Why is WordPress so popular? Here are 34 reasons.

Why is WordPress so popular? 

Here are 34 reasons why WordPress is so popular:

1. Open source.

Nobody owns the WordPress code or ecosystem. Anybody who knows WordPress and it’s main language PHP can build themselves a website or even plugins for customized functionality and create a website. 

WordPress software is not proprietary. So you can also host it anywhere as well. 

In fact, WordPress.org is a non-profit organization created to promote the free use of the WordPress Content Management System (CMS).

2. Free themes and plugins.

You can find plenty of free themes and plugins on WordPress.org. In fact, most web hosting providers offer WordPress software as a free download. 

Within your WordPress dashboard you can then choose from thousands of free themes and over 50,000 free plugins available for you to customize your WordPress website.

3. Huge infrastructure.

There are more resources, solutions to website creation needs than any other Content Management System on the internet. 

If you have an issue, something you want to figure out, learn, build or customize your WordPress website with, then someone has more than likely done it before you. 

You can always find their solutions through various WordPress forums, GitHub.com, Stackexchange.com and even YouTube, then use them on your website.

4. Powers more than 40% of all websites on the internet today.

According to this recent W3Techs Market Share report, WordPress now powers up to 40% of all websites on the internet today. 

In fact, WordPress is the most popular and most widely used CMS on the planet.

5. Easy to learn.

WordPress is easy to learn for absolute beginners. But, there is a learning curve no doubt. 

When I first learned how to use WordPress 10 years ago, I had absolutely no experience in creating a website or even pointing the name servers of my recently bought domain name to my web hosting provider. 

But I was still able to get a WordPress website up and live on the internet within a few hours. Nowadays, it takes absolute beginners even less time.

6. Plenty of support and a huge community.

There are plenty of forums, websites, even YouTube channels devoted to WordPress. All of which are quite open to the free exchange of information in order to constantly improve and evolve WordPress and the WordPress ecosystem. 

You can start with the community on WordPress.org. But you will find very popular WordPress forums on GitHub.com, Stackexchange.com even on Reddit.com/r/wordpress/. 

All of which provide free and useful information that can help you build the website of your dreams.

7. Plenty of room to scale.

The beauty of WordPress is that you can start out with a simple blog, even a personal blog and evolve it into a multi-million daily visitor website complete with media, ecommerce and even a forum. 

Many websites today started out as small personal blogs all on WordPress. WordPress also powers big names like: TechCrunch, The New Yorker, BBC America, Bloomberg Professional, Variety, Sony Music, TED Blog and MTV News to name a few.

WordPress grows as you do.

8. Control with plenty of self-hosting options.

Since WordPress is open source, you are not stuck on one platform. 

Many smaller competitors have popped up over the past few years looking to imitate WordPress and it’s success. 

However, you must not only create your website on their platform using their CMS, but you also must host it on their platform. This makes you subject to their terms and conditions. 

For example, if they decide to raise your monthly hosting costs, fees or you experience poor customer service, slow loading times etc. you have no choice but to stay. 

With WordPress, if you have any of those issues, you can simply migrate your WordPress website, complete with its theme you have worked so hard to customize along with plugins and of course your content, to any number of independent web hosting providers.

9. Versatile and flexible.

Through the use of more and more customizable themes, you can design your WordPress website any way you like. 

Whether it’s colors or headers and footers, to the design of your page layouts like columns and paragraphs or even fonts. You have total design freedom.

If you need extra functionality, simply search for a plugin to accomplish that. 

Once you get your WordPress website looking and functioning the way you like, you can even save it as a template and create other websites with it as well.

10. No need to learn coding.

WordPress was made for non-coders. With pre-built themes and the concept of plugins which are used to add individual types of functionality to any WordPress theme by simply downloading and activating it. There’s no need to write a single line of code.

11. Very integratable with most business software.

Whether you want to include an email marketing campaign, start a newsletter or add a payment system to your ecommerce store or even have any ecommerce store to begin with, all of these functions and capabilities can be integrated into WordPress. 

In fact, most 3rd party SaaS companies include WordPress integration with their software.

12. Mobile friendly.

As more and more internet users take to accessing the worldwide web on their mobile devices, WordPress has also adapted. 

WordPress along with its Independent theme and plugin developers have streamlined their coding making WordPress very mobile friendly and fast loading, specifically for mobile devices.

