Pros & Cons of Choosing WordPress as Enterprise CMS

Enterprise websites typically represent the reputation of huge global corporations and include multiple pages, subdomains, subsites, and other elements. That is the reason you need to choose the appropriate CMS for website development. The majority of CMS solutions feature capabilities for editing and publishing web content. They enable users to create dynamic web pages with rich content without having to understand HTML or other programming languages. In any CMS, you can have more options like themes, templates, plugins, and other tools, which will help you to design, create, and manage your website.

As WordPress is the most popular CMS compared to other CMS platforms. Many enterprise-level companies to fortune 500 companies use WordPress CMS for their website development. WordPress is the first choice that comes to mind when anyone wants to develop a website for their business or personal portfolio. However, some individuals continue to doubt if it is a viable solution to develop a WordPress site for a business. If you’re running an enterprise-level business, and you’re thinking to create your website with the help of WordPress CMS, then this blog will walk through the pros and cons of WordPress for choosing as enterprise CMS. And based on that, you can make the right decision for your business website development.

What is WordPress?

According to a 2022 survey by W3Techs, WordPress is the most popular CMS that powers over 64.2% of all websites. WordPress is the principal CMS for millions of websites, including personal blogs, corporate websites, online stores, and government officials’ websites. WordPress is open-source CMS with a huge community of developers and designers to extend the platform’s features.

WordPress is a user-friendly CMS that enables you to develop and maintain modern, functional websites with ease. As WordPress is an open-source CMS, anyone can make customization based on their requirements. In 2003, WordPress began as a blogging platform, to develop blogs and personal web pages. WordPress has matured and gained immense popularity among both individuals and businesses over the years.

We can attribute WordPress’s immense popularity to the plethora of adaptable and user-friendly features that have been added over the years. WordPress has evolved from a CMS largely used by hobby bloggers to a platform utilized by many organizations and giant companies.

Difference Between WordPress.org and WordPress.com

WordPress.org

WordPress.org is free and available to anyone who wants to use it, and you will need to so that you can run a self-hosted WordPress installation. Before you can create a self-hosted website, you must register your domain name and acquire a web hosting service. Your website’s performance will be determined by the type and caliber of web hosting plan you select.

Self-hosting also gives consumers greater control over the web server space they rent from their web hosting company. The self-hosted version of WordPress enables WordPress to reach its full potential. Users can search for and install any WordPress themes or WordPress plugins, including those they have created themselves.

Self-hosted WordPress is ideal for customers that seek high levels of flexibility and customization, and who intend to scale their websites in the future.

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is a web hosting service that utilizes a website builder based on the WordPress CMS for all of the websites it serves. WordPress.com is hosted, meaning it administers the web servers that store the websites of its customers.

Users who register for the free service must use a branded domain name, such as yourwebsitename.wordpress.com. One must upgrade to a premium subscription to use a custom domain name.

Other restrictions apply to the free version. For instance, WordPress themes and plugins cannot be installed by users. Overall, hosted WordPress.com is more appropriate for customers who want to develop a website quickly and don’t mind restricted customization and flexibility.

Enterprise-Level Companies That Use WordPress

WordPress is the world’s most widely used website builder and content management system. It is possible to create practically any type of website, WordPress blog, online store, and enterprise WordPress website development. It contains thousands of free and paid plugins that may be used to increase your website’s capabilities.

The majority of websites utilize WordPress due to its adaptability, user-friendly admin interface, and extensive theme and plugin library. WordPress may be installed without having to write any code or required any programming language knowledge to create, manage, and delete any content on WordPress.

Having stated that, let’s examine the most prominent brands that use WordPress as their CMS.

1. Sony Music

Sony Music is a multinational music brand whose website is powered by WordPress. The website features its artists, the latest news, a Twitter feed in the sidebar, and more.

2. TechCrunch

TechCrunch is a renowned technology website that covers the most recent news about startups, gadgets, events, and other relevant topics.

3. Time Magazine

Time Magazine is among the oldest American news websites and publications. The website covers numerous themes, including politics, health, technology, entertainment, and science.

4. The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones website features their most recent events, music releases, online store, and other information. This website features vivid hues, interactive elements, and video.

