Have you heard the idea that WordPress web hosting is free? Maybe this is one of the aspects that confuse your mind. Whether free or not, generally speaking, a website that uses WP CMS and hosting can be a better website when it comes to overall performance.
But of course, you have to know the real score of whether or not WP CMS and WordPress hosting are totally free. It is part of your investment, so it is better that you know some important facts about this controversy. There can be complications as to the answer from the different experts in the field. There are web developers who can tell you that it is free, while there are also other web experts who can tell you that it is not totally free.
Are you still confused? Perhaps, yes! Now, let’s examine briefly the entirety of WordPress. To make it clear, it can be free but there are some attached costs to it. However, let me be clear further that the WordPress software core should always be free. It is an open source, to say the least. It is free on the aspect that you have such freedom to make some modifications and you can have some extensions freely.
There are some key points that you have to know and understand why experts would say that it is free. WordPress operates through GNU General Public License (GPL). So, anybody can have the freedom to download WP and use it. The users are also free to make edits, to customize, and to sell WP codes. These are the free things that the WP users can do as long as it is released under GPL.
Free WordPress Hosting: Is It True?
Anybody can download the software freely anytime, anywhere. But this is not the end of the story. What is free is the CMS but somehow you still have to pay for the following:
- Web Hosting
- Premium Support
- Premium Plugins
- Premium Themes
- WP Updates
But keep this in your mind that with respect to hosting, there is also a free WP hosting. If you can see those domain names that look like this, yourbusinessname.wordpress.com, that is a free site hosted by WP. But having a website hosted by WordPress for free has a lot of drawbacks. One of the disadvantages of having a free WordPress site is the aspect of search engine optimisation and ranking.
The Philosophy behind Open Source Software can also explain the aspect of being free. This Philosophy explains that the software, once created, can be downloaded and copied anytime by anybody. With cost? There is a tendency that copying the created software can cost you but only a little amount.
Does the Philosophy of Open Source Software Negate the Idea of Being Free?
Maybe yes, literally. But obviously, the little cost of every software that can be copied and used in your WordPress website is not that big. So, ideally, the concept that WordPress hosting is free is being supported in one way or another.
On the aspect that a user has to spend money for the needed parts of a particular WordPress site, you can take a manufacturing company as an example. Regardless of the products being manufactured, each part of the manufactured objects has a corresponding cost. There is a total calculation of the general cost of an object or product being manufactured and the cost is decided by the manufacturing company with a profit margin included in the computation.
Please be reminded that there are varied costs as to the software and its copies being produced for WordPress. There is no the same pricing. That’s why it is important that you have to choose a plugin, a theme, and any other important WP requisites brilliantly. You should do this in order to avoid spending money for a WordPress add-on that won’t work for your business website. Only choose to pay for an extension that really provides benefits for your website.
But take note that the free items are very appealing and enticing. You can have free software, support, themes, plugins, and updates. But if everything in your website is free, the tendency is that it can rank very slowly. Most web development and SEO experts suggest that you have to have a WordPress website that has a premium web hosting. In this way, the ranking objective can ultimately be achieved.