There are roughly 1.13 billion websites on the internet and 43% of them are built with WordPress. That’s 559.000.000 websites!
This fantastic statistic means nothing if what WordPress offers doesn’t fit your needs, however.
You want to build a website because you need it to support your business. So, just because a platform is popular, it doesn’t mean you have to use it.
You need to use a platform that truly fits your needs. Not just to follow the crowd.
So the question is, is WordPress really the platform you need to build your professional website?
In this post, I will provide some reasons why WordPress is still the best website builder to create a professional website. I will also provide some field realities around WordPress to give you balanced insights before you truly create a WordPress website.
But first, who am I?
Shortcuts ⤵️
- Absolute site ownership
- You can turn your website into anything
- There is no king
- Full design control
- Optimization control
- Solid SEO foundation
- Extensive integration support
- Limitless possibilities for creators
- WordPress cons
I Have Been Using WordPress Since 2013
My name is Aliko, the creator of the blog you are currently reading.
I can’t remember when exactly I created my first WordPress website. Maybe in 2010 or something. All I can remember is that I was still in college at that time.
But I can still remember the first professional website I created with WordPress. That was in 2013. I consider it a professional website because I managed to make money from it (selling affiliate products from Amazon).
Based on that, I consider 2013 was the year I began my professional journey with WordPress.
I mainly use WordPress for blogging, but I once also used WordPress to create several other projects, including a stock photo website (discontinued). I also once created WordPress websites for someone else although I don’t offer a professional web development service.
Since 2019, I have focused on developing this blog to share my knowledge with those wanting to build a website with WordPress and grow a business with it.
One crucial thing you need to note. I am not a developer. I am just a regular user who uses WordPress to build websites for business.
So, no biased opinions here. What I will share are based on real experiences.
I Tried Other Website Builders Too
Life is too short to do only one thing or to use only one thing.
WordPress is a great software but it is definitely not perfect. Although most of my needs are already fulfilled by WordPress, I sometimes make some exploration to find out the life beyond WordPress.
Before settling with WordPress, my go-to options for website builder platforms were Joomla and Drupal. They have things in common like WordPress. They are are open source software and free to use.
Before building a live site on a paid hosting service, you can try them on your local computer using XAMPP or MAMP (if you are a Mac user). Both Joomla and Drupal are PHP-based software just like WordPress and relatively easy to install.
Unfortunately, the Joomla and Drupal ecosystems didn’t evolve like WordPress. It’s hard to find plugins or themes for both platforms, leaving users who don’t have programming knowledge limited customization options.
I also tried Ghost, which is also open source. It is a great platform, but only usable for blogging. You can’t extend its functionality with plugins. Ghost doesn’t offer flexibility like WordPress does.
Design options are also extremely limited. I couldn’t even create a custom homepage for my blog.
Platforms like Wix, Webflow and Squarespace are out of my consideration because they are closed platforms.
I 100% prefer to use an open source platform to build a website for a strong, valid reason: ownership. I will elaborate on this shortly below.
Reasons WordPress is the Best Solution to Build a Professional Website
1. Absolute Site Ownership
This is the main reason I still use WordPress despite so many options of website builder software. I have no plan to switch away from it. When you build a website with WordPress, you completely own it.
If, for example, your hosting service does something you can’t accept (e.g. increases the service fee with no reasonable reasons), you can simply migrate to another hosting and take away everything you have built.
Migrating from a certain hosting service to another one is a common practice in the WordPress space. And it’s not a hard job. Plugins like Migrate Guru and UpdraftPlus make everything easier.
Some hosting services like Cloudways and Pressable also offer a dedicated migration plugin to make it easier for customers to migrate to their hosting service.
Also, they offer a migration service although not always available for free.
You can migrate your website to another hosting because you own your website. Not just rent it.
If your website is built with Webflow, Wix or Squarespace, you will be locked out forever in the platforms. You can’t move your website somewhere else.
Why?
