WordPress is a Content Management System or CMS. It was never intended to become a website building tool or eCommerce platform, it was purely created for blogging. However, since it was released in 2003 its popularity has soared.

From it’s humble beginnings as a fork of Cafelog, WordPress now powers over 43% of all known websites on the planet. It’s a force to be reckoned with, no other CMS comes close to rival it. Read on to learn more about WordPress and why this CMS dominates the world!

WordPress offers control, developmental speed and value that few CMS can rival.

Here are our Top 5 reasons why you should consider powering your website with WordPress:

1. WordPress is 100% Free

2. WordPress is SEO Friendly

3. Customisable & Flexible Web Framework

4. WordPress is Highly Scalable

5. WordPress Community Support

1. WordPress is 100% Free

WordPress is open source software (OSS), this means the original source code is made freely available. This is a game changer, there are very few platforms that can be installed and used 100% for free without ever requiring a financial commitment.

WordPress is one of them and has been for almost 20 years now. Thankfully there are no plans to change this anytime soon either.

For clarity sake, it is worth mentioning that web hosting providers that offer ‘Managed WordPress’ solutions, or the like, do charge. However that is because they are a host and have their operating costs to consider, these costs are not associated with WordPress itself.

As a result of making the source code freely available, there are millions of developers who have seen opportunities to create Themes and Plugins for it. Some are Free, others offer them for a fee.

As of 2022, there are over 60,000 free plugins and over 9,000 free themes in the official WordPress Plugin Directory so you won’t be short of options or design inspiration that’s for sure!

By including these service ‘add-ons’, you are able to create a fully functional website, online store, booking engine or even a membership site – all on WordPress. For a start-up or small business, this could save thousands in upfront and ongoing costs.

Leaving the only costs to consider being any chargeable Themes or Plugins required plus the costs of the Domain name(s), Web-hosting package and the skills of a Web Designer and Web Developer to help realise your vision. 

2. WordPress is SEO Friendly

A WordPress powered website can be on the front page of Google, it is 100% search engine friendly. You don’t need expensive website builders to get you on page 1 of Google or Bing. No matter what their fancy pants marketing says. WordPress can do it too and for a fraction of the time and cost.

We’ll cover SEO in more detail over the course of a series of separate articles (such as this one) but just know – WordPress has you covered.

With only free plugins, you can assign each page and post on your website a unique meta tag, meta title, meta keyword, and meta description. In addition to generating a sitemap that self-manages. This makes it a highly SEO friendly platform.

Granted, these capabilities can be expanded upon and become more powerful with some chargeable plugins. But, the free ones do a good enough job in most cases. This all matters because it allows for more precise optimisation and better ranking in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

One plugin that can help achieve this with a lot less hassle is Yoast SEO – we would highly recommend it, the paid premium upgrade is often worth it too.

3. Customisable & Flexible Web Framework

When it comes to customisability and flexibility, WordPress is legendary. Your imagination really is the only limitation with WordPress. From beautiful animation driven websites to lush image-heavy responsive designs, WordPress delivers.

One of the major reasons why WordPress is loved the world over, by businesses and developers alike, is because it can be tailoured to meet just about any design requirement. And quite amazingly, it can achieve it fast too.

This is all thanks to using what are called ‘page builders’. The two most popular page builders on WordPress right now are Elementor and WPBakery. They will help to create a unique website that will resonate well with your target audience in a matter of days. If you need any help or inspiration with them – YouTube is your friend thanks to their excellent support base. 

Some of the most successful organisations in the world, from The New York Times, to MTV News and The Walt Disney Company – all use WordPress powered websites.

The framework is so flexible, modern and responsive that websites can be created very quickly and be easy to maintain too. Instead of days – think hours. This results in a website that is both cheaper to operate and faster to rectify if, and when, things go south.

Customisability really is King when it comes to websites. Platforms such as Wix and Squarespace have a long way to go in this regard with their highly restrictive and, sometimes, frustrating user interfaces (UI).

This translates into a longer development time, higher costs and limited capabilities. With the ongoing monthly costs to consider too, they suddenly become very expensive options when compared to WordPress.

This is probably the reason why Wix and Squarespace only power, at most, 6% of all known websites apiece. A far cry from the 43%+ that WordPress powers.

4. WordPress is Highly Scalable

With the right infrastructure, services and resources, WordPress is highly scalable. It can serve tens of thousands of logged-in users simultaneously and serve millions of page views each and every month without skipping a beat.

WordPress has the ability to process page requests immediately and can deliver lightning fast results to search queries too. As a result, WordPress is a highly scalable platform that can support almost any growing business – even multi-million dollar corporations like the ones listed above.

Two of the most powerful features of WordPress are its enterprise integration and multi-site capabilities. It has the ability, with little to no coding, to integrate with a wide variety of disparate enterprise level platforms. Including CRM systems such as Salesforce, custom data synchronisation, eCommerce stores and single sign-on systems.

Multi-site is a type of WordPress installation that allows you to create, and manage, multiple websites from one single WordPress dashboard.

This capability makes website management a breeze, making changes and updates all from just one place results in less complication and easier maintenance when you’re running lots of websites.

5. WordPress Community Support

When more than 455 million websites use the same platform, help is never too far away. There are literally tens of millions of articles and do-it-yourself guides on Google and YouTube showing you how to do things with WordPress. It’s an incredible support base and nothing else comes close.

Sourcing a developer isn’t a chore either, there are millions of them that are ready to help resolve your issue – from design to integration and everything in between. An expert is quick to find with only a Google Search these days and you’ll be up and running in no time.

Remember, no platform is perfect and WordPress is no exception. Problems happen and they often derive from updates. It’s just a matter of when, not if, things go wrong with any website platform. So it’s really important you have support on-hand when you need it and you’ll never be far away from a WordPress specialist.

Your next steps.

At VIEWFULE, we often start our customers on WordPress. Given its a completely free, open source solution that is also a highly SEO friendly platform – we hope you understand why. But in some cases platforms such as Joomla or the Laravel framework are required, amongst others. These are custom solutions to meet the needs of custom problems. So reach out for your FREE consultation and we’ll talk through your challenges to get you on the right platform that meets your use case and budget.