"I was fooled in the beginning
'Cause I thought WordPress was free
But besides all those paid plugins
What's it worth to keep my sanity?"
These are lyrics from the second half of Verse 1 in the song, "WordPress Got Ran Over By My HubSpot", which highlights one of the biggest myths on the internet... that WordPress is free. Yes, it is open-source and you can freely download the core WordPress CMS, but that is the only part of the process that is actually free!
The first thing you will have to put in place for WordPress is a hosting solution. There are many options and routes to go here, but they will all come with a price tag. You have to have the hosting account, which provides the server setup that will house your WordPress site. A cheaper hosting account could be around $20/month, but many run in the hundreds of dollars each month. And as with anything else in life, you do get what you pay for.
Beyond the hosting account, you also have to setup and pay for a SSL certificate, and a firewall/CDN solution (like Cloudflare). Of course, the firewall is optional, but as security is a major issue with WordPress, not having a firewall would be like jumping out of a plane without a parachute.
As the song mentions "those paid plugins", this is a regular part of the financial cost to your WordPress site. There are thousands of plugins available, most of which you wouldn't want to touch with a 10-foot pole, but you will have to utilize some third party plugins to make your site capable of anything beyond a blog. Some of those plugins are free, but the ones that you would need to have the best WordPress setup possible will cost you. Some are one-time costs, but many are setup as a subscription, so the cost continues.
Also, most paid plugins will be licensed to only one website, so if you have multiple sites, you'll have to purchase the plugin per website or buy a more expensive developer or commercial license. For example, one of the plugins that I see as a requirement for a WordPress site is Advanced Custom Fields. This will cost you (based on currently posted pricing) $49/year for a personal website, $149/year for a "freelancer" 10-site license, or $249/year for an agency license covering unlimited websites. That is one plugin and you'll be hard-pressed to get away with less than 20 plugins on a WordPress site.
You often hear the phrase "cost of ownership", and you have to look beyond the cost of that plugin, the monthly cost of the hosting account, etc. You have to look at the cost of your TIME involvement. Your hosting might only cost $60/month, but how much time is spent with tech support to address issues, to update PHP, to resolve conflicts that arise with server changes? That plugin might only be $99/year and can be installed in one click, but how much time is spent updating the plugin over and over, testing to make sure the updates play nicely with the rest of your setup, troubleshooting when the update breaks something else on your site, or re-applying your customizations that get lost every time you run an update?
People managing websites like WordPress or other open source solutions spend an enormous amount of time on an ongoing basis just fighting to keep the lights on. The reality is, between all of the updates and maintenance that comes with a website like this, those updates simply do NOT always go smoothly. There WILL be moments when everything comes crashing down and you spend the next 3 days trying to dig that needle out of the haystack.
In the end, time is money. Simple and true. That initial download was free, but how much are you now spending with your therapist? :)
As we're looking at the HubSpot CMS in comparison to WordPress, how does HubSpot stack up against all of the above? I'm glad you asked.
I have personally migrated a great number of clients off of WordPress and onto HubSpot's CMS Hub... and the client is always thrilled with their decision!
If you're running a website on WordPress, it's time to let go of the mess and the stress. We can help. Let's chat.