Because there is only one hosting service for Webflow, Wix and Squarespace — the platform itself.
If the platform where you created your website does something crazy, nothing you can do but curse.
2. You Can Turn Your Website into Anything
I said earlier, I mainly use WordPress to create blogs. The blog you are currently accessing is the prime example.
But if I want it, I can add other functionalities to my blog. For instance, I can add a membership functionality and charge a certain fee for my readers to access member-only content.
Or, I can turn this blog into an e-commerce platform using WooCommerce.
Want to turn your WordPress website into a newsletter platform? Plugins like MailPoet and Newsletter Glue can help to turn your ideas into reality.
WordPress is the best web builder platform when it comes to flexibility. It allows you to turn your website into anything thanks to the abundance of plugins availability.
The best part, you can always have full control over your data because your website is self-hosted on the hosting service of your choice. You can download your website in case you want to have an offline backup.
Also, you don’t need to have a programming background. Plugins offer no-code feature addition to your website.
3. There is no King in WordPress
Compared to WordPress, closed platforms like Wix and Squarespace are commonly easier to set up and maintain.
But again, there is a big issue with a closed web builder platform. You will forever be locked out into its platform. You have no freedom to move away like you do when you use WordPress.
Mind you, the end goal of every business is to get profit. And being a business, a website builder platform also aims for profit.
Unfortunately, the way it makes money sometimes (or oftentimes) is harming users.
A closed platform can change their policy at any time to align with their business goal. Even if it harms its users. And, the business goal usually change after it make an exit. Be it IPO, getting acquired, etc.
Take Squarespace, for example. Its price increase above may have been triggered by the acquisition by Permira.
There are also big players in the WordPress ecosystem, but there is absolutely no king.
Take WP Engine, for instance. It is a big player in the WordPress ecosystem. It is one of the most popular managed hosting services for WordPress which also owns ACF, the most popular custom field plugin (a plugin to create custom meta data).
But if you have a bad perception of WP Engine and don’t want to use its products, you can use plugins like JetEngine, Pods or Meta Box instead of ACF.
Or say you need an SEO plugin but are not interested in using Yoast because it is owned by a private equity. You can use its alternatives like SEOPress or AIO SEO (formerly All-in-one SEO Pack).
Even Automattic, the company that has the most contribution to the WordPress core development, has no absolute power. If you don’t like its products (WooCommerce, MailPoet, Pressable, Jetpack, etc.), you can use the alternatives instead.
4. Full Control Over Design
Regardless of the website type you create, design matters. Even if it is just a simple landing page. WordPress comes with a versatile editor, Gutenberg, which you can use to create static pages and to write blog posts.
If are not interested in using Gutenberg, you can use a dedicated page builder like Divi or Elementor which have more advanced design features.
You can use Divi, Elementor or Gutenberg to customize every single part of your website (header, footer, 404 page, archive pages, etc.) with limitless styling options.
The best part of designing a website in WordPress is that you can add dynamic elements.
Say you are designing a custom header. You can make a button only visible to logged users or vice versa.
If you don’t like Gutenberg, Elementor or Divi, there are alternatives you can use. Such as Breakdance, Brizy, Beaver Builder, Bricks to WPBakery.
5. Full Control Over Site Optimization
The other day, I clicked a link on Threads that took me to a landing page. The page didn’t open until I used a VPN. Even after I enabled my VPN, it took a while for the page to open.
Now, imagine you are running a paid campaign on Facebook and your landing page won’t open. What a nightmare.
Ideally, a web page is fully loaded in less than 2 seconds. Longer than that is a bad user experience signal.
In WordPress, you have full control over the site optimization to boost performance. If your hosting provider doesn’t offer decent built-in optimization features, you can install plugins like Breeze, WP Rocket to FlyingPress.
If needed, you can add CDN to reduce the load of the origin server.
For maximum performance, you can use a VPS like Cloudways and Rapyd Cloud. They offer isolated resources, which are ideal for high-traffic websites.
