Wordpress Pricing, Features, Reviews & Comparison of Alternatives

Pros
Whether you get 1) the "regular" wordpress, aka wordpress.com, aka the one that's not too different from the other website solutions out there, or 2) wordpress .org, aka the "self-hosted" and "you'd better know what you're doing, or have someone on your team who does" version, WORDPRESS is AWESOME. The possibilities are limitless, almost--as long as you or SOMEONE in your reach does, in fact, know what s/he's doing. So I like that bit. I also like the fact that there are so many out-of-the-gate options (themes, features, add-ins) at the ready. The free plan is very generous, and the pricier options give you, erm, lots of options.

Cons
Despite all the possibilities of theme and feature that I just crowed about, even wordpress.com (the not-self-hosted option) can be daunting to a beginning builder-of-a-website. For example, many of the themes by WP and by third parties look GREAT in the theme-chooser-thing, but have little-to-no documentation ("readily" available) for things that might seem standard or obvious to many, ie recommended banner dimensions for a theme. What I mean by this is that making MY page identical to the one shown in the theme-chooser (ie making mine a carbon copy of the example EXCEPT that it's my info and/or graphics, ie "trying to make mine look as good as the one in the store window") is really, REALLY difficult. There's a TON to figure out, and the themes offering the keys to their "secret sauce" are very few and far-between. This might seem trivial to some, but I'm a theme-addict. I've literally created businesses because I was in love with a business card idea, or an ad concept, or... a website theme. And while I've been able to make things work, it took way longer than I would have wanted it to. (That said, I'm a photographer, and one pixel off of my expectation is a soul-crushing experience, aka "most people aren't this persnickety about appearance."

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 8/10

Pros
Wordpress is an excellent, low barrier of entry platform (CMS) for the web. It's useful for beginners, and features that will be handy for advanced users. "Web Skills" are not required for anyone, and it's an excellent publishing platform to allow a variety of users, with permissions, access to add content. It's reasonably fast, and has plugins galore. (Boy does it have plugins). There are piles and piles of themes out there, so you can get pretty close to whatever you want out of your WordPress site. There is a nice app that works well for remote posting, but I do prefer my desktop.

Cons
WordPress is basically the #1 CMS in the world. That also means, it's the top targeted platform. Every exploit, web hijack script on earth is targeting your system. Have a strong password, have an SSL key, and keep it up to-date or you will get hacked. And even then, you might still get brute forced. Dynamic sites don't scale very well with a high number of users, or an extreme amount of content. Plugins are a blessing and a curse. You could setup some advanced things that then get "lost" when the plugin is no longer supported. Finding a "Great" theme that's exactly what you want is a challenge. Making your own layout is a beyond the scope of most users. Minor customization are doable (module / drag n drop).

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 7/10

Pros
Because the platform is open source, people can build plugins and templates for the platform. You can purchase templates to make your website look nice and it does have a lot of features - that you can add on, typically with an additional fee. I think it is fantastic for certain types of websites, but if you need advanced functionalities, I would recommend going with a platform that already has those tools, especially if it is eCommerce.

Cons
Don't get me wrong, WordPress is a very popular and easy tool to use - with the right plugins or if you are experienced in coding. However, WordPress is a platform that is very very easy to mess up if you don't know what you are doing. Additionally, I have found WordPress to be an insecure and easy to hack platform for a few reasons. 1) The updates to the platform itself happen frequently but without much warning to plugin developers, so a plugin can break your site if the platform itself updates. 2) Because it is open source, it is a very popular platform for SQL injection and hacking attacks. Nearly every WordPress website that I currently manage had an experience with hacking, malware, SQL injection and more prior to becoming a client. You need special plugins to keep your site safe. They don't automatically come with it 3) Many newbies at web design don't know that in order for your SEO plugins (the ones that Google likes) to work properly, you actually have to put information in them. They don't work automatically so just having it on the site isn't enough. 4) One bad designer can cause a lot of problems that are not so easy to fix, especially if they mess with things they shouldn't.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 2/10

Pros
user friendly content management software platform that allows for easy navigation of posts and pages, an attribute which can be traced back to the platform's origin in the blogosphere. This makes it the number one go-to platform for everyone with little or no website management knowledge looking to oversee the affairs of their websites all by themselves. Wordpress as a blogging platform gives room for the usage of plugins, both free and paid(for pro versions of most plugins), this singular feature makes blogging on the wordpress platform look like magic as there is always a plugin for everything you want to make happen on the blog. Wordpress provides for website compactness and responsiveness across all internet enabled gadgets, thereby making clients' websites mobile and search engine friendly. Wordpress help its users focus on search engine optimization as there is options to optimize meta tags, blog posts and keyword focus of choice

Cons
updates that are meant to improve and enhance functionality of sites hosted on the wordpress platform can sometimes be a nuisance as some updates end up breaking the functionality of the website hosted on the wordpress platform. The open source status quo of the content management software makes it prone to attacks from hackers who are looking to hold blog owners to a ransom. Some themes on the wordpress platform are just too heavy to properly execute just in time to consider a blog fast enough.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10

Pros
I was a struggling college student when I first installed Wordpress on my cheap hosting. Back then I picked Wordpress because it was easy to install and open-source. I had a few technical skills and no money so that was the best CMS for my new website. The first blog was pretty basic, but it did the job. Thanks to WordPress, I eventually managed to build a small following by publishing blog posts on my website. Today, I continue to power all my sites with WordPress. Here's who I recommend WordPress for: - If your website is going to be content-heavy (i.e. you publish a lot of blog posts) - WordPress makes the job very easy. Formatting is easy, writing is easy, uploading media is easy... - People who have none or little technical skills - you're not a programmer but would like to have a professional looking website. There are lots of features and plugins on WordPress that allows you to drag and drop elements on your site so you don't have to touch a line of code if you don't want to! - People looking to MVP SaaS projects - this is relatively new for me but I've noticed tons of people making money by building simple SaaS on top of WordPress. It's gonna save you a ton of time and money building your MVP on WordPress compared to other platforms.

Cons
I've always loved WordPress but the one thing I'm having mixed feelings about is Gutenberg. It has been working quite well for me for the last couple of months and I've been loving the ease of using it, but since the latest update, the entire thing lags when I write. This really sucks for me and I think I have to switch back to the 'Classic Editor'. Could be a theme issue, but I've converted almost all my new posts to Gutenberg format now I don't know if I remove Gutenberg what would happen to the formatting on my posts.

Rating breakdown

Likelihood to recommend: 10/10