As Founder & CEO of iBrand Strategy Services LLP, here are my thoughts regarding WordPress.
Pros:
Easy to Manage:- Anyone can manage WordPress with basic familiarisation. One doesn't need to have coding or technical expertise to manage it.
Flexible:- Wordpress can be used for blog writing/e-commerce/running full-scale website. Worldwide around 27% of websites run on WordPress and WordPress has 58% market share in the Content Management System. Flexibility is One of the many reasons why so many websites are on WordPress.
Look & Feel:- For WordPress, there are hundred's of themes available for free which help you create a different look and feel for your websites. This goes a long way in adapting to current brand identity for a business or individual.
Plugins:- Plugins in WordPress help extending website and making it dynamic in nature. You have plugins for everything from social share, Contact Forms, Shopping Cart, Payment Gateway Integration and what not. Given the preference for WordPress, there is also a huge number of paid options that one can use for specific applications and specific businesses.
Mobile Responsive:- Google has moved to Mobile first indexing and WordPress websites benefit from being mobile responsive. This helps in website rankings as well
Built-in Blog:- WordPress has a built-in blog giving users the ability to publish content within the same website.
Community Support:- WordPress has a very large community and that comes in handy when one faces technical issues/problems.
Cons:
Page Speed:- Google has become very particular about page speed when providing rankings. Given the bulky Wordpress Content Management System, attaining Mobile Speeds of 75+(Google's recommendation) has become a big task. Also given that Google focuses on Mobile First Indexing, high Desktop scores amount to nothing unless you can bring the page speed up. Most of the websites are struggling today with this problem. All the plugins that guaranteed good page speeds are of the earlier era before Google turned to Mobile First Indexing. So even these plugins fail to get your speed beyond 50 on Mobile.
Drag and Drop Builder:- WordPress didn't have a drag and drop page builder and recently introduced Gutenberg Page Editor that provides VERY BASIC page editing options. This often limits the ability to customize look and feel of the website. Page builders like WpBakery and Elementor created a business out of this empty space.
Security:- WordPress being an Open-source platform is often prone to hacking and security threats.
Customization required coding:- Customizing even as basic as look and feel in WordPress Requires basic understanding of HTML and CSS. If you are using paid themes, theme support may be able to help you there. But even when theme Support provides you with the code to be used, one needs to have a technical understanding of where to insert the code and what to do when it doesn't work. If the coding requires tweaking advance functionalities, you definitely want a website developer on your side.
Updations:- Let us say, you got a WordPress website developed through a developer thinking that it is easier to manage and publish content and that you can, later on, save money by not having to maintain the services fo website developer. In WordPress, this again can be problematic. WordPress, themes, and Plugins often keep coming up with updates, which at times can result in website functionalities getting impacted. This would again require an understanding of how to reverse the update or a developer to maintain the website while being fully updated. Also, with every update done on WordPress whatever page speed optimization you may have done, goes out of the window as all the bulky code comes back on the website.
