Now before you write us off for the headline, just hear us out on this one.

WordPress is a massive CRM and it's used in over 40% of websites, has a huge 60% market share, is open source, SEO optimized and best of all it's free... Or is it? Before you take the plunge, let's dive into a few things most people don't realize until it's to late!

1: The Real Cost:

Ok so WordPress itself is... actually free, you will have to purchase a hosting plan to get your site published to the world which is around $130ish but the real cost will come in when you sit down and attempt to build your website.

This is where you'll realize that WordPress require a pretty extensive level of coding knowledge if you really want to make something worth while.

Of course there are a few options to help you out here!

A: You could hire someone to build and code it for you, but that's likely going to cost close to $10 thousand dollars, oh and that doesn’t include the their monthly maintenance fees that your 100% going to have to pay to keep your site updated and running smoothly.

B: You could install a drag and drop plugin, but even those have limited functionality, and again they're going to cost money.

Speaking of plugins, did you know WordPress has over 50,000 plugins available? This is because 90% of your website is going to rely on some form of 3rd party plugin?

While this may not seem like a big deal, plugins are like a phones apps, some are free, most are a trial for a short time and eventually your paying a monthly fee for each plugin.

2: WordPress Websites Need To Be Updated:

We’re not talking about the websites content or images, we mean the actual WordPress platform and the plugins. Think of this like your mobile phone, except with your website and all the plugins, that you probably haven't looked at in the backend for a while!

- Did you know?

WordPress actually encourages users to upgrade to the latest version, as do most of the plugins, but less than 50% of these sites are running the latest update! This is crazy to think of because when you don’t update you jeopardize the site's security and are putting personal information of users at risk.

3 - The Successful Business

Bulls-Eye.

WordPress websites are regarded as the Rolex of websites.

There a symbol that your business is wealthily, large and successful. Why does this matter?, because WordPress websites get the highest level of spam messages from hackers and bots trying to compromise your site just because they can see its make in WordPress:

- It’s easy to determine what your website is built with, unless you can block this like we did!

4 - The Complex System

There are definitely businesses out there that will benefit from a WordPress website, and we always recommend this when it makes sense, but for the average business, WordPress is just plain overkill.

How you ask? Well how does 2.2 Million lines of code that need to be written in either PHP, Python, HTML, CSS, Javascript or a combination of several sounds? Oh and if you make even the smallest error, like putting a (.) instead of a (,) it can either crash your entire website or cause a lot of issues.

Just reading this out loud is giving our coding specialist flashbacks. LOL

Oh and then there are all the plugins that need to be installed, set up and tested.

So what should you use?

Well first I would encourage you to talk to a professional about your goals, needs and let them help you choose. Find a company that is flexible and experienced with all the platforms to help eliminate a biased answer.

Or I mean call us, it’s free and we’re not that scary.

Seriously though, there is no right answer there, while some businesses can will benefit from WordPress, its open source setup and the complete control functionality, most businesses (and most of our clients) can achieve the same results using other platforms.