One of the questions I get asked by people who are interested in running an online business is what are the benefits of using WordPress over other website building platforms? WordPress has many advantages over its competitors and I believe the two main reasons are its ease of use and it is so flexible, you can build any type of website on WordPress.
WordPress powers over 30% of all websites and that increases to 60% when you narrow it down to websites that run on Content Management Systems (CMS). In this article, I will list 12 benefits of WordPress and why you should build your next website on this popular platform.
Why is WordPress so popular?
Back when it was released in 2003, WordPress was known for being a simple blogging platform.
Although it is still a great platform to blog on, it has grown to be much more versatile and robust.
Now even big corporations are running their multi-million dollar websites on WordPress
It is so easy to build websites with WordPress, anyone can do it, there is no more need to know HTML Javascript or CSS.
Although, personally, I still believe its still good if you can learn those web programming languages, they are not necessary to build a website on WordPress. In fact, with so many web hosts providing one-click WordPress installation, you can have a simple website up and running very quickly.
Benefits Of Using WordPress
1. It’s Free
Yes, WordPress is completely free, it is an open source piece of Software, which means you can download it and modify it as you wish.
Because of its popularity, there are many web hosting services that provide hosting that is optimised for WordPress. They even include one-click WordPress installation and many have free guides and tutorials on how to build a website using WordPress.
As WordPress is an open source software, there are thousands of free themes and plugins that will add extra functionality to your website.
2. Easy To Use
I mentioned this in the beginning, but I will expand on it. WordPress is popular because of its simplicity.
Anyone can start a WordPress website, it doesn’t matter if you are not very technically minded, the WordPress dashboard is easy to navigate and if you have used a text editor like Word or Notepad, then using WordPress shouldn’t difficult.
Out of all the major CMS, it definitely the most user friendly and great for beginners.
3.WordPress Is Search Engine Friendly
Why does it matter that WordPress was praised by Google’s former head of spam, Matt Cutts? Because Google is the king of search engines and they lay out the rules we must follow if we want to get organic search traffic.
Matt Cutts has stated that WordPress automatically solves the majority of technical SEO issues.
This means the coding behind WordPress is search engine friendly and gives you an advantage over other platforms. Also, with the likes of SEO plugins like Yoast and All-In-One SEO, you will be able to optimise your content so that search engines crawl your sites quickly and frequently.
4.WordPress Plugins
Given that WordPress is open source, it means that anyone can create plugins (code) that can extend the functionality of a WordPress website.
There are over 51000 plugins, you won’t need them all and in fact, many do the same job.
Look for ones that meet your needs and check what the ratings are and the number of times it has been downloaded. If its above 3 stars and over 10000 downloads then you should consider installing it.
There plugins for nearly everything, from making your site load faster to making it more secure, if you want some extra features for your WordPress site, there will be a plugin for it.
The possibilities are endless but don’t install too many plugins as this can affect the speed of your site and be bad for SEO.
5.WordPress Themes
You spoilt for choice when it comes to choosing a theme, one of the many great things about WordPress is that you don’t have to hire an expensive designer to make your website look beautiful and professional looking.
There are thousands of free themes available from the WordPress directory and then you also have the option to buy themes with extra functionality.
The WordPress theme of my site is designed by Elegant Themes, they have a huge range of premium themes at very affordable prices.
Other vendors that provide premium themes are My Theme Shop, Studio Press, Theme Forrest amongst others.
6.WordPress Is Secure
Since WordPress is so popular, it is a major target for hackers, fortunately, the WordPress community takes this threat seriously and is always updating their security features and making WordPress one of the most secure website building platforms.
WordPress actually has a team of 50 security experts who work behind the scenes to make sure that the core features of WordPress stay secure and whenever a vulnerability is identified it is patched up quickly.
One reason the hackers target WordPress is that of the huge range of themes and plugins, many of which are coded poorly and leave security holes.
This is why it’s important to always use themes and plugins from reputable developers and check that they are constantly updated.
WordPress has a range of fantastic security plugins that will help protect your site against, hackers, malware and brute force attacks.
For a list of the best WordPress security plugins, click here.
