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You might be using WordPress currently and you might love what it has done for your webpage. But, have you ever seriously thought about the real, total cost benefits (and drawbacks) of WordPress? Here are some of the calculations that I have down for the cost to the close actual amount.

First, let’s compare some of the possible scenarios that can appear in 2020 – you might be attracted to cool Javascript frameworks like Gatsby.js(React), Next.js(React), or Nuxt.js(Vue). These days, these are the most trending frameworks to publish blogs or build other websites. Okay, For this example, let’s pick the below

• Gatsby.js – An open-source tools that allow developers to create faster websites and apps
• Contentful – A digital platform that can connect to other apps and devices.

Note: I am a developer who loves the value and power of Javascript/Node.js framework(s) including react, Vue and all of the cool libraries on NPM. In this article, I will only talk about a part of topics from a certain side – cost around building/managing websites with blogging features. In the actual cases, the answer for which technology you should use is just “Case by case.”, so there isn’t one right answer!

Here let’s imagine you’re the owner of a new web service project and are on a mission to attract potential buyers, with a co-worker who is mid-leveled experienced.

TL;DR;

In short, there are a lot of invisible cost benefits when you use WordPress. More than you might think!

The Costs When Building the First Version

Building Design & Frontside: 10 Hours vs 10 Days

Designing your WordPress site is the most difficult problem, you can Google to find out the benchmark websites and pick several sites. Okay then let’s build a website similar to them…

• WordPress (2Days) Just find a theme you like, and then install it to your WordPress site. Okay, let’s get started!
• Gatsby.js + Contentful (14Days) Ask your developer and tell him “Please build a website like…”. Then you can just wait until he builds it with writing the first or second content for your new blog site. You might want to grab a couple of beers while you wait because it is going to take a while.
• Or, if you are starting your business by yourself, then you might need to hire an online developer like Upwork.com. That can cost at least $1,500USD.
  So hopefully you picked WordPress to create your website that will help boost your company. Now let’s take a look at managing content

Building “Managing Content” Part: Know the Difference

Okay! Then you’ve got a beautiful website which will grow your company as you’ve always dreamed of. Ah, but how to update my shiny content?

• WordPress (0 Minutes) Just logging into the admin panel, then you’ve got it!
• Gatsby.js + Contentful (0 Minutes) Just logging into the admin panel, then you’ve got it!

Because both of them have great admin panels, there aren’t any differences between the two programs. 😀
Finally, you’ve got the place to publish your content. Okay, now let’s ship it and keep moving forward.

After Publishing the First 5 Posts

You’ve succeeded to publish 5 of the first bright posts and published them via your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Your audiences seem to enjoy reading your content! Things are going great, But…

Costs for adding a “share buttons”: 1Hour vs 1Day

…Woops, now you just noticed that there are no social share buttons on your content side. Okay, let’s fix that.

• WordPress (1 Hour) You can search in google with keywords like “WordPress social share plugin”, compare plugin reviews, choose one (which takes about 30 minutes). One example of this is f, AddToAny Share Buttons. After that, you just install the plugin and configure it with the plugin instruction. That’s all!
• Gatsby.js + Contentful (1 Day) First you need to have a meeting with your team developer (30 minutes) to talk about what kind of “buttons”, how it looks, where it should be placed. Your excellent teammate would make the feature in 3 hours, and you will check his work and might ask him: “could you please add Pinterest button?”.
  As you can see, you are saving not only your time but also your teammate’s time (and sanity) by using WordPress to install a quick button like a “share button”. With the new content and share option, you are going to need a place for your audience to have a discussion and talk about your content.

Cost for adding “Comment section”: 10 Minutes vs 5Hour

You’ve noticed that your competitor’s website has a comment section and now you want one too for your site. Okay, let’s add it to your website.

• WordPress (10 minutes) Just log in to WordPress dashboard and enable discussion features which WordPress itself has.
• Gatsby.js + Contentful (3 Hour) Yup, this could be a problem… First, you will ask your teammate and he will get the Gatsby official docs about adding comments on the way to find the best way. Your teammate can implement it using Disqus along with the doc.
  As with all the other steps so far, WordPress just makes it simple for you. The time you save using WordPress can be used to working on other parts of your company that need your attention.

Costs for adding “(Anything you will want)”

So as you have seen already seen in each section, the main difference between working with WordPress and other programs is the time (hours) it takes to add features. While it might not seem like a big change now, You will see that the total time difference is huge. For example, to add 10 features it will take 10 hours and 10 Days. If we calculate it as a cost like: 1H = $50, 10H = $500, 10D = 80H = $4000, Then it would be like cutting 85% of the costs, sounds unbelievable right? But it’s true in a lot of cases.

What makes the difference between WordPress and everyone else? The answer is not in the WordPress source code but in the huge community & ecosystem.

What makes the difference? – A: WordPress’ priceless plugin ecosystem

Since 2004, WordPress’ plugin system and it’s ecosystem has been growing greatly (Here you can see its history). For 16 years, Great developers in the community have built great plugins for a lot of uses.
Looking for an SEO plugin? There is Yoast. Contact Form? Yes, there is Contact Form 7. E-Commerce? Yes, you can start today with [WooCommerce]() and it’s 3rd party plugins.

Here let me introduce a few of my favorite plugins which will work on any kind of WordPress sites, tiny and cute ones 🙂

• Custom Codes – I love this because this enables us to add Javascript & CSS codes (also SASS and LESS) from the admin panel in the most easily quick way.
• Central Color Palette – This helps to manage colors as you like in the color palette of an editor, customizer, and others in WordPress.
• Customizer Search – Quick filtering the customer menu with just putting keyword(s). This is very simple and useful, I think once you have this you can’t leave it!

I always appreciate and respect the work that the developers put in, thanks!
All you have to do is just choose which plugin you want to use. This saves you the trouble of making all of the features by yourself.

There’s the Difference – Why don’t you think highly of WordPress, again?

In this post, I tried to simulate the situation of building a website with blogging features. to summarize the benefits that come from WordPress:

• 2 Days vs 14Days for building the first version
• 1 Hour vs 1 Day for adding a feature
• WordPress’ plugin ecosystem makes the (large) difference

As you can see, there are a lot of benefits of using WordPress to build your website. If you are in a situation where your team doesn’t have developers, then you should especially choose WordPress! Using WordPress allows benefits not only from the core features but also getting features from the community & ecosystem. It’s very similar to other open-source tools NPM or Linux repositories, but WordPress’s benefits are not only for developers, but they are also aimed more towards users.

I might have oversold the benefits of WordPress, but I feel like it can be true in a lot of cases all over the world. I would love to hear what you think! I would love to hear your thoughts and opinion on the comments below or on Twitter!

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