13. Ready to use right out of the box.

As soon as you get a domain name and point the name servers to your web hosting provider, you can simply download WordPress onto your web hosting provider’s dashboard and you’re ready to go.

WordPress dashboard is very user-friendly and you can download themes and plugins directly from it.

14. Easy to manage.

WordPress is very easy to manage. Whether WordPress rolls out a core update or your theme and plugin developers roll out their updates, many of these can be done automatically within WordPress, without you even needing to check. 

So you never have to really see if any of the software on your WordPress website is updated in WordPress, WordPress developers are constantly updating their tools and software for you.

15. Integratable with social media.

You can easily add social media buttons to your WordPress website and share your content through various social media channels. 

Whether those channels are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any number of social media channels, they normally have social media buttons that you can add to your WordPress website.

16. Easy to control costs.

Since WordPress is open source you can control costs by deciding where to have your WordPress website hosted. 

Perhaps you’re just starting out and you want your WordPress website self-hosted. 

Normally a Shared Hosting account would be the most cost efficient. As your website grows and needs more resources, you can always upgrade your hosting to a VPS or Cloud Hosting. 

There are even Managed WordPress Hosting plans as well. 

You can also get a Dedicated Server for your WordPress website or websites for ultimate control and speed. 

If you don’t like your web hosting provider, you can always migrate to another. You can’t do that on any closed proprietary platform.

17. Low startup cost.

You can literally start a WordPress website for free. WordPress.com offers a free blog plan. 

So there’s no obligation from you and it’s a great way to not only get a free WordPress website up on the internet, but it’s a great way to learn WordPress software and its ecosystem as well. 

Then you can either graduate to a paid plan with more control or go totally self-hosted and use another hosting provider. 

You can also use free themes and plugins which are great for controlling costs as well, especially when you’re first starting out.

18. E-commerce adaptable.

If you want to add an ecommerce store to your WordPress website, you can do so with WooCommerce. 

WooCommerce is WordPress’s ecommerce platform which is made specifically to integrate into your WordPress website. 

However, you can also add Shopify products as well or even Squarespace. WooCommerce and WordPress are quite flexible, even with closed platforms. 

You can also set up payment gateways through WooCommerce to your WordPress ecommerce store as well.

19. Add features like memberships and forums.

With WordPress you can add “Membership Only Access” to your content and a forum so that your website’s visitors can engage not only with your content, but with each other as well. You can even add these through the use of plugins or third-party software.

20. Multi user capabilities.

You can add multiple users to your WordPress website. 

For example, you could be the Administrator but you can also assign different roles for different users like an Editor, Writer or any number of roles and provide them with various levels of access into your WordPress websites dashboard. 

This way they can also contribute content as well as other functions without having you to personally log them in at each time they need access. 

Perhaps you have some freelance writers or an Editor, you can give them limited access in order to publish and edit content for your WordPress website, without you having to step in. 

21. Add Testimonials.

WordPress has plugins where you can add testimonials from your clients or visitors praising your website, services as well as content.

22. The ability to publish content instantaneously.

There’s no need to wait in order for you to publish content to your WordPress website. Get your content out and live on the internet fast. 

You simply enter your content into the WordPress editor in your dashboard and hit publish. 

Your content is now live on the internet. 

There’s no need for approvals since it’s your content on your website.

23. Number one blogging platform on the planet.

As I mentioned above, WordPress powers over 40% of all websites on the internet today. 

Although WordPress can do many things, at its core, it is very blogger friendly and the first choice for independent bloggers who want full control over their content and their website.

24. Multi-lingual.

If you are not a native speaker of English, then rest assured, you too can configure WordPress, since it comes in many different languages. 

No longer will you need to study hard to read manuals and documentation in English, if your native language is other than English. 

Additionally, if you are building a WordPress website or setting one up for a non-native English speaker, they can have a WordPress dashboard as well as any functionality in a variety of different languages. 

If your readers and visitors are non-English-speaking, there are also many plugins and 3rd party software that can automatically translate your content into a variety of languages as well.

25. Email.

Set up an email account, or several accounts for that matter, very easily within your WordPress hosting provider’s dashboard. 

You can then either connect it directly to your WordPress dashboard or to your email accounts stored locally on your own computer.

