard or impossible. Others offer the possibility to build webshops while others dont. But all of the following have in our view more similarities than differences, in that they are versatile, industry standard and talk about performance as a key factor in their marketing. Lets check if the money is where the mouth is.

Comparison results

Without further ado, here are the performance results from GTmetrix in order:

• Framer.com –  C 60% [GTmetrix]
• Webnode.com –  B 73% [GTmetrix]
• Squarespace.com – B 86% [GTmetrix]
• Wix.com – A 92% [GTmetrix]
• Flipsite.io – A 97% performance [GTmetrix]

We were unable to get a result Webflow.com as the test crashed every time due to the page taking too long to load.

And were not happy about missing 3% either. Well be sure to fix that soon. Obviously testing only the front page doesnt tell the whole truth, but it gives you an overview of how important these tools deem that performance is. They might have put an extra effort into their own front page, which doesnt promise things about the rest of the pages, or standard templates.

With flipsite all sites automatically get top scores. Try it out for yourself.