Should You Use WordPress? A Question Many Small Business Owners Often Ponder

These days, it seems like everybody is making use of WordPress to build their websites. The advantages seem to be many: it is easy to use by novices, and there are thousands of themes and plugins available. However, one should not be fooled by the herd mentality. As with all systems, there is a trade-off. While there are many advantages to using WordPress, there are also costs. We will highlight these pros and cons to help you decide if WordPress is right for you.

Pros of Using WordPress

WordPress offers some advantages to the end-user. The benefits are as follows:
• Open Source: WordPress developers often share code and solutions to problems they have encountered. The open-source nature and community of WordPress is a massive boon to developers who find problems they just can’t seem to solve.
• Simplicity: Anybody can use it. Changing the content to optimize for SEO or changing business needs is easy. The interface is intuitive and easy to navigate.
• Plug-Ins: There are thousands of plug-ins that modify the way WordPress operates. This makes it easy to set up your website for any number of business needs including e-commerce, SEO, client interactions, and more. You can find a complete listing of WordPress plugins on WordPress.com.

Cons of Using WordPress

For every upside, there is a downside. To help gain some perspective we reached out to Jon with High Level Marketing, a company that has created their own CMS platform. This is as true for WordPress as it is for any other aspect of life, perhaps even more-so, the downsides are as follows:

• Insecure: While being open source makes WordPress easy to develop, this also makes it easy to find security exploits. Even more damning to security are those plug-ins mentioned previously. Most plug-ins create a fatal security flaw that hackers can exploit to bring down your website. Even with updates, the number of vulnerabilities keeps trending upward.
• Lack of Flexibility: While professional WordPress developers can adapt themes to create a custom build for smaller sites, these child themes can leave much to be desired. The amount of work needed to make a child theme means most companies are best served using a more flexible CMS.
• Regular Updates: WordPress does receive regular updates, but updating WordPress can be tricky. Updates also have a tendency to break plug-ins. However, if you avoid updating, then you are under greater threat from hackers.
While WordPress does offer many benefits, they come at the cost of security. Ultimately, what is best for your business is up to you.