We love WordPress—it’s simple, user-friendly, and a cost-effective way to get your website off the ground.
Having said that, we have a bone to pick with WordPress as well. While it’s effectively marketed itself as the ideal “free” hosting service (free templates, free plugins, cheap domain hosting), such claims are often too good to be true. The cost of something involves more than just its direct financial impact, and without professional guidance, WordPress gets very costly indeed.
The Cost of Free Templates
Sure, there are plenty of free WordPress templates out there. This is the problem. The best part about free themes is also the worst—they’re free, which means everyone is using them.
Stale templates make your site look amateurish and unoriginal. It’s hard to establish yourself as an authority when you’re using the same website design and style as thousands of other businesses.
On top of that, using free themes to save on WordPress costs can actually end up hurting your page’s SEO value. How?
The culprit is the links found in the footer of your theme. This feature lets proprietary developers who provide free themes include links back to their own website. This is fine in theory, but some theme developers are taking advantage of this and including links to less reputable pages in exchange for a fee from the unsavory websites in question. This means that without the right guidance, you may end up backlinking to some nasty web pages, which sends a clear signal to Google that your page isn’t reputable. This can put a serious dent in the way Google ends up indexing your page.
You work hard on your business and the content that drives it—don’t sell yourself short by settling for uninspired and shady design. If you’re struggling to stand out from the crowd, (and don’t feel like dropping the cash for paid themes,) the services of a professional web development firm can set you straight by analyzing the content of your site and developing a style unique to your brand.
The Cost of Free Plugins
Just like themes, there are a wealth of free plugins to choose from to help keep your WordPress costs down. Ordinary plugins. Ordinary plugins for ordinary websites.
But that’s not you, is it? Your site is more original than that, featuring customized functionality across your UI, content creation, and administrative management. This is as essential as having a unique design—your website drives your business and helps solidify your brand in the minds of your customers.
If your website currently relies on run-of-the-mill plugins, consider contracting with a professional who can help you make an impact with a unique digital presence.
The Cost of Site Management
As they say, time is money. And who has the money to waste fiddling with your website all the time?
Site management is an expensive proposition when you consider the employee manpower and resources that website development and upkeep require. You’re not a dedicated web developer; you have your own job that needs your full attention. And not just that—your WordPress costs will really rise if misfortune strikes your site in the way of server crashes, glitches, or exploitation by unauthorized users.
Dedicated web development firms can handle all of the back-end grunt work for you and ensure fast problem resolution if your site ever goes down. While less “free” than the services offered by WordPress, you get a guarantee of quality, originality, and support that can’t be found elsewhere.
