Are you trying to decide whether .org vs .com is the better domain extension?
There are many types of domains, but the most popular are .org and .com. While often taken for granted, a site’s domain extension affects how others view your brand and how easy it is for users to find your site.
In this post, we’ll compare .org vs .com and highlight when to use each. That way, you’ll know which domain extension is right for your needs.
What are Domain Extensions, and Why Should You Care?
Domain extensions, also known as top-level domains (TLDs), are the last part of a domain name, appearing after the dot.
Take WPBeginner, which uses the .com extension, while a site like WordPress uses .org. (There is a .com for WordPress, but it is a commercial product, not open source.)
To understand how a domain name works, you have to know how it interacts with the Domain Name System (DNS).
When entering a website address, the DNS looks up the URL (wpbeginner.com) and finds the hosting server’s numerical IP address where the website lives.
We use domain names rather than typing the IP address because they’re much easier for humans and search engines to use and remember. In addition to the domain name itself, the domain extension can tell visitors what your website is about.
For example, .com is designed for commercial websites, while .org is meant for non-profit organizations.
When potential customers see your web address, they might make assumptions about your business based solely on your URL.
With that in mind, we’re going to highlight the differences between a .org and .com domain extension and which is better for your website. Click on any of the links below to jump to a specific section.
The .org extension stands for organization and was created for nonprofit organizations and charities to provide valuable information.
Generally, .org websites are used to raise awareness, accept online donations, and search for volunteers. Thus, when visitors see a .org domain name, that’s what they come to expect.
That said, anyone can register a website with the .org domain extension, even if the website isn’t part of a nonprofit organization.
However, businesses can still benefit from the .org domain when linked to the company’s charitable arm, while other domain names help protect the brand.
What is a .com Domain Extension?
The .com extension is the most popular domain extension and is used by commercial businesses.
Nowadays, .com has become the default domain extension for general-purpose websites, whether or not they have commercial intent.
With that in mind, the idea of .org being only for nonprofits has stuck around a lot more than .com being only for businesses.
Differences Between .org and .com
As we said above, neither .org nor .com has special requirements to register, even though they were both made for different purposes and users expect different things from them.
Still, there are a few major differences between them that we’ll go into below.
Availability
The overwhelming popularity of .com has made it challenging to find and choose the best domain names with the extension. With many desirable domains either in use or parked, some people turn to other domain name extensions to get the URL they want.
Before you jump to other TLDs, you should start by looking at our free business name generator tool. It gives you clever ideas you can use for your domain name. Just make sure your domain name accurately represents your business and what you do.
For instance, let’s say you want to start a recipe blog.
Using our handy business name generator, you can find useful domain names like thedailyrecipes.com.
You can see in the screenshot above, that many simple .com addresses are already taken.
In contrast, far fewer .org domains are taken. In fact, there are 161.1 million .com domains registered compared to only 10.6 million .org registrations.
Because of its lower demand, .org is also much cheaper to get. That’s the opposite of many .com domain names because they are becoming more expensive because of high demand.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
Because the .org extension was intended for nonprofit organizations and is still used by many of the most well-known charities and philanthropic groups, this TLD still elicits a high degree of trust. When applied to the right site, it adds more credibility than the .com extension.
That said, it depends on what your site is used for. If you start an online store using a .org TLD, most people may be confused by your domain extension since visitors may expect to land on a nonprofit site.
This can lead to a high bounce rate and lower engagement, which also hurts your SEO.
If you own a .org site, your website should align with your target audience and their expectations of a nonprofit mission-driven organization.
The .com extension is still a more widely trusted domain than other TLDs because of its familiarity. In fact, .com domains are 33% more memorable, and when people try to remember a URL, they’re 3.8 times more likely to assume it ends in .com.
It’s also important to keep in mind that other factors determine whether a site is credible. For example, a site using HTTPS means it has active SSL encryption, which is more secure for keeping users and their data safe.
Traffic
If you’re looking specifically for branding and discoverability, .com is the best choice. If you want your potential customers to find you, .com is the most natural extension for your visitors to type in. That’s why we use the .com domain extension here at WPBeginner and for our other products.
