WordPress is a widely used platform among website developers that allows you to build and design a website. However, this service isn’t completely free; there are a lot hidden costs of building a WordPress website and it is much harder to manage which means website developers can charge an arm and a leg for the same services you could achieve doing it yourself or through a web developer who has decided to move away from this platform which is becoming rapidly outdated.
WordPress comes with myriad of free features but with a limited usage policy. So, if you’re looking to upgrade to premium WordPress plans, here are some hidden costs that you should keep in mind when building a website with WordPress:
Hidden Costs of Building a WordPress Website
1. Professional Developers
Building a WordPress website can take a lot of time and effort just the get the website up to scratch compared with some of the more modern website builders such as Editor X, Wix, Shopify, or Squarespace. Unless you a building the next AirBnb, you don’t need to build on WordPress and actually it might even hurt your business. Not just financially, as often developers building on WordPress are much much more expensive or cut corners, but also it can be detrimental to SEO, Security, and your time. WordPress websites are a lot more work and are much harder to maintain because they are fastly becoming the dinosaur of website development platforms. If we had this discussion in 2018 I would have told you differently, but in 2021 more modern website builders have not only closed the gap in terms of functionality, customisation, and SEO - they also offer 24/7 support and modern tools to get whatever you need done.
2. Ongoing Support
Lets say you decide to go down the WordPress path and build the site with a professional WordPress developer, you paid $1,000 it took two months and it looks okay but they left half your backend unfinished and scrappy. Or, you paid $3,000 and they did a great job. But now, 12 months later, you are getting notifications of outdated security settings, you need to change your contact number, your forms need updating, you want to add some extra text or even just add your new logo, or an even worse case your website get hacked! If you can still find your expensive developer they’re going to charge anywhere between $250-$1,000 to fix it or even make small changes. With more modern platforms none of the above is an issue, they have very simple, easy to use systems for you to make updates yourself, or, if you want to hire someone like us we will charge $20, because it takes us 5 minutes to make those updates. Modern CMS providers also have your website backup running automatically and have state of the art security measures and constantly monitoring security teams to protect your site should anything ever go wrong with no extra cost.
3. Website Hosting
Website hosting is important to make your business accessible via the World Wide Web. There are three ways you can host your WordPress website:
Shared hosting is when your website is shared with others. This option is cheap but is slow.
VPS hosting is relatively faster than shared hosting because fewer websites share a single host; thus, increasing the price.
Dedicated hosting is when you don’t share the host. Thus, getting maximum speed but at a higher price, starting from $79.99/month at Bluehost.com.
4. Secure Socket Layer Certificate
SSL certificate is a public key certificate that proves your ownership of a public key, such as for storing passwords, pins, etc. It shows the authenticity of your WordPress website as a green mark on your website: Secure https://. The basic SSL certificate at Bluehost.com costs $36.75/year.
5. Website Design
WordPress offers many free themes and designs to build your website, but that’s something everyone can use. Hence, if you want to make your website unique and attractive, you might have to buy premium designs, logos, and paid quality images that distinguish you from others. A typical WordPress design may cost around $19 to as high as $5000 – or even more.
6. Website Security
Your WordPress’s standard security features may seem secure, but you’ll have to spend some chunks of your profit to ensure the security of your website. That being said it is not uncommon for WordPress websites to be hacked and compromised (if you don’t believe me Google it), this means you also have to make sure that the data entered by your customers is adequately protected otherwise you could be in more trouble. Factor in the costs of your hosting, and now add on a standard website security plan at such as GoDaddy’s which adds an extra $6.25/month. A benefit to modern closed system Website CMS platforms (Wix, Shopify etc) is that they can more easily secure your site and with hundreds of millions of websites, you can be sure they have the resources to do it.
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We hope the above summary has been helpful for you to understand some of the hidden costs of using an older system. A lot of website developers haven’t embraced new website building systems for the same reason that cigarette companies would tell you that smoking was actually healthy back in the 20th century – money. If they tell you a range of excuses such as “SEO isn’t good” or “not as customisable” - I’d encourage you to ask any of our clients happily using their new, easy to use websites if that’s the case and I think you’d get a different answer.
Contact us for help with upgrading or building your new site today