WordPress is a good CMS and can do a lot of things. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. As with anything there are a few things that are not so good about it. Knowing the pros and the cons of the technology will help you make a better decision whether or not WordPress is the right solution for your website.
Lets start with the pros.
The pros of using WordPress
The content editing experience is really good
WordPress uses the block editor for writing content. And while it got a lot of bad feedback when it first came out because it was very rough around the edges, it is in a really good state now.
The block editor gives content editors a lot of flexibility in using and arranging different content types from images to videos to lists and quotes. You can drop each ‘block’ onto the page and then rearrange them how you want.
Lots of plugins and themes to help you build your website
The plugins and theme ecosystem is what defines WordPress. Thousands of developers and designers have created plugins and themes to do all kinds of things.
Want e-commerce on your site? Install WooCommerce. Need simple forms? Install Contact Form 7.
Because of WordPress’ popularity. A lot of other companies have also create plugins to help you easily integrate their services into your website as well.
You have the freedom to build your website exactly how you want
WordPress is extremely flexible. With the right expertise you can build almost any website you want and have it work and look exactly how you want. Many of the biggest websites in the world are built on top of WordPress.
So those are a few of the really good things about WordPress. Now for the cons
The cons of using WordPress
It takes time to learn
The block editor is very different to your typical word application. So some time is needed in order to learn how to use it.
This is double true is you plan on building your website by yourself. Building a website using WordPress is not as straightforward as it is if you were to use another service like Squarespace or Wix. WordPress.com might take away some complexity with building a WordPress website but you will still need to make a lot of decisions along the way like what themes and plugins to use for certain features. Whereas an out of the box might already have those features built in.
It is easy to build a bad website
WordPress gives you a lot of freedom when building your website but because of that, it can be easy to build a bad website. Not every plugin or theme is good. Using poorly built plugins and themes for your website can make the site worse.
It is important to thoroughly check any new plugins or theme you want to introduce to your website to make sure it won’t cause problems for your website.
It’s rarely the cheapest option
Unless your website is a simple blog. You will probably need to spend some money on your website.
A lot of the out of the box services run on a fixed monthly price and have a lot of features included. With WordPress, you will be using things from a lot of different companies and services including plugins, hosting, domains, emails, security etc. Each of these have a cost and when you add them together they can add up to more than what you would pay another service.
Wrapping up
Knowing the pros and cons of any technology is important to make an informed decision of whether or not to use it. WordPress is no exception. It’s a really good CMS but it’s not perfect for every situation. The key thing to think about is if the pros are worth the cons or if the cons can be mitigated.