5. Spotify Newsroom

Spotify Newsroom is the press webpage for the music streaming application Spotify. In addition to news, updates, and music releases, there is a sign-up form for an email newsletter.

Pros of WordPress CMS

After extensive research, the following are the main advantages of selecting WordPress as enterprise CMS:

An Open Source CMS

Based on PHP and MySQL, WordPress is a free and open-source content management system. Open source software enables you to make minor adjustments and modifications to your website. You can install extensions and plugins for more functionality, and you can even modify the code to alter other elements based on your requirements.

One of the most significant advantages of WordPress is that you do not need to require any developer’s help to make some changes in the content, you can do it by yourself without requiring any coding skills.

Open-source software is, as its name suggests, accessible to everybody. Because the source code of open-source software is publicly accessible. WordPress Support Forum is available, where new WordPress developers to experienced WordPress developers share available solutions for anyone’s problem related to WordPress. Still, if you or your team facing any struggle with WordPress website development, you can also take advantage of hiring expert WordPress developers from reputed WordPress development companies.

In addition, open source software powers the majority of the Internet. Some significant examples include:

1. Apache is the most popular web server software in the world.
2. Linux is the most popular web server software.
3. The most prevalent DNS server software (routes internet traffic) is BIND (DNS).
4. HTML, PHP, Ruby, Perl, and Python are languages for programming.
5. WebKit is the browser engine that Google Chrome and Safari use.
6. Mozilla: The browser engine used by Firefox and Opera.

Cost Effective Website Development

You must have considered developing a website for your online business. How much does a website development cost? Costs do play a significant role in the development of commercial websites. In fact, the costs associated with utilizing a CMS may be a deal-breaker for you. Consequently, you may spend the budget you’ve set forth for an enterprise-grade CMS on website creation, premium themes, and paid plugins.

A WordPress website’s cost relies on several factors. WordPress CMS is free of charge but the preferences may vary for each site and the cost depends on your budget, goals, requirements, etc. The Cost of website development also depends on the below factors:

1. Website designing with premium or advanced templates, extensions, and plugins.
2. WordPress security and Hosting management cost.
3. The complexity of the website development.
4. Allocated resources in the WordPress development.

With any enterprise WordPress website development, the costs do not stop at development. You must also consider the costs associated with patches, updates, support, and maintenance. You may use the costs saved here to purchase premium WordPress themes, paid WordPress plugins, managed hosting solution, a Content Delivery Network (CDN), and other development and marketing tools that may be required to support your enterprise website. You’ll still end up saving costs without compromising the usability or the performance of your website.

Fast Performance

The Speed and Performance of the Website play a vital role in the ROI of the website. The poor performance of the website affects traffic, speed, usability, and conversion rate which should be taken into consideration. Web page speed is a ranking factor for SEO which means a slow-loading page or website can lower your website ranking. Therefore, you should not take speed and performance for granted.

WordPress supports many plugins like W3Total Cache, WP Rocket, WP Smush, and many others, which help you to increase the performance of your WordPress website. You can also increase your website core web vitals score for desktop and mobile versions by using above-mentioned plugins. If your objective is to create a high-performing website for an enterprise company, I strongly suggest you should hire WordPress developers with experience in enhancing the speed and efficiency of WordPress websites.

Huge Library of 3rd Party Plugins & Professional Themes

WordPress has a huge library of free and paid WordPress plugins, currently, on WordPress.org there are 59K+ plugins available in the WordPress repository. And the numbers are still increasing day by day, as many WordPress plugin development companies develop new WordPress plugins which fulfill customers’ requirements and match current trends.

Some free WordPress plugins are usually ideal for small businesses or those looking to give WordPress a try, but I suggest you should go with a premium WordPress plugin if you’re developing a WordPress website for enterprise-level businesses. With premium WordPress plugins, you may get more advanced features that enhance your website accessibility and functionality. You can use the most popular WordPress plugins like RankMath for SEO, Social Auto Poster for Social Media Auto Posting, WooCommerce PDF Vouchers for the WooCommerce store, WP Rocket for Speed Optimization, and many others.

