At GreenMellen, we’re big believers in the power of WordPress. I’ve personally been using it since 2004, and our agency has been using it exclusively for more than a decade now. But why? There are a lot of great content management systems out there, so what makes us stick with WordPress? There are four big reasons.
1. You own it
Many of the new content management systems (CMS) out there are fantastic. Products like Squarespace and Wix have some beautiful templates and powerful features, but they have one major drawback—you must use their servers to host them. This leads to two big problems:
- While they indeed have a lot of great features, if you want to do something outside of their feature set, you’re stuck. You just can’t do it and you have to stick with what they offer out of the box. With WordPress, the sky is the limit and you can literally add any feature you want (within the scope of your budget).
- Being hosted on their servers means that if they decided that you broke one of their rules, true or not, you’re done. Your site is toast and you’re back to square one. It’s unlikely to happen, but there is nothing you can do to prevent it.
With WordPress as your CMS, you aren’t locked in. You can host your website on thousands of different platforms, and if you encounter a problem with one of them it’s rather painless to pack up and move to another.
2. Technical ecosystem
WordPress now powers over 40% of the entire web, and that size leads to some amazing advantages. One of the biggest is the technical ecosystem that you get.
If you have a feature that you want on your site, there are 60,000 plugins that have been written to accomplish almost anything you can dream of. Because of the open nature of WordPress, you’re not even limited to those 60,000—you can write any new feature that you need.
WordPress also connects with almost any other platform that you’re already using. If you use MailChimp or Constant Contact for email, Hubspot or ActiveCampaign for your CRM, Facebook or Instagram for social media, they all connect seamlessly with WordPress.
With the size of the WordPress footprint on the web, it’s rare to find a product that does not work with it.
3. Support ecosystem
Of equal importance is the WordPress support ecosystem. This benefits you in two big ways:
- If you have a problem with your site, you can search for the answer and it’s incredibly likely that someone has faced the same issue as you in the past. There are over 455 million sites using WordPress, so your “unique” situation almost certainly isn’t unique. The power of the WordPress community is massive.
- If you have a problem with your marketing agency, you have a huge number of others you could turn to. This is great for you, because it causes agencies like GreenMellen to work very hard to keep you happy, but still gives you an easy opportunity to go elsewhere if you choose to. It’s a powerful position to be in, and the same is not true with any other content management system.
4. Community
The WordPress community is unique and wonderful. The amount of sharing and collaboration that happens between competitors is something you just don’t see very often.
Our A Brighter Web Meetup and Facebook Group are both full of others that do what we do, and we all learn from one another. When your business uses WordPress to power your website, you benefit from this shared community.
Will We Use WordPress Forever?
Will GreenMellen exclusively use WordPress forever? Probably not.
I’ve said for years that “we’re using WordPress for now, but we’ll keep an eye on new platforms that arise,” which is true. However no platform has yet to come close to the advantages that we see with WordPress.
WordPress isn’t for everyone. There are unique situations that are better suited for a tailored CMS that meets specific needs. For 99% of business leaders reading this, though, WordPress is almost certainly your best bet and it’s very likely that you’re already using it.
If you have any questions about WordPress or issues with your current setup, please reach out and we’d be happy to help you.
