I'm not new to building websites. I used to use Joomla and phpbb to build sites. I actually got fairly good at it. One day I decided to try Wordpress. I was concerned, as I didn't wish to build a blog. I always considered Wordpress blog software. I soon was very surprised that it goes well beyond blogs. It is one of the easiest to use to build your own website.
Pros
This software is beyond user friendly. With a small amount of research, you can build a professional looking website. This saves a purchaser a large amount of money. paying someone to build your site is very costly, and some non-for-profits simply don't have the capital to do so.
Cons
Unfortunately, Wordpress has always had a spam issue. Every contact form from Wordpress is constantly hit with spam. You can use captcha to offset the spam and use some plugins made to stop the spam, but there are always a few that slip through.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 10/10
I would choose no other platform for my website. I've built and managed sites on Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, and more. WordPress is by far the best CSM out there, especially for SEO. That's all our agency uses for our clients' sites. And if they're not on WordPress, we encourage them to migrate.
Pros
The best thing about WordPress is the amount of functionality and control it offers over your website. There's nothing you can't do with it. Since their CMS is an OpenSource platform and the most widely used CMS, just about every host out there can host your WordPress site. On the note of it being OpenSource, you're not bound to the first party features of the CMS like you would be with Wix or Squarespace. You can find a 3rd-party plugin for literally anything you need your site to do without having to have any website development background.
Cons
There is a learning curve to getting started, I'll admit. It takes anyone a decent amount of time to get going on the platform and really understand what they're doing. With that being said, there are tons of resources out there. All it takes is a little time investment to master your WordPress site. If you don't have anyone teach you how to operate the backend of the site, it can seem not very intuitive.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 10/10
Overall I really like it - it is just inconsistency with customer service that wastes time
Pros
I like the ease of use and customer service is available in a variety of ways. It is easy for a non-developer and looks professional. Easy to add purchase or donate button. Over all I really like it
Cons
Some of the web pages are hard to change. One customer service agent told me to do it one way and actually changed some things themselves - but it was wrong and very difficult to change. The next customer service agent said it was set up wrong to begin with so those pages had to almost be deleted altogether. Also, there are many answers to the same question I found out - differing customer service agents will send instructions and links to differing ways of doing the same thing. Also, some customer service agents do not read the question in chat - it takes repeating the same question or giving the same answer several times as they do not take time to read
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 9/10
I used Wordpress to host my start-up Journo Resources and it's been a well functioning and customisable solution. It was easy to set up, I'm able to do the majority of it myself, and I've found it easy to integrate the work of outside developers. As my business is based entirely online, it's important for me to have a lot of control, and this helps me to do this is a customisable way.
Pros
There are a number of features I'm a big fan of on Wordpress.org, mainly centred around ease of use, customisation:
• This is one of the easiest pieces of kit to set up in terms of your website, and they're very good at walking you through how to tie it all together when you're starting out.
• It's intuitive, so you don't have to spend a lot of time explaining to people what they need to do, and there are good (and customisable) permission levels so you can make sure the right people have access to the right things.
• The platform is free! All you need to pay for is your own hosting.
• It's incredibly customisable. There are no shortage of Wordpress developers out there if you're looking for a custom build, and there are thousands of plug-ins and themes which can sort you out if you're looking for an out of the box solution. For the most part, I don't need anyone else to look at the website on a day to day basis, and am able to effectively manage it myself.
Cons
There is a ratings system on the plug-ins, but it would be good to make this more robust. Generally, though, I'm very happy with the service.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 10/10
We have been very happy with WordPress for our use. We are a small organization and don't have any coding skills, so we needed something that we could use, update, manage without a lot of prior knowledge. We've had to make a lot of changes to Wordpress in order to keep is secure, and Wordpress is making large strides to help simplify this.
Pros
Wordpress was very simple to set up and get going. There are a lot of great templates to get started and lots of great plugins to use. Without any coding skills, we were able to get a fully functioning website up and running in a matter of hours, rather than days, months, or years.
Cons
There is a lot of maintenance and when you need to start customizing things beyond what your template or plugins are able to do for you, it can be really difficult. Wordpress was obviously created as a blogging platform, but has widely been used as a web designer. It is pretty clear that there are limitations when it comes to using Wordpress as a full website.
Rating breakdown
Likelihood to recommend: 9/10
Wordpress offers a free plan (3GB storage), as well as paid plans:
Personal plan: €4/month (billed yearly) with 6GB of storage and a custom domain name.
Premium plan: €8/month (billed yearly) with 13GB of storage, a custom domain name, and monetization options.
Business plan: €25/month (billed yearly) with unlimited storage space, a custom domain name, and a range of additional features including plugins, Wordpress branding removal, and more.
