WordPress is a common solution for people who want a cheap and fancy page. There are many reason why people choose WordPress and one of them is because it is free.

I’d like to show here that this is only half true. I’d like to clarify that I don’t want to demotivate people from using WordPress. Actually, this article was written using WordPress, I have a few pages done with WordPress and I’ll keep creating new pages with it. I just would like to show something you might not be considering when choosing this platform for designing your website.

Don’t confuse WordPress with your domain and hosting.

Many host companies advices their hosting service with phrases like: have your free WordPress site with us. This is just a trick message, what they are saying is that if you hire their hosting service (which will not be for free), you will have WordPress installed.

Here, you have to use a loupe for checking how flexible is the WordPress they are installing to you. Many times you discover that the product don’t allow you to add new templates or plugins. If that’s the situation, you might discover that the plugins and templates feature can only be activated only if you upgrade your plan.

The cool templates are not free

Once you have your hosting, you need a template. If you chose WordPress because it is free of charge, you probably started googling “wordpress free template”.

Initially you will think that all the links on the result are really free, but in practice they are not. Most of the template providers show a few options of templates, but the coolest ones must be paid.

I’d like to highlight that I highly recommend purchasing a template. And I’m very in favour of paying for a good service/product, however, what I’m trying to show in this article is that if you choose WordPress thinking that you wouldn’t pay a penny, you will see that you might be wrong.

When choosing your template, be aware that a WordPress template might be much more expensive than the same template. Again, remember that it is more expensive in terms of price, you might save a lot of time when developing your website.

Plugins are not really free

Ok, you installed WordPress and chose a template. Next is the time for reading about how to use both. Here you will learn a lot about the recommended plugins.

Loginizer

Firstly, you will learn that you should have a plugin for controlling your website security. The most common one is Lognizer. If you google “wordpress loginizer” you will end up with this page: https://wordpress.org/plugins/loginizer/, which don’t say anything about price.

After installing it, you will see that most of its features, like reCaptcha, two factor authentication and many more, are not included in the free version. The real price is between $24 and $150 per year. https://loginizer.com/pricing.

Akismet

If you don’t want to suffer with spammers, you need to install Akismet. This is a free plugin for a personal website, but if they thin that your website is a commercial one, then you have to start paying like £8 a month or £80 a year. https://akismet.com/plans/

There are many ways people can spam your website with wordpress, not only with comments, so this plugin might be required if you have a popular website.

WPML

If you want to achieve the highest number of users in this planet, you might need to use a multilingual plugin. Most of them have paid versions, and the free version might limit the number of languages to two or the number of words translated.

A common solution is WPML which costs from $29 to $159. (https://wpml.org/purchase/). Again, it might worth having this plugin, but considers that so far, nothing has been done for free, and the budget is growing step-by-step.

Elementor

One common plugin which comes with many templates is Elementor. This plugin allows the user to build their website by using visual blocks. This is a great plugin, for those who love refurnishing their website. Iti si cool, but consider that many components, like navigation menu, or media carousels, are only available if you have the PRO version, which costs $49 per year. https://elementor.com/pricing/

Conclusion

WordPress is a great tool for creating websites and it saves a lot of effort. Just consider that this tool is not as free-of-charge as you think. Choose the appropriated plugins and templates and enjoy it!

WordPress is not the government services which you have to pay use them or not. Here, you still have the option of selecting which plugins you like, and pay only for those you use.