6. Solid Foundation for Organic Traffic
Traffic is the lifeblood of an online business. And traffic can be paid traffic or organic traffic.
Paid traffic is great for immediate results, but how long can you go with it?
For more sustainable traffic, you need to get organic traffic. Be it via search engines or AI chatbots.
To get organic traffic for your website, you need to do SEO. And WordPress is the best platform for this particular matter.
WordPress is by nature a CMS (Content Management System). No wonder it has the best CMS feature compared to other website builder platforms.
Not only can you use it to manage your content, but also to optimize it (the content) for search engines.
If needed, you can install an SEO plugin to make sure your content is SEO-friendly before you publish it.
Ghost is a CMS that also has a good SEO foundation. However, like I said, it is not fully customizable like WordPress unless you have a programming background. Also, it is only usable for blogging.
7. Extensive Integration Support with Other Platforms
WordPress is great to create a professional website. But to make it fully usable to run a business, you sometimes need to integrate it with other platforms.
For instance, if you want to leverage email automation to grow your business, you may prefer to use a SaaS solution like MailerLite or Mailchimp instead of a plugin because a SaaS-based email marketing platform commonly has a more solid email delivery function.
Or, if you want to accept payments on your website, you may need to integrate your website with PayPal, Stripe or other payment gateway platforms.
Most SaaS platforms and other internet-based platforms support integration with WordPress. Some even offer a dedicated WordPress plugin to make the integration more seamless.
8. Limitless Possibilities for Creators
We are living in the creator economy era where a lot of people make money by creating something. Be it a digital product (software) or content.
If you are a content creator, WordPress is a perfect solution to create and publish content on your own platform.
The best part of publishing content on your own platform is that you are not dictated by the algorithm. You can also build your own content distribution channel by building an email list.
Just to clarify.
Not only can you use WordPress to create and publish content in the form of articles/blog posts, but you can also publish other content types. Audio, video, newsletter, etc.
An extra hosting service may be required if you want to use WordPress to publish videos on a regular basis, but you won’t be a slave on someone else’s platform like when you are publishing content on social media.
If you want it, you can even build a social media platform with WordPress using a plugin like BuddyBoss, Fluent Community or PeepSo.
What About Content Monetization?
BuddyBoss, Fluent Community and PeepSo allow you to turn your WordPress into a paid membership platform. You can set content access restrictions according to the membership plan.
If you want to offer paid newsletter content, Newsletter Glue can help to turn your idea into reality.
Want to adopt a business model similar to Medium? You have Leaky Paywall as the solution.
While you can use the plugins I mentioned to monetize your content, you can use the native CMS feature of WordPress to publish free content to get organic traffic from search engines.
The Cons of WordPress
WordPress is built by humans so it is far from perfect.
There are some “negative” things around WordPress you need to know before you use and stick with WordPress.
❌ Too Many Options to Choose From
There is no king in the WordPress ecosystem. That’s the truth. You always have options to switch to. WordPress gives you multiple options over a certain thing. This is what makes WordPress so special.
Unfortunately, more options don’t always mean better. Especially for beginners. Sifting through thousands of products that you know very little about can be overwhelming.
✅ Solution: Stick with What Works
WordPress is a vibrant community. Many developers are actively building new plugins and themes. Whether to create a new blue ocean or to fight in a red ocean.
An easy hack to keep your “sanity” amid the crowd is to stick with what works for you. Only switch to another plugin, theme or hosting if you really need to.
❌ Maintenance Requires Time and Effort
This is true. To keep your website secure, you need to make sure that your WordPress is up to date. Not just the WordPress core, but also the plugins and themes you use.
✅ Solution: Use a Managed Hosting Service
In the past, everything could only be done manually. But today, you can hand the site maintenance over to your hosting provider.
Some hosting companies offer a managed hosting service in case you have not enough time to maintain your website yourself.
What is a managed hosting service?
