Item: WordPress
Rating: 8
Author: Lisa Keyser

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

WordPress is the most-used content management system in the world. Because of its ubiquity, we use it on about half of our clients' websites. While our current website is powered by WordPress and has been since 2015, we will be switching to a different platform later this year. Generally, it presents a quick and (mostly) free way to get a presence on the internet, with tons of free themes, plugins, and integrations that make it fairly easy to create a custom website for your business or hobby.

Pros and Cons

WordPress is incredibly easy to set up and get running with little to no technical knowledge. Most web hosts will do it for you, since it's so easy.
With thousands of themes available for free and for low cost, WordPress can accommodate any design you can imagine.
The community behind WordPress is generous, and there are loads of educational opportunities both online and in person to learn and connect with other users.

While WordPress bills itself as easy to use, some users will need to get expert help for more complex tasks.
Because the WordPress plugin ecosystem is so large, it's not uncommon to run into plugin conflicts. Troubleshooting those can be frustrating, and they can cause your website to crash.
There are some fairly basic CMS capabilities that WordPress cannot perform out of the box, which means you need to install a plugin to accomplish them. Of course, with more plugins comes more upkeep and more potential for conflicts.

Return on Investment

Because the core software is free, we're able to deploy it on client websites without a lot of front-end costs.
We occasionally run into issues that take longer to fix than expected, which end up costing us some time and money.
We frequently onboard new clients who need technical support for their WordPress websites, so it has helped us increase business.

Alternatives Considered

Joomla!, Wix and Weebly

We only build and support websites on WordPress and Joomla!. In general, WordPress is a good fit for our smaller clients who want to handle all of the maintenance and updates themselves. Our clients with larger and more complex content needs, or more sophisticated access/membership needs, we direct towards Joomla! because it has more out-of-the-box support for those. When we have run larger websites on WordPress, we occasionally run into compatibility issues, and find that many feature requests require additional plugins.

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

Joomla!, Adobe PhotoShop, Google Workspace (formerly G Suite)

Likelihood to Recommend

WordPress is scalable enough to handle any size website, from the smallest to large enterprises, universities, and more. There are very few things that you can't accomplish with it; however, some things are more easily accomplished than others. In addition, for the non-technical DIYer, there are easier platforms, though those don't offer the scalability and portability that WordPress does. The best way to determine if its a good fit is to determine what your needs are, then figure out how you would accomplish those with WordPress. We suggest it to our clients about 60% of the time.

WordPress makes getting online easy, but upkeep can be a challenge

Overall Satisfaction with WordPress