48% of websites use .com versus only 5% for .org. Consumers view .com as the de facto default extension. Thus, you’re more likely to get people to remember a .com domain, which can increase direct traffic.
Of course, .org domains will likely rank higher for nonprofit-related keywords.
However, some mobile devices include a .com button on their keyboards, which makes them a more mobile-friendly option as well. Users can press and hold the .com button for other extensions like .org to appear.
When Should You Use a .org Extension?
While everyone can register a .org extension, it may not be the best choice for everyone. Here are a few examples of when using .org is the best choice:
Charity, community, and nonprofit organizations: .org domains have historically been linked to nonprofit and humanitarian causes. Internet users have come to associate .org domains with charities and nonprofits. This extension can enhance the credibility of an organization as it signals a commitment to serve others.
Open-source websites: While open-source software companies aren’t generally seen as nonprofits, they commonly use .org extensions. They do so to tell the public their software or user network is available for free. WordPress.org is an example of this.
Informational websites: .org websites are known for providing valuable, unbiased information that helps people learn about important issues.
When Should You Use a .com Extension?
The best domain extension mainly depends on the type of website you plan to create. Here’s a quick look at when to use .com:
Business websites: .com has a wide general appeal and is commonly used for commercial purposes making it the appropriate choice for just about any for-profit business. This works for just about any type of business and includes companies of all sizes, including small businesses and startups.
Ecommerce stores: .com is widely used and trusted, which can instill confidence in shoppers. For example, if given the choice, a user is more likely to purchase from an online store that uses .com than a .xyz or .biz.
Blogs and Personal Brands: .com is simply easy to remember and better for branding, helping you reach a broader audience.
Which Extension is Better
When running a small business, .com will do the trick. The extension generally performs better for SEO and helps to boost your online presence more than other domain alternatives.
It’s also seen as the default domain extension and is the go-to choice for online businesses, personal websites, publications, and blogs.
The only downside to .com is availability. With billions of websites on the internet, your desired URL may not be available in .com.
In that case, you have to weigh your options. Is altering your brand name or adding additional words to get the .com domain extension worth it?
For some, they rather keep their original name or idea and choose .org instead. Some even go for .net as an alternative.
With that in mind, we recommend using domain name generators or a site like Nameboy to help you find the right URL for your business. Since having a .com can affect your audience’s perception of your brand and traffic, it’s a good idea to find a .com URL that works for you.
Of course, there are also other TLD alternatives like .edu, .biz, .gov, and .net. If you’re creating multilingual websites or region-specific websites, make sure to use the right country code, such as .co.uk and .ca.
Ultimately, the choice is yours, but .com is best for most new website owners.
How to Use .org or .com Domain Extensions
Once you’ve decided which extension you’d like to use, it’s time to buy your domain and create your website.
1. Pick a Domain Registrar
You can purchase your domain at a few different places, including:
Domain name registrar: Some companies like Domain.com or Namecheap provide domain registration as their primary service. The best registrars offer low pricing discounts for multi-year registrations and free WHOIS protection (to hide your personal information from domain registries).
Web hosting service: Many hosting services will also register domain names. Sometimes, they’ll give you a great deal for choosing to bundle one with your hosting plan. For example, BlueHost offers a free domain for your first year when you choose to use their hosting services.
Website builder: Some website builders like Squarespace let you buy a domain name, host it, and build your site all in one place.
Use their search tool to find and purchase the perfect domain that aligns with your business.
In this process, you’ll also have to set up your account and provide a form of payment.
3. Choose a Web Host and CMS
Now that you have your domain name, it’s time to connect it to a website. First, you must rent server space from a web hosting provider. For those using WordPress, make sure to get managed WordPress hosting, which you can get from Bluehost.
While there’s a lot that goes into making a website, using a content management (CMS) such as WordPress can make the process much easier.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
With the first 20 years of WordPress history behind us, the platform is already powering 43% of websites. Over the years, WordPress has continued to grow and evolve to meet the changing needs of website owners. But what can we expect in the future?
In this article, we will talk about the future of WordPress and what you can expect.
What Improvements Can We Expect From WordPress in the Future?
WordPress was launched in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little. Now that there are over 20 years of WordPress history behind us, you may be wondering what’s coming next.