26. Responsive.

WordPress sites are made to be very responsive to whichever device your visitors are accessing your WordPress website from. 

Whether that’s from a PC, laptop, tablet or mobile device, your WordPress websites are designed to resize and function according to the device it is accessed from.

27. Free Block Editor and Page Builder called Gutenberg.

As Content Management Systems evolve, so does WordPress. There have been many excellent Page Builders created over the last several years. However, these usually aren’t free. 

But, due to the popularity of page builders, WordPress has incorporated its own Page Builder through its new Block Editor called Gutenberg. 

Now you can create even more customized posts and pages on your WordPress website through the use of Gutenberg. 

Best of all, this Page Builder is free and comes with WordPress.

28. Multi-site options.

WordPress now gives you the opportunity to create a network of sites by using the multisite feature with one installation. 

So instead of controlling multiple WordPress sites through multiple WordPress dashboards, you can control multiple sites through one “Super Dashboard”. 

This makes things like updating themes and plugins to site wide design changes, access to multiple users much easier to manage. 

You can read more about this “multisite feature” and how to create one here, Create A Network.

29. Easily customizable with themes and plugins.

WordPress themes and plugins are becoming more and more customizable. Depending on your theme and what you are looking for, you can usually customize your WordPress website without knowing any code to your own specifications. 

Both theme and plugin developers are becoming more and more attuned to the needs of WordPress users and are creating dynamic themes, doing all the necessary coding so you, the WordPress user, don’t have to. 

30. Beginner friendly.

As I mentioned, WordPress is very beginning friendly. 

After all, WordPress was created so that practically anybody, with or without coding skills, can create beautiful websites and get them live on the internet, so that others can enjoy them. 

WordPress does all the heavy lifting, so all you need to do is create the content to fill its pages and posts. 

You could set up a WordPress website in practically no time with just a few clicks, download a theme along with any necessary plugins and you’re good to go.

31. Safe and secure.

WordPress is as safe and secure as they come. No website nowadays though, regardless of CMS, is totally safe and secure from hacking. 

Hackers become more and more innovative in their approaches to hacking, so it’s just a necessary risk that all website owners have to deal with, regardless of CMS. 

The good news is, there are plenty of security options and software that you can add to your WordPress website to make it as secure as possible. 

This is because WordPress is constantly updating its core and WordPress developers are constantly updating their themes and plugins. 

This helps to plug in any gaps hackers can exploit. Though again, no CMS is foolproof. 

But with WordPress you can rest assured that you will have as safe and secure a website as they come.

32. Ability to handle various types of media content.

With WordPress you can display not only text, but also add video, gifs, podcasts, whiteboards and other interactive media for your visitors to consume. 

Many of these come through the use of plugins and other 3rd party SaaS software.

33. Not going out of business anytime soon.

WordPress started in 2003. One of its developers and core founders Matt Mullenweg started WordPress.org as a nonprofit organization. 

Mullenweg along with the other founders of WordPress decided that they wanted to make this software and content management system open source.

They wanted to create an environment and ecosystem in which others can not only use their software and content management system, but also to add to it and help it evolve. 

Mullenweg went on to form the company Automattic and copyrighted the WordPress name. This for profit venture creates and sells various WordPress tools and provides services like hosting under WordPress.com. 

There are more resources and code written for WordPress than any other CMS in the world helping WordPress continue to grow to this day and evolve. 

Out of all the CMS is out there, WordPress would be the last to go out of business. 

Therefore, if you do decide to build a WordPress website and go in on the whole WordPress ecosystem, you can rest assured that someone or some corporation is not going to pull the rug out from under you, your website or all the hard work you’ve done by going out of business. 

That’s the beauty of WordPress’s, its open source foundation.

34. Continues to grow and evolve.

WordPress continues to grow and evolve. 

It’s developers, volunteers and other key people continue to update its core software. 

These updates further refine, improve and secure the WordPress foundation. 

But they are not alone. WordPress developers throughout the world are constantly updating their themes and plugins as well. As a result, improving the whole WordPress experience for everyone. 

There is little to no chance of WordPress stopping or even slowing down anytime soon.

Why is WordPress so popular? Conclusions.

There you have it, 34 reasons why WordPress is so popular today. Need I say more? I think not. 

However, the only way to truly understand the value of WordPress and what it can do for establishing your place on the internet, is to download it, create a great website and see for yourself.