Item: WordPress
Rating: 8
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use WordPress to host our marketing websites for our companies and products. We do graphic design in house and outsource custom theming and development to freelancers. WordPress being so popular means that the availability of freelancers for just about anything you would want to do in WordPress is available at reasonable cost.

Pros and Cons

Broad User Base
Open Source Flexibility
Fast to get started

Breaking changes with Plugins & Themes
Security, Backups, & Updates easily forgotten about
Managed WordPress becomes a trade off between flexibility and ease of management

Return on Investment

Democratizes web content manipulation by being relatively easy to use, meaning content updates can be done inexpensively.
Offers expandable functionality far beyond other products, meaning if there's something we want to do, we don't have to start over with another product.
Looking professional pays dividends, so a sharp custom theme goes a long way.

Alternatives Considered

Squarespace, Wix, Joomla!, Drupal and Plone

WordPress has the largest community of users, selection of plugins and themes, and the best third party support on the market.

It's tempting to go with something that is less customizable and therefore requires less maintenance, but if you desire flexibility, WordPress is a good choice.

Other Content Management Systems truly require development resources to implement and maintain for any length of time, making them far more expensive in the long run.

Key Insights

Do you think WordPress delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with WordPress's feature set?

Yes

Did WordPress live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of WordPress go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy WordPress again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Drupal

Likelihood to Recommend

WordPress can made to do just about anything with the low cost to get started, which makes it popular, which means it often gets used where it is not the ideal solution. The low barriers to entry mean there's many people out there who use and sell WordPress solutions with a large variance in quality. Many people don't understand that sites created with WordPress need to be maintained with constant care and feeding to patch security issues, and do not budget their time, money, and other resources accordingly leading to frustration.

WordPress - One size fits most -- but you'll need a tailor to look your best.

Overall Satisfaction with WordPress