The future of WordPress is important because it is the content management system (CMS) behind 43% of all websites, including big-name brands like Sony, CNN, Time Magazine, and Disney.
You can expect WordPress to stay modern and relevant and become even easier to use. WordPress is designed to be simple and adaptable, and WordPress developers are already looking a long way down the road and have a detailed roadmap.
In fact, at a recent WordCamp, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg shared that he expects WordPress to be still going strong a century from now.
I could see WordPress being around—not just around, but core to the fabric of the web—100 years from now, and I would love to attend a WordCamp Asia in my 80s.
Matt Mullenweg, WordPress Co-founder, WordCamp Asia 2023
With that being said, let’s take a look at what to expect in the future of WordPress. You can use the links below to jump to the sections you are most interested in:
WordPress is very popular. It currently powers 43% of all websites, which translates to 810 million websites in total. This number has also grown a lot when you consider that WordPress was used to build only 29% of websites in 2018.
Besides that, WordPress holds nearly 65% of the global CMS market share. The following chart shows every content management system with more than 1% usage. Nothing comes close to WordPress.
These statistics haven’t gone unnoticed. WordPress has been chosen by the most successful companies in the world. In fact, 38% of the top 10,000 websites are powered by WordPress, including big-name brands like Disney, Sony, Facebook, and more.
As you can see, WordPress currently dominates the website market, and this trend will continue in the future.
WordPress market share numbers have been steady for some time, and other CMS options have also remained steady without large spikes of growth. We expect WordPress will remain popular well into the future.
We can be confident because WordPress is built by a community and doesn’t rely on a single company for its success.
The WordPress community is made up of developers, designers, and WordPress enthusiasts who contribute to its core development, plugin creation, and theme design.
As WordPress evolves, so will the community that supports it. This will make sure that the platform remains a powerful and accessible tool for individuals, businesses, and organizations.
Why not become an active part of the WordPress community? You can get started by simply attending WordCamp or a local meetup. To learn more, see our guide on how you can get involved with the WordPress project.
2. The Growth of WordPress for eCommerce
eCommerce is a rapidly growing industry, and the availability of WordPress eCommerce plugins makes WordPress an excellent choice if you are starting an online store.
There are currently more than 5 million websites powered by the WooCommerce plugin. It has a market share of around 39% among eCommerce solutions, above Shopify, Squarespace, Wix, and others.
That makes WooCommerce the most popular eCommerce platform right now, and its market share has had an upward trend over time. This means we can expect more people to keep using it into the future.
Of course, WooCommerce isn’t the only eCommerce solution for WordPress. If you don’t need a full-blown online store, then you can choose a different eCommerce plugin like Easy Digital Downloads or WP Simple Pay.
Overall, we expect to see faster adoption of WordPress for eCommerce in the future. It’s clear that while WordPress is maintaining its position as a leading website builder, it is also expanding its eCommerce market share.
3. More Artificial Intelligence in WordPress
Matt Mullenweg spoke about artificial intelligence during his AMA (Ask Me Anything) at WordCamp Asia 2023. He sees the potential of AI technologies and encourages people to embrace them to create software, websites, and web content.
But he also recognizes the current limitations. He warns that artificial intelligence is still very young and has a lot of room for improvement. We are also not sure how the economic implications of AI will play out in the future.
So you can expect artificial intelligence to be added to the WordPress core eventually, but not until it’s ready.
In the future, we expect artificial intelligence plugins to become even smarter, giving us better AI website builders, new content tools, more intelligent chatbots, and advanced automated workflows.
4. Easy Collaboration on Multi-Author Blogs
WordPress is about to become more collaborative, adding features needed by multi-author blogs and eLearning sites. This is part of Phase 3 of the Gutenberg project, which is in the planning stage as we write.
For example, WordPress will allow multiple authors to work on the same article at the same time. Think of the experience you have using Google Docs but from your WordPress dashboard.
Authors and editors will be able to write notes to each other and suggest potential edits. You will be able to annotate specific blocks or sections of content and take part in threaded discussions right inside the WordPress content editor.
