The Pros and Cons of WordPress for Your Next Website

Jan 21, 2023

Photo from Adobe Stock

Originally Posted On: https://www.wpassist.ca/wordpress-pros-and-cons/

In case you don’t know, the most popular Content Management System for building a website is WordPress. In fact, according to the latest statistics, WordPress powers over 40% of all websites on the internet, and 64% of all CMS websites are built using WordPress.

If you’re on the fence as to whether you want to use WordPress for your next website, have a look at this list of pros and cons of WordPress so that you can decide for yourself.

The Pros

While there are many competitors to WordPress, including Joomla, Wix, Drupal, Squarespace, Magento, Weebly, none of the competition truly compares to WordPress. That is because competitors do not offer all the benefits of WordPress.

Here are the biggest reasons WordPress is outperforming the competition.

Free Open-Source CMS

It’s free to get started. Because you can start for free, and easily use it, build upon it, and change it, using WordPress gives you freedom. You can even redistribute the software.

This does not mean that it will always be free in terms of costs. However, if there are additional costs, it is up to you. You can pay for what you wish to pay for, making WordPress tremendously flexible.

Therefore, WordPress works well with any budget.

Ease of Use

It is based on PHP and MySQL, making WordPress a powerful platform. Not only is it powerful, but WordPress is also intuitive and simple to use.

You can easily customize your website design, create new posts and pages, and add navigation menus with its simple-to-use dashboard. On the sidebar, you will see different menu options that are intuitive, making it a splendid solution for any beginner.

Build Any Type of Website

If an entrepreneur can dream it, a novice can design it. From designing a website for simple blogging to complex eCommerce websites, WordPress can achieve it. You can build a membership website, start an online store, sell online courses, showcase a portfolio, publish a digital magazine, and many other types of websites.

For businesses that conduct sales and operations internationally, WordPress allows for a multilingual website, too.

Do you want to host a section on the next wiki-like website? WordPress can do that, too! It comes with great assets to help any knowledge-based wiki site to be successful.

Endless Theme Possibilities

One of the difficult things to do when starting a new website is knowing where to start. What should the site look like, what features should you add, and what colours and fonts to use?

Luckily, this is often not a problem with WordPress. With literally thousands of themes to choose from, the problem becomes which one to choose! Narrow your search down by deciding which features are important for your business.

Don’t get too carried away with all the bells and whistles offered by some themes. You want your WordPress website to load fast and be easy for your visitors to navigate.

Plugin Ecosystem

With 55,000+ plugins designed specifically for the WordPress platform, there is no shortage of functionality and features you can add.

WordPress plugins are like the apps you install on your mobile device. Without the apps, your mobile device would be just a phone, and without plugins, a WordPress website would be just a simple blogging website.

So essentially, plugins bring more functionality to your website. They help website developers improve SEO, add contact forms, increase site speed, and offer email opt-ins, just to name a few excellent functions.

WordPress plugins offer superior advantages for web developers. WordPress plugins are reliable, save time, and offer some flexibility.

For recommendations on the best design plugins, check out this article.

Enhance Your Website With New Post Types

Think of post types as a type of page you can publish on WordPress. Out of the box, WordPress supports two default post types: Pages and Posts. Typically, the “Page” post type you would use for standard pages like the homepage, about page and the contact page, while the “Post” post type you use for publishing blogs or news articles.

Due to the open-source nature of WordPress, developers can also add new post types to extend its functionality even further.

By utilizing some simple code, or a plugin, you can easily create new custom post types. For example, a business can add a new post type of listing “Jobs” on their website along with unique fields specific to that post type, such as a job description, salary, and candidate requirements.

This makes data entry simple, as well as aids in the development of a standard user interface for displaying this custom data.

SEO

Out of the box, WordPress is probably just as good as any other platform for building websites. Creating titles is easy, and WordPress makes it an SEO-friendly function. Further, you can create unique meta descriptions, another important element for improving SEO.

Search engine bots can easily index WordPress websites because the code is clean and simple. The website software optimizes your images, too. This is because you can create relevant “alt text” and image titles that are engaging, allowing for better visibility on image search engines, including Google’s image search engine.

What makes WordPress especially good for SEO is the availability of plugins that can aid in the optimization of a website with SEO. Things like XML Sitemap generation, Title, and Meta Description fields can be added to pages and posts.

Developer Community

Another benefit of working with the most popular website platform is having access to an abundance of developers. This is a highly active online community. Also, you can find many local WordPress communities and support forums.

Communities can have different teams, too, that work on various aspects of WordPress and website software. This can range from design to testing to technical support.

The Cons

Designing a website is more than creating something that looks spectacular, it must be user-friendly and function well. You must have a website that gives visitors a pleasant experience. That way, they will remember your brand with a positive feeling.

Websites can experience technical difficulties, even WordPress websites, which means you need to manage them. Here are a few of the downsides of working with WordPress.

Hosting

Unlike some other platforms such as Wix and Shopify, WordPress website owners need to figure out their own web hosting options. With many hosting companies offering various plans and features, it’s confusing to know which one is right. Not to mention, costs can also vary drastically from a few dollars a month to hundreds.

Hosting your own website can leave you vulnerable to the website going down, and this can happen when you don’t even realize it. Every minute your website is not operating is a minute that a customer cannot engage with your brand.

Downtime sometimes leads to lost business, which could be temporary, but costly, especially if you operate an e-commerce website. That’s why it’s critical that you invest in a good hosting solution. Do you research, and don’t automatically sign up to the cheapest plan you find.

Security

Because of its popularity, WordPress is often the target of malicious actors and attacks. Most WordPress websites end up using dozens of plugins to get their websites to where they want them, which can exacerbate this issue.

Various third-party developers develop these plugins. Although, for the most part, these plugins are safe and secure, vulnerabilities are not uncommon, and website owners need to actively monitor their website and their components to stay ahead of hackers and other malicious actors.

To mitigate this issue, make sure your website is hosted with a reputable hosting company that is focused on security and includes a Web Application Firewall (WAF) as a standard option in their hosting plan.

Maintenance & Upkeep

WordPress is a developing platform with approximately new releases every quarter. On top of that, plugins are constantly being updated – for new features, performance, and security.

The more plugins, the more updates to keep up with. Maintaining the website can quickly become a full-time job.

Further, a common issue for inexperienced WordPress users is that they will add too many plugins. This can make your website slow, causing overall poor performance. Recent statistics suggest that slow-loading websites cause tremendous losses in sales for companies, up to $2.6 billion annually.

While this may seem like an enormous burden, you can avoid potential losses like this when you partner with the right WordPress maintenance and support team. In fact, with improvement in your website’s performance and uptime, you will see profit rise, making it a part of your budget that offers the best ROI!