As a web business, you need professional design that makes your website stand out and communicates your values and what your business stands for.

In other words, appearance matters a lot.

With over 72 million websites using the WordPress CMS, it is obviously the top choice online when people talk about designing a professional website.

But sometimes, conventional wisdom can be wrong. Maybe you shouldn’t use WordPress. Just because everyone else is using it does not mean you should, too.

While WordPress is great in its own way, here are a few disadvantages to using WordPress for your website:

1. Design can be Very Expensive: The number one drawback to using WordPress is the design cost; while WordPress is a widely-used, free CMS, the default themes that comes with it are generic and unprofessional; they’re okay if you’re running a small blog as a hobby but not if you want to build a professional website for your services or products.

Getting professional WordPress design is costly and this is understandable when you consider how many people are using WordPress and how difficult it is to create something that stands out; while there are various premium themes that cost anything from $47 to a few hundred dollars, these themes are also used by hundreds or thousands of people, which doesn’t make it any easier for your business to stand out.

Getting quality custom WordPress design costs thousands of dollars, however. Depending on who your designer is, you’ll have to spend upwards of $3,000 to get great WordPress design.

To get a custom design with premium WordPress design firms Blazersix.com or HindsiteInteractive.com, for example, costs upwards of $5,000.

2. Constant Updates and Maintenance can be Expensive: There have been over 100 WordPress version releases to date; most of these releases fix bugs in previous versions and depending on which theme you use you might need an update.

If you’re looking for a website where you can just set up your design and forget, WordPress isn’t an option.

3. Plugins Can Slow down Your Website and Make it Vulnerable: With WordPress, you’ll have to install dozens of plugins to enjoy its full functionality. From anti-spam plugins to analytics plugins to SEO plugins, almost everything is handled by individual plugins except it is already coded into your theme.

Also, WordPress plugins are coded by various programmers and designers so the effectiveness of a plugin depends on its creator; for this reason, there have been cases where hackers are able to take over a WordPress blog because of an outdated plugin or an ineffective plugin.

Plugins also contribute to the load speed of your website and can make it slower.

The above points are not to say WordPress doesn’t have its own advantages. It does, it’s about you knowing when you should use WordPress and when you shouldn’t.

For example, if you’re a startup on a budget or if you’re looking to start a services business, you might not have $5,000 – $10,000 to spend on a custom design. Maybe big businesses do, but you don’t.

You can easily invest significantly less and still get good looking WordPress websites.

A Better Way to Create Professional Websites without Relying on WordPress

This might surprise you, but the answer is to use plain old HTML.

Yes, you heard that right.

When you eliminate the need for plugins that WordPress is known for, a properly designed HTML website can be very fast and effective.

With the right tools, you don’t have to worry about updating your website and keeping it active.

If you want to create a professional website without expensive design budget, if you don’t want to worry about constant updates and maintenance that cost more money or if you don’t want to worry about essential plugins slowing down your website, you need the right tools.

Most of these tools will create HTML web pages for you, but you don’t have to worry because it isn’t complicated; it’s often as easy as publishing to WordPress.

Here are a few alternatives to help you create professional websites without WordPress:

1. Easy Webcontent

With a flexible site builder that you can use to create and design beautiful and unique sites without programming knowledge or experience, as well as a HTML editor that makes it easy for you to edit and update your website as if you were using WordPress, creating and updating content becomes a breeze.

2. Wix

Wix is another WordPress alternative that helps you build quality websites without relying on WordPress.

With HTML 5 support and 100’s of customizable themes, Wix also makes it easy to build better websites without relying on WordPress.

It Doesn’t Always Have to be WordPress

WordPress is great and I use it myself, but it isn’t for everybody. If you want more without having to hire expensive designers or you don’t want to be updating your WordPress installation all the time, I believe the above post was of some help.

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