WordPress vs Jottful

When Hoot Host first launched our Website Builder plans, we did a lot of research. It turns out our vision to reinvent the way websites are built for businesses is still very much a fresh and innovative approach to the traditional agency option. We see a huge opportunity in our offer to build affordable websites with your domain, hosting, monthly maintenance, and optimization all included. With no big upfront costs or contracts. Just an affordable monthly plan for your business to have an effective, professional website. Our customers understand the immense value in our Website Builder plans and the response has been amazing.

But the truth is, there are a few other companies who are following this solution-first model to building affordable websites. One example of a company doing it well is Jottful. Jottful uses their own proprietary software called “Magical Editor” to build and manage affordable websites for small businesses. They offer very low rates so even startups and very small scale businesses can afford to get a website. To their credit, Jottful seems to do an awesome job with this model and is a great company. Their clients love them and they are definitely proving this new approach works (they’ve been in business since 2017).

With regards to the way Jottful works, we did have a question though. Why use your own custom content management system? Hoot Host aims to empower our customers with the world’s greatest CMS – WordPress! All a custom CMS does is traps a business with a website that limits their growth and capabilities. A business of any size deserves a better solution that they can still afford, and WordPress seems like the obvious answer vs Jottful’s approach.

In Jottful’s own marketing they pitch their website platform as a tool to build effective, professional websites with highly customized design and best practices built-in. But when you compare a Jottful Magical Editor website vs a WordPress website – topics like overall design presentation, best practices, search engine optimization, compliance, and performance are all brought into question.


We took a deep dive into several Jottful Magical Editor sites and compared them to recent Hoot Host Website Builder customer websites we built in WordPress. The results are an obvious win for WordPress.


When auditing sites built on Jottful Magical Editor, most websites were being given poor ratings in performance, search engine optimization, best practices, and compliance. All audits were completed using Google Lighthouse and only a few of the sites we audited had good metrics to speak of. But this is an issue for a business of any size. Even for the smallest business with just a basic site, you need your website to load efficiently on desktop and mobile. Even more so, you need to maintain search engine optimization practices for ideal search engine ranking. Most importantly, you need your website to meet standards for ADA, WCAG, GDPR, and CCPA compliance.

To be fair, we audited several recently built WordPress websites from Hoot Host Website Builder customers. While every website (regardless of how it was built) always needs to improve on something, it is more than fair to say WordPress websites are the clear winner when it comes to these topics. Our customer’s WordPress websites outperformed Jottful Magical Editor sites in performance, search engine optimization standards, best practices, and compliance.

Next, let’s talk about design. Jottful likes to say small businesses don’t need the high end design an agency would provide and overcharge for. So a small business can build a basic site with them and at least have an online presence. But we ask the question, does this help or hurt a business? Just because your business has a website, does not mean that website is benefiting your business. Especially when your site has a dated design with poor presentation (and maybe even an issue with ADA compliance). From what we can tell Jottful Magical Editor has a single theme that is slightly customized for each customer. Compare this to WordPress which has thousands of free themes to choose from and the debate is over. Plus, with Hoot Host Website Builder our customers receive a custom design, branded specifically to their business! No templates, no basic cookie cutter approach – a custom designed website to best represent your business. So while we’ll admit Jottful Magical Editor has a few decent looking websites, they still cannot compete with WordPress in it’s flexibility, themes, and endless customizable design options. On the design debate – an easy win for WordPress.

What about scalability and growth? Again on the Jottful Magical Editor websites we reviewed, we saw minimal integrations and add-ons. While Jottful does claim they offer a handful of higher end integrations and functionality add-ons, we could not find any live examples of this – and they simply cannot compete with the open source community around WordPress. With WordPress, our customers have access to thousands of plugins, tools, security add-ons, and easy integrations to help them grow their website with their business – and easily integrate with literally any third party tools, CRM, or other platforms! WordPress is literally built for growth and scalability, so this is another clear win for WordPress.

What happens if you want to take your website to another host or provider? With Jottful – you can’t. Plain and simple. However WordPress is hosted and supported by all the major providers and thousands of others around the world. It is truly the most used and supported platform in the world. While Hoot Host does have some limited terms and conditions for new customers, we don’t hold your website hostage if you choose to take it elsewhere somewhere down the line. Jottful Magical Editor being a proprietary platform, they will not let you take it anywhere else, ever.

Our Hoot Host Website Builder plans simply offer more than Jottful Magical Editor can because we are using WordPress as the backbone of our affordable website approach. Our plans offer truly customized design (or a theme of your choice), the largest community of open source plugins and tools on the web to help your website grow with you, easy integrations to all the popular third party platforms and CRMs out there. Not to mention the ongoing maintenance, optimization, and security benefits we include every month!

We don’t tag on extra fees like Jottful does for your domain, email, or other add-ons with confusing pricing. With Hoot Host you get everything included with no extra fees and far more comprehensive services included every month.

All built on the WordPress platform so you know your website is the modern, professional, optimized, and secure online presence it should be for your business. That is why we structured the Hoot Host Website Builder plans around a system that empowers your business and grows with you. That platform is WordPress.

Need more evidence that WordPress is the better choice over Jottful Magical Editor? Jottful’s own website is built on WordPress! They build their customer’s websites on their limited Magical Editor platform, but their own website is built on WordPress.

That’s where we’ll end the debate – and the winner is obviously WordPress!

Get Started with Hoot Host Website Builder for an affordable WordPress website