7.Worldwide Support
WordPress has a huge community of volunteers who are always willing to help, plus as it such a popular platform, there many forums and websites that totally dedicated to all things WordPress and are always willing to help people with any WordPress related problems.
9.Mobile Friendly
As more browsing is done through smartphones and tablets its vital that your website provides a good user experience on these devices.
If someone comes across a site that is not mobile friendly they will most likely leave and jump onto one that is.
Luckily WordPress is already mobile friendly and all of the themes come with responsive designs so that they look great on all devices.
One other reason to have mobile friendly websites is because they rank higher in Google. Google is now giving ranking priority to mobile-friendly websites over which are not, so if you want your website to look good on all devices, WordPress is the easy solution.
10.Build Any Type Of Website
Yes, WordPress started as a blogging platform but over the years it has evolved into a complete web development kit in which you can build any kind of website.
You can build fully responsive eCommerce stores with popular plugins like Woo commerce or WP eCommerce.
There are a variety of plugins for membership sites, directory sites, themes that are great for magazine websites or websites that deal with current affairs.
List of big brands that have many of their websites built from WordPress
Sony
MTV
Forbes
EBay
Time
Mercedes Benz
12. WordPress is Open Source
Being an open source software, you have full control of everything relating to your website. You can change any code within WordPress, modify it to your needs, even develop your own themes and plugins without the need for a licence.
Being a popular open source software, it has a large community of developers who maintain the software by updating it regularly, fixing security patches and answering questions on the official forum.
No one owns the software so once you download it, it is yours to keep and use as you see fit.
Final Thoughts
WordPress is a fantastic platform to build your website on, if you are looking to start a blog or a website, WordPress is the perfect solution for this.
If you are unsure whether WordPress is right for you or not, try it for free, build a free WordPress website using the SiteRubix platform below.
Hello there,
I totally agree with you. Wordpress is unparalleled in terms of user-friendliness.
In the past I have used ”blogger” but it is not as flexible as wodpress.
Plus, wordpress gives a lot more possibilities for customization.
And it is totally free – amazing.
What do you like most about wordpress yourself?
Hi Asen
Thanks for commenting, my favourite thing about WordPress is that it’s free and easy to use. I guess that’s 2 things.
But there is so much to like about this platform and it keeps improving.
All the best
I definitely agree that Wordpress is awesome. It makes it very easy for anyone to get a website started without having to know any technical stuff.
Great list with the reasons. When I build my first website it was before the time of Wordpress. That was very time consuming and took some learning to figure out how to get the website up and running, and was also time consuming to do small edits. I love how quick it is to do edits in WP. It really make sense that so many big companies have also started to use it as the website platform. The employees that need to do the updates can quickly learn this.
You are writing that WP is still growing. Do you have any numbers on how much it has grown over the last couple of years and how much it is expected to continue growing?
Thanks
Hi Mikael, thanks for coming on my site and commenting, as for specific stats for the last couple of years, I have none.
But in the last 5 years, WordPress downloads are up 560%, thier market share is a staggering 60% for website which run on CMS.
Thier growth is truly amazing
I agree, Wordpress is awesome! I particularly love the many different plugins available. I have found some interesting themes for free, but to get a really good one, I suggest to go with a premium theme.
I love that we no longer need to worry about coding or html. It truly has begun to be so much easier to build a website, and now everyone can do it!
I love wordpress. I use it for my site as well and have found some really great tools in their add ons that I would normally have to pay tons of money for elsewhere. I like how user friendly it is and I keep finding more ways to make things easier. It is great. Thanks for sharing with others.
I’ve hear a lot about this platform for building blogs and websites but I always thought it was a little…complicated?
I’m used to using drag and drop website builders like blogger or weebly – is wordpress as easy to use as these two options?
Do you know of any free tutorials that would help me set up a wordpress site?
Hi Chris
I haven’t used blogger or Weebly so I cannot really comment on which is easier, but they are similar and if you can use those two, you can certainly use WordPress.
There are free tutorials, if you create a free website with the plugin that I have recommended, you will be taken to a website that provides lots of tutorials on how to set up WordPress blog and how to monetise it.
All the best.