WordPress

WordPress is one of the best website builders in the market. However, you may not be sure whether it is the best choice for your needs of not. Unlike Squarespace, Weebly, or Wix, WordPress is 100% free. It explains why the search phrase “WordPress reviews” hardly brings any results. 

The reason is that bloggers want to write reviews for products that give them a commission. To help you make the right decision for your business, we have come up with this ultimate review for the WordPress software. You will get to understand the features, performance, support, pricing, pros, and cons of the WordPress website builder.

WordPress has two versions available for the users. These include the self-hosted version and the fully-hosted version. If the two confuse you, I will explain to you the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

What is WordPress.com 

WordPress.com is a fully-hosted version that manages your hosting on your behalf. In the hosting service, the provider stores the online content of your website so that people can type the URL address of your website and access your website.

It is just like renting an apartment to help people know exactly where to get you. The URL serves as the house number and street name. WordPress.com will take care of your hosting needs at a monthly fee just like website builders like Weebly and Wix work. It will save you the job of trying to find a separate hosting service provider and having to go through the technical jargon that you need to start a website. 

What is WordPress.org 

On the other hand, WordPress.org is a self-hosted version that we will be reviewing in this post. It gives you ultimate flexibility and control over your site with none of the restrictions that come with WordPress.com. What you will be giving up at this point is the ease of use. You will have to deal with all the technical elements of owning, operating, and even maintaining the WordPress website.

WordPress.com vs WordPress.org

What most people don’t know is that WordPress.org and WordPress.com are two very different platforms. Most beginners confuse between these two platforms and this can make you choose the wrong blogging platform for your needs. Most people ask which platform is better between these two. It all depends on what you want to do and your level of knowledge. 

The primary difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com is who is actually hosting your website. We recommend WordPress.org because you will be hosting your website by yourself. On the contrary, with WordPress.com, the platform takes care of all the website hosting needs on your behalf. Even though it is easier to start with WordPress.com, it comes with less freedom. It is the major difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com. 

Personal bloggers who don’t care about generating income from their website can go for the free option of WordPress.com. If you are a blogger or a business and want to make money from your website, it is recommended to use self-hosted WordPress.org. This platform gives you the flexibility and freedom of growing your website the way you wish. 

WordPress.com business gives you so many advanced features plan but this comes at a price. You can also use the self-hosted WordPress site which is much cheaper. According to us, WordPress is the better platform’s hands down. It is the platform that all professional bloggers, big brand names, and small business owners are using globally. However, you still have to do a WordPress login before you use any of them.

The primary objective of WordPress is to give you a website building experience that is as easy as possible. Even beginners will not have a hard time when it comes to using the WordPress website builder. Here are some of the most essential features of WordPress. You will get access to all these features after the WordPress login.

1. eCommerce capabilities

WordPress templates and plugins are readily available if you wish to set up an online store within the WordPress.org website. It is a feature that most website builders in the market do not offer. When using the WordPress website builder, you can be sure of getting access to the most important WordPress eCommerce capabilities. It is one of the features that motivate people to use this website builder.

2. SEO Services 

One of the key considerations when developing a website is SEO. There is no way you will compete favorably online unless you take good care of your SEO needs. The good thing about creating your website with WordPress.org is that it will be already optimized for the search engines. However, you can look for a broad range of SEO plugins and packs to improve your SEO further. You will not have any major challenges when using the WordPress Website builder. The Platform comes already optimized for SEO in the search engine hence increasing the visibility of your website. 

3. Developer Features 

Users who have more advanced knowledge in building websites will have access to more specialized features when using the WordPress website builder. Some of them include the theme system and plugin, the custom content types, and the application framework. These developer features are very crucial whenever you are building a website. It is one of the things that people look for when developing a website. You will get all these capabilities in the Website builder that comes from WordPress. 

4. Templates 

WordPress.org provides a broad range of free WordPress themes. It can also accept theme submission from web designers and users. WordPress themes are something that most developers want to find in a website builder as it makes their work easy. You can filter these directories basing on the layout like wide blocks, left sidebar, and the grid. You will not fail to get the best WordPress templates when using this platform.