Same like 3rd party plugins, WordPress has a huge library of professional themes. WordPress themes are a great choice for making an attractive website design that stands a part of the crowd. WordPress theme is a group of code, features, and styles that you can add to your website. It’s basically a set of tools to help you build your website. Its features and styles can be changed without touching the code by using page builders or any other plugin.

On WordPress.org, there are 9K+ WordPress themes that are freely available for different categories. For different businesses, you’ll get different options for website development. You can also get premium themes from a marketplace like Themeforest. For fast, secure, and easy-to-use WordPress website development, you can use some premium WordPress themes like Astra, SeedProd, Divi, OceanWP, and many more.

WordPress Supports Multisite & Multilingual Functionality

Numerous enterprise businesses operate multiple websites to serve their worldwide clientele. Additionally, it is feasible to have multiple sites under the same brand. Therefore, WordPress is one of the greatest platforms for website building if you require multisite support. Companies can manage all of their websites using a single CMS, thereby conserving server, resources, time, and additional costs.

Additionally, WordPress supports multiple languages, allowing visitors who do not speak English to interact with your website. WordPress Plugins such as Polylang and WPML permit site visitors to select their preferred language for their convenience.

SEO and Mobile Friendliness

SEO enables websites to rank naturally at the top of search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, and many others. SEO’s influence on business websites and its ROI can be significantly greater than that of Small and Medium size websites.

Here is why enterprise website SEO is so important:

1. It enables large businesses to control an entire market segment.
2. Organic visibility aids businesses in enhancing market share, brand recognition, public relations, etc.
3. SEO enables businesses to reach a wide variety of consumers at various customer journey stages, resulting in a substantial increase in conversions and income.
4. WordPress is renowned for being highly mobile- and SEO-friendly out of the box. In addition, you have a vast selection of WordPress plugins and themes to help the SEO and mobile-friendliness of your company website.

The number of smartphone users worldwide has exceeded three billion. Consequently, it is essential that the platform you choose be responsive and mobile-friendly, especially if you offer items or services online. WordPress’ default themes are responsive by default. One can always create their own theme in WordPress with available responsive front-end theming frameworks which makes the final theme secure and fast performing.

Effective Social Media Integration

It is essential for businesses to maintain an active social media presence today. However, driving engagement on social media can be difficult. Daily posting can be time-consuming, particularly for small teams without a social media manager. Connecting your social media accounts to your WordPress website is simple. You can also use a WordPress plugin like Social Auto Poster which allows you to automate social media posting directly from your website. Including social share buttons on each new post, for instance, is a passive method of increasing interaction, and if users like your post then they can easily share your post on their social media accounts.

Smooth Migration Support

Thankfully, WordPress is rather easy to migrate. It contains connections to plugins that further simplify the procedure. While setting up a new WordPress website is relatively simple, moving it from one host to another can be difficult. If you are unfamiliar with the migration procedure, a single error can result in data loss, downtime, and even a drop in search engine results. Fortunately, WordPress is a platform that supports numerous plugins that can assist you. These plugins create automatic backups of your website, manage the transfer, and prevent any downtime that may occur during the migration of your website.

Thriving Global Developer Community

Since its introduction as a blogging platform, WordPress has had an astonishing growth curve. This is largely due to the hundreds of WordPress communities throughout the world that contribute to the global success and popularity of the WordPress CMS. The robust global community of WordPress developers and designers is constantly on its feet, actively contributing to the open-source software, correcting problems, assisting users on public forums, and shaping the platform as it exists today.

The WordPress community consists of professionals and experts who aid people with questions and concerns. The WordPress global community runs user groups, support forums, and documentation. With this vast ecosystem behind you, you and your team may simply obtain support. Having a solid CMS support system is a long-term victory for your business.

Managed Hosting Services

Scalability, performance, security, and robustness are important for enterprise websites. Any hindrance here can hurt a company’s ROI, reputation, and revenue. All of the above criteria depend on your company website’s hosting and infrastructure. WordPress offers managed hosting choices like WordPress VIP, WP Engine, Kinsta, etc.

Compared to other enterprise CMS choices, these managed hosting companies optimize WordPress. These hosting providers offer GIT integration, various staging environments, and daily backups.