In general, maintaining a WordPress website requires you to do the following tasks:
- Updating to the latest version WordPress core
- Updating to the latest version of plugins
- Updating to the latest version of themes
- Performing backups
- Tweaking the security
A managed hosting service offers the features to handle the above tasks. Be it as the core features or as add-ons.
A managed hosting service is commonly a bit more expensive than a traditional hosting service, but it is worth the money.
Some managed hosting services for WordPress I can recommend are:
| Cloudways | Kinsta | Rocket.net | Rapyd Cloud | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Automatic core update | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Automatic plugin updates | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Automatic backups | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Managed security | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Learn more | Learn more | Learn more | Learn more |
❌ Too Many Plugins Can Slow Down Your Site
Too many plugins can slow your website. This is not entirely true because most plugins work only when they are needed. In the technical term, they work only based on hooks.
However, you need to be careful when installing a new plugin. I strongly recommend you install only the plugins you need.
Avoid installing plugins with too many automatic features to minimize overload on the server. Automatic features usually run background processes which consume server resources.
The more processes run in the background, the more server resources are used.
✅ Solution: Pick a Plugin with Multiple Functionalities
The real issue with installing too many plugins is not site performance. Rather, it will add a new task to your maintenance workflow.
Also, some plugins can make your WordPress dashboard get polluted with advertisements and extra items on the menu panel. To avoid these, you can use a plugin that offers multiple functionalities.
Elementor is an example of a plugin that offers multiple functionalities and features. It comes with the following features:
- Advanced visual editor
- Form builder which you can use to create a contact form and lead generation form
- Popup builder
- Theme builder (to create custom header, footer, 404 page, archive pages, etc)
- Advanced design elements and effects (icons, animations, advanced background options, etc)
- Dynamic content
- Etc.
If you are not interested in using Elementor, you can use Divi which also have all the above features.
If you use Divi, you don’t even need to install a single plugin to get the above features. Divi is a theme and all the above features are available as the integral parts of it.
❌ WordPress is a Popular Target of Hackers
This is also true and it totally makes sense. The more popular a platform becomes, the higher the threats it gets.
Not only from serious cyber attacks but also lower-risk, annoying spam. This is a natural law and applies on all platforms, not just WordPress.
Just take a look at how many spam comments on YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn. Especially on accounts with million subscribers/followers.
✅ Use a Hosting Service with Solid Security Features
There are some plugins that you can use to secure your WordPress websites. But I strongly use a hosting service that offers solid security features.
It is much better to have security features on the server level instead of application level. Some security features you need to secure your websites are:
- SSL (This is a super basic security feature. Run away fast if a hosting service doesn’t offer this feature).
- Firewall (aka WAF, Web Application Firewall)
- Malware scanner and removal
- Vulnerability scanner
All hosting services I mentioned above come with these features.
Summary
WordPress has been around for over two decades, since 2003. It has evolved from a sole blogging platform into a full-fledged website builder platform.
One thing unchanged. WordPress remains the go-to option for non-programmers to build a website for their business.
Two main perks you will get in WordPress that are not available on other platforms:
- Site ownership
- Customizability
Closed platforms like Squarespace and Wix may be easier to use and maintain than WordPress, but you don’t really own your website. The platforms do.
You can’t move your website somewhere else.
Open source platforms like Drupal, Joomla and Ghost offer site ownership like WordPress, but they are not fully customizable like WordPress — unless you have a programming background.
WordPress is not perfect. Far from perfect. But it is still the best solution if you are not a programmer and want to build a professional website for your business.
Here are the main reasons WordPress is still the best option to build a professional website:
- Absolute site ownership
- Fully customizable, no coding skills required
- Plenty of options of plugins and themes
- Full control over design
- Full control over site optimization
- Solid SEO foundation
- Extensive integration support with other platforms
- Limitless possibilities for creators
If you want to build a professional website with WordPress, I have hand-picked some hosting services you can use to power your website.
I have also hand-picked some popular themes widely used by WordPress users.