The WordPress themes you choose depend on features like threaded comments, microformats, and custom logos. You can even get free WordPress themes that will give you a great service. The last category comprises of subjects like eCommerce, photography, and block. All of them have a special role to play in as far as web development is concerned. This platform will not let you down if you are looking for the best templates in the website builder.

5. Open Code Access

This is yet another close feature that users look for when shopping for the best website builders in the market. Even though WordPress.org is a free platform, it comes fully packed with the open code access capability.

When using WordPress, you will get access to the codes that are used to power it. It allows you to customize everything and even build new features as per your desires. Therefore, it comes in handy if you are having a complex website that requires extra functionality and custom tools.

Who does not require such a capability on the website builder of choice? When you have access to these WordPress codes, it will help you to do all these things. The good news is that you can make it to work as you wish. There is nothing that is too hard when using the WordPress website builder because of its open code access. 

6. Large Professional Community 

One thing you will love about WordPress is the fact that it is the most popular brand all over the world. Therefore, it is not hard to find an excellent website developer to work on your website. There are also so many online tutorials and classes that you can access in order to learn how to use the WordPress platform.  The large community makes WordPress to be highly approachable. 

The most important thing is to set aside some budget and time to invest in the initial learning process. You will really love the kind of knowledge that you will gain from the huge professional community. If you have any challenges, the WordPress help team will assist you with troubleshooting within no time.

7. Uncountable Number of Plugins 

Because WordPress is an open-source, any person who has coding skills can create plugins, WordPress themes, tools, and features for it. Currently, WordPress has one of the largest plugin libraries among other website builders in the world. The good thing about this library is that it is still growing.

The large plugin library is what gives WordPress the flexibility that it has and it is among the biggest draws. Are you looking for a payment tool, product management tool, membership access tool, and many more? There are plugins for almost all these features and functions. Therefore, there are no impossibilities whatever you wish to add on your website. It is among the most amazing features that you can get in a website builder.

The other important thing you want to look in your website is the performance. WordPress ranks among the best when looking at this feature. The load time of these websites normally ranks between 0.8 to 1.0 seconds. However, this virtually depends on server status and internet speed. Therefore, you cannot blame the builder alone on the performance of the Website, 

WordPress.org doesn’t offer any kind of in-house web hosting services. Therefore, the uptime exclusively depends on the third-party service providers that you choose. Therefore, you have to make sure that the choices are right. All said and done, WordPress website builders produce one of the best performing WordPress websites in the market. It is an excellent choice if you are looking for a website that is highly reliable. 

The performance of WordPress is basically more than satisfactory. When it comes to uptime, site load speed, and TTFB, WordPress has some of the best performance. The site speed is the time that the site takes to fully load. 

The uptime is trickier because it refers to the period of time the website will take to be life or without crashing. The initials TTFB refers to “Time till First Byte’ and it measures to the speed at which your site responds to the before-mentioned call. 

Most of these parameters apply to the WordPress.com website. The reason is that you can host the .org version on any web hosting provider. Therefore, it is not the fault of the tool if the website server begins to crash. The parameters that we observed are TTFB of 301ms, the uptime of 99.98%, and a load time of 3914ms. Any person will tell you that these parameters are just more than okay. Out of all the website builders, the performance of WordPress is among the best.

WordPress customer service is among the best in the industry. WordPress.org does not offer a dedicated WordPress help team for the website builder services. However, this is something that you can expect from a free service. As a result, you will have to troubleshoot issues on your own and seek to find solutions. The good thing is that the company has a great community that will hell you to find the best solutions for any challenges that come your way. You can do this by calling the WordPress support number directly.

The other way out is top hire someone who knows how to resolve some of these issues to serve you. As a popular platform, we have so many people who company a high level of technical knowledge in WordPress. Therefore, unlike the other website builders, you will not have a problem using the WordPress website builder.

You will not get stuck, by any means, because support is always coming your way. There are so many sources of support that you can get when using this platform. Don’t choose a web builder unless if you know where you will get WordPress help in case a problem comes your way. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with WordPress customer service if you need any technical support when using this platform.