Are You Breaking the Law Having a Maintenance Free Website?

Websites have come a long way since the 90's. The days of custom hand coding sites and needing a "webmaster" are far behind us. What's strange is that the majority of website design agencies keep perpetuating this ball and chain relationship by building websites on WordPress CMS (Content Management System) platforms that require constant maintenance and upkeep on the back end. Oh sure, they'll let you edit and manage the updates on the site if you insist, but the majority of clients are not technically savvy enough to navigate all the issues that can arise from performing software updates, bug fixes and patches on a regular basis.

The fib everyone is told is that "WordPress is the gold standard. It's what everyone uses," but the real reason is -- Money. The more maintenance a client site needs after launch, the more reoccurring revenue for the website design firm. Website Maintenance plan anyone? Most marketers are unaware that there are better website CMS platform alternatives to build on. Meanwhile, web design agencies are selling you the razor, and making money on the blades every month.

Website design agencies will also tell you WordPress is free. Yes, the code is free, but what they don't expound upon is that maintaining a WordPress site with hosting, security, monthly plugin updates, bug fixes and new theme versions can cost $4,500/ per year on average. Over ten years, that's $45,000

No. You will not be arrested if you have a maintenance free website. In fact, many B2B companies enjoy not being handcuffed to an old, legacy platform that pulls them away from focusing on other marketing tasks. Smart business website design and development these days happens on something called a closed source CMS platform where all the updates and maintenance is automatically done for you in the cloud. You can still access the source code if you need to, but there is rarely a need. You are free to focus your marketing efforts on what's important.

SO WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON HERE?

The fact is, WordPress is a precarious platform to build your business website on. Originally developed as a blogging platform, it has evolved, but as of March 2019 WordPress is still the most hacked CMS platform in the world. That's right, number #1. 90 percent of all hacked CMS sites are WordPress sites. Older, legacy digital marketing firms know that if they keep building sites on a bad foundation, the clients will come running back for help once the site is broken, hacked or goes down. They make money on the site build, annual maintenance AND if something goes wrong. Pretty sneaky...

WordPress is like McDonalds. Sure, a lot of people use it,

but is it really good for you?

So, What Makes WordPress Sites a bad investment?

1) The reason WordPress sites are a bad investment is they are built on a foundation that requires multiple third-party plugins in order to run. These plugins are not well vetted, most are not GDPR or HIPAA compliant, many are outdated and not maintained. And why should they be? Many of the most popular plugins are built and downloaded for free. These plugins are constantly morphing and require quarterly updates.

2) Sometimes the plugin and bug fix updates don't play well with the other plugin software. This can cause issues on your site and even shut it down.

3) To complicate things further, in addition to constant plugin updates, WordPress requires theme and WordPress updates. These updates can also conflict with other plugins and cause problems.

"The mish-mash ecosystem of any WordPress site is the equivalent to herding a variety of animals to live peacefully in a small, fenced in plot of land. In the end, someone is eventually going to get bit, and that someone could be you..."