The Pros and Cons of Using WordPress in 2024
WordPress is a web management system that was created as a platform to publish blogs. Now, blogging is just one of many features available on what’s become one of the best and biggest website builders on the internet.
Here, we’re going to look at WordPress’s advantages and disadvantages so you can see for yourself what has made WordPress so popular and ultimately decide if it's a good fit for your needs.
This blog is part of a series comparing the advantages and disadvantages of website builders WordPress, Squarespace, and Shopify. To read the other installments, visit the links listed below:
WordPress Pros & Cons Overview
Pros:
Great Design Capabilities
Thousands of Available Templates + Themes
Strong Search Engine Optimization
Cons:
Fluctuating Pricing
Reliant on Third-Party Platforms
Security Concerns
Who Should Use WordPress
Because of how many plug-ins it supports, you can customize your website to fit most businesses and business needs. However, we feel WordPress is at its best when you use it to create a large blog or a website with members-only content and a discussion forum. In fact, WordPress was originally a tool to create and publish blogs, and even though it has evolved a lot since its initial conception, it's still the best place to create a dedicated blog.
The big reason WordPress is still the premier place to build a blog or membership site is because of the available compatible plug-ins. For example, food blog hosts can download plug-ins that validate their posts as recipes on Google and Pinterest so they appear as such in relevant search results rather than as articles. Membership websites with courses are similar. For example, WordPress is compatible with plug-ins that add discussion forums to pages with online courses or educational content so students can discuss the lessons together.
But while WordPress is a good fit for most types of businesses, it doesn’t mean it’s a good fit for every person. WordPress is not a DIY or beginner friendly platform, and it takes a lot of skill and research to use it properly. If you’re not an experienced developer or don’t have time to learn web development, we would recommend using a more beginner-friendly platform.
wordpress.com vs wordpress.org
As you’re researching WordPress, you’ll probably discover that there are two versions of the platform - WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Both sites let you download the same WordPress software, but have a few fundamental differences. For starters, on WordPress.com, you don’t have to go through a domain registrar to host your website. Rather, WordPress will host it in-house via any of their six subscription plans, and you’ll gain access to more advanced features and add-ons the better your subscription is.
Meanwhile, WordPress.org is completely free and unrestricted, but you have to figure out hosting on your own.
For this comparison, we are looking only at the pros and cons of WordPress.org, the free WordPress source code.
Pros of Using WordPress
Design Flexibility
Because WordPress supports so many plug-ins, there are very few limits on how you can or can’t build your website. This also means that it can be trickier to build a website than it is on a platform like Squarespace since there are very few guard rails, but editor plug-ins like Elementor operate similarly to Squarespace’s drag-and-drop editor and make the design process more manageable. WordPress is also very friendly for coders, so if you want to personally program elements of your website, WordPress is the best platform for it.
There are also thousands of templates and themes available for WordPress that provide a fantastic starting point for most websites. While you have to pay a recurring fee for most of the advanced options (compared to Squarespace, which offers all its templates for free), a well-designed theme can bring novice designers close to a ready-to-use website without extensive knowledge of how to use WordPress.
With those resources making the WordPress design experience easier, you can use other plug-ins to make your website as feature-dense and optimized as possible without the headache of starting from scratch or learning to write code.
Search Engine Optimization
Understanding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is critical for making your website stand out online, and WordPress might be the most SEO-friendly website builder available. That’s in large part because the SEO tool Yoast is available on WordPress as a plug-in, and it can analyze your pages and content and make recommendations on how to improve your website’s optimization.
But WordPress’s SEO advantages come down to more than just Yoast. WordPress can also automatically generate XML sitemaps and let’s you tag your business to your exact location to improve its favorability on search engines. While it is trickier to set up your website’s SEO on WordPress than it is on Squarespace, there are more methods for you to positively impact a WordPress site.
Cons of Using WordPress
Reliance on Third-Party Platforms
If you want the most out of your WordPress build, you’ll have to go through third-party sources to get it. We’ve talked about some benefits of this, but there are drawbacks as well. For example, it can get overwhelming searching for every plug-in you need and want, even if you have a sense of what features you want on your site. This is one of the biggest reasons people see WordPress as less user-friendly than similar platforms. Experienced web designers will know what they need to get the most out of the experience, but novices will go into it clueless.
Some people will prefer Squarespace’s seamless experience of having a dense library of features available directly on their platform without forcing users to find and install tools just to create a functional website. And while many of the third-party plug-ins you’ll find that work with WordPress are better than Squarespace’s in-house solutions, if you don’t need anything advanced for your website, it likely won’t be worth it to spend more time and more money on WordPress with more straightforward options available.
Having a lot of third-party plug-ins also means you will have to do a lot more maintenance than you would with a more contained website builder like Squarespace. A lot of the outside apps you’ll download for your WordPress site aren’t optimized for WordPress. So every time those apps update, they can change the layout of your pages, requiring you to adjust your formatting as problems pop up.
Fluctuating Pricing
Technically, you can sign up for WordPress and create a web presence at no cost. However, for a proper website, you will need to pay a lot for third-party plug-ins and designer themes to use WordPress as intended and maximize your investment.
Some of the expenses of creating a WordPress website come from paying a domain registrar. The rates that you can purchase a domain for your WordPress site can range as low as a couple of dollars, but to secure a domain that’s secure and memorable, you’ll likely have to pay a bit more. BlueHost and GoDaddy are two domain registries we love. The rates on GoDaddy range depending on your domain, but BlueHost’s pricing is more concrete. You can find out more on their website.
There are also the costs to subscribe to the plug-ins that make WordPress so friendly for designers that aren’t included in the standard price information. For example, Elementor, a page-builder plug-in that makes editing WordPress pages easier, is practically necessary if you want to build a fully functional website and don’t know how to write code, and subscriptions start at $59 yearly.
There’s also Yoast to help you monitor and strengthen your SEO, WooCommerce to add beneficial tools and functions to your online store, JetPack to improve your website’s security, and dozens more. And each of them comes at an additional cost. Meanwhile, Squarespace has SEO and security features built into their standard pricing, with e-commerce features available as less expensive add-on’s.
Security Concerns
We rarely see security issues with any of the Squarespace and Shopify websites we work on. But with WordPress sites, security is a much greater concern. While WordPress itself isn’t inherently unsafe, many of the less reputable third-party plug-ins you can install for your WordPress site are. Even one plug-in with a poor security system can jeopardize your website. And you’ll create an even greater risk of suffering a security breach the more of those apps you add.
You can, and probably should, download additional security plug-ins to make your website safer, with one of our favorites being JetPack. However, even these dedicated security measures won’t make your WordPress site as safe as it would be if you built it on Shopify or Squarespace.
WordPress Platform Overview
The best part about WordPress is that you get out of it what you put into it. With the right features and plug-ins, WordPress can be one of the most advanced content management system available. Though there’s a bit of a learning curve and required research to find the right plug-ins and learn to use WordPress without them, the platform is still the best way to build websites with a specific focus, like blogging or educational content.
Of course, the downside with this approach is that it's difficult to predict how much a secure, well-functioning website will cost before you start building it. And if you want all the bells and whistles, it will cost you more than it would to set up a Squarespace website. We have to stress again that WordPress is not a DIY-friendly platform, and if you’re dead set on creating a WordPress site, we would recommend hiring a web agency to do the tough work for you.
With that said, the trade-off of more features and better design flexibility in exchange for a higher yearly cost will be worth it for some websites, especially blogs or members-only pages optimized for WordPress and most of its plug-ins.
Still not sure if WordPress is a good fit for your website? Schedule a call today and talk about your goals for your website.