Here are some benefits of WordPress-optimized managed hosting:

1. Effectiveness
2. Cost cuts
3. Server Security
4. Auto-backups
5. 24/7 assistance

This may be one reason you choose WordPress as your company’s CMS.

Security concerns. As WordPress powers more than 64.2% of the web, it’s inevitably the platform most targeted by hackers. Installing a WordPress security plugin and applying other best practices can reduce the risks.

Third-party content. Since most WordPress themes and plugins are created by third-party developers, some may be buggy. Before installing a new plugin or theme, always read its description and reviews.

Page load time. Too many plugins may slow a site down. To fix this, uninstall unnecessary plugins and clear the WordPress cache.

Cons of WordPress CMS

Before picking WordPress as your enterprise CMS or migrating from another CMS, consider its downsides too. In this part, we’ll discuss WordPress’s drawbacks as an enterprise CMS.

Additional Features Require More Plugins

WordPress makes it easy to install and manage themes, as they only require proper configuration to function. However, this is not the only characteristic an enterprise CMS website should possess. Plugins are required if you need to add more functionality.

For instance, the platform has different plugins for SEO, eCommerce, and marketing. Some of these plugins are free to use, but the majority require payment. Installing and administering all of these plugins to provide the required functionality for your website can be time-consuming and cumbersome over time.

Vulnerable to Attacks

Given WordPress’s popularity as a CMS, it’s not surprising that several malicious persons attempt to hack and exploit WordPress-based websites. Despite the fact that all websites are subject to online attacks, those that utilize WordPress are more likely to encounter them.

For businesses managing eCommerce and payment gateways, there is a chance that hackers will attempt to breach your database and steal sensitive client data. Those with blogs and comment sections might also be easily targeted by spammers. When website vulnerabilities are exploited and made public, prospective and current customers will lose faith in brands. Hackers may target eCommerce and payment channels to steal client data. Brands lose credibility when website vulnerabilities are exploited and made public.

Again, Vulnerable to Attacks can be prevented by developing high-level security on the website especially if you have file uploads on the website. For static websites, you can already have paid plugins like Wordfence that can help you to improve the security of your website.

Website Down Without Notice

Undisclosed website disruptions may occur for a variety of causes. If you are not paying attention to your website, you may not notice that it has gone offline. It could be down for a few hours or even days, significantly harming your business. There are many reasons for the website to go down like wrong connections, domain validity errors, inaccessible website, suspended hosting account, server connection errors, theme or plugin conflict, and hacking issues. At this tough time, you have to employ a WordPress development company to help you get it back online, which is an additional expense you do not want.

Plugins Conflict

While the tens of thousands of WordPress plugin alternatives may increase the platform’s flexibility, they may also result in “plugin bloat.” Plugins conflict often refers to a problem in which your WordPress website’s performance and speed are degraded due to excessive plugin usage. Sometimes some WordPress plugins are not compatible with other WordPress plugins, which provide almost similar or near to the same functionalities in your WordPress website. So it is more important to check plugin compatibility before installing it on your WordPress website. The extra functionality of WordPress plugins may be accompanied by less-needed code.

Frequent Updates

WordPress users complain about frequent updates. WordPress core and plugins often release updates to improve site features and security. Updates can improve your site’s performance and security. These can be annoying. Automatic updates may potentially be risky. Because upgrades might cause website difficulties and glitches. You have to examine your WordPress website after every core WordPress update, plugin update, or theme update, if you find some error or bug then you need to revert back to the previous version of WordPress, plugin, or theme. You can also hire WordPress developers or a WordPress development company to monitor your website’s upgrades. This improves and manages the consistent performance and security of your website.

Final Thoughts On WordPress As Enterprise CMS

After reading the pros and cons of WordPress as enterprise CMS, I believe you can make a decision for your WordPress website development. One size doesn’t fit all businesses. So based on your requirements, you have to take a decision about which CMS is best suitable for your enterprise website development. But my opinion is always to stick to WordPress for Enterprise website development, because of its flexibility, scalability, and availability of expert WordPress developers.

Also be sure to learn more about WordPress SEO tips and tricks, how to speed up WordPress websites, and don’t worry about the security of your site, here are some WordPress security tips to keep your website safe.