Website owners will also be able to create editorial workflows for their content team and plan upcoming content on a calendar. Content approval workflows will make sure that specific users or roles will need to review and accept posts before they can be published.
Life is going to become much smoother on multi-author blogs.
5. Multilingual Support in WordPress Core
Since WordPress is used on 43% of the world’s websites, these sites and their content need to be accessible to a global audience. And that means WordPress needs to provide support for multiple languages.
Multilingual websites serve the same content in many different languages. You can allow users to choose their preferred language using a dropdown link, or you can automatically change the website’s language based on the visitor’s geographic location.
Currently, you need to use multilingual plugins to achieve this. Unfortunately, not everyone has the time to install and configure these plugins, and they may have some impact on WordPress performance.
Another problem is that the developers need to maintain each plugin independently, support their users, and keep adding more languages. That’s a lot of work, and it makes sense for multilingual WordPress to become a centralized effort within WordPress core.
That’s the goal of Gutenberg Phase 4, which will launch in 2024 or 2025. It will start to add much-needed multilingual features to the WordPress core.
To start with, WordPress will enable you to manually translate your content into languages of your choice and allow visitors to read the content in a language they can understand.
In time, as the technology improves, WordPress will be able to translate your content on the fly so that it will be automatically available to anyone who reads a supported language.
This will make your content accessible to a global audience, significantly improving your reach and bringing more traffic to your website.
It will also continue to make WordPress even more relevant and popular as we move into the future, as it will be available to everyone, no matter what language they speak.
6. WordPress Legacy Websites, Products, and Companies
As we said at the beginning of this article, WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg is looking 100 years into the future as he considers where WordPress is heading.
He suspects that website owners may also have long-term goals for their online projects.
For example, business owners may want to keep permanent documentation of their company’s history. Families might be anxious not to lose valuable photographs and stories. Website owners may also value a permanent online home that adapts to the needs of the future.
As a result, WordPress.com is offering a 100-year “legacy” plan that you can purchase with a single payment. It includes domain name registration and web hosting for the next century.
This will allow users to maintain their online histories without worrying about what will happen when they are gone. Legacy plans can also inspire businesses to think in the extended long term, beyond a typical 5 or 10-year plan.
This new plan can set an example for top WordPress hosting providers and plugin developers. They may be inspired to think about marketing their products for very long-term use and building a “legacy”.
It could also change the way that WordPress companies think about their long-term goals. Offering internships and job opportunities to employees’ children and grandchildren could be a more sustainable way to grow a business over time.
FAQs About the Future of WordPress
Before we finish this article, let’s answer a few questions we are regularly asked by our readers about the future of WordPress.
Is WordPress still relevant?
WordPress is now over 20 years old, and new competitors pop up every year. For this reason, some people ask whether WordPress is still relevant.
Since WordPress powers 43% of all websites, it’s more relevant than ever. We hope this article has shown you that it will go on being relevant for decades to come.
With all of its success, some people question how long WordPress can stay on top. There are many rumors that WordPress may die out and stop being popular.
However, when you look at the facts, these rumors are simply not true. There are absolutely no signs that WordPress is dying or its loyal users are about to abandon it.
We have written a detailed guide on the state of WordPress and clearly answered ‘No’ to the question: Is WordPress Dying?
Is WordPress that bad?
You may have heard a tech consultant or a YouTube influencer claim that WordPress is bad.
You might ask, ‘If WordPress is really that bad, then why is it so popular? Why do nearly half of all websites on the web use it?’ The fact is, it’s not bad at all.
That’s why we wrote a detailed guide called Is WordPress Really That Bad? We take a look at common reasons people claim WordPress is bad to help you make the right decision.
What is the future of WordPress careers?
If you are thinking about getting a career in WordPress, then you may be wondering about job security. Will WordPress jobs still be around in the future?
The good news is that the demand for WordPress professionals remains high due to the platform’s popularity and constant growth. Plus, there are lots of WordPress careers for individuals with a wide range of skill sets.
You can learn how to make a living with WordPress in our complete guide to WordPress career options.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Are you looking for an honest web hosting comparison of Hostinger vs. Bluehost?
These are two of the most affordable hosting companies on the market. However, beginners are often not sure which company to choose for their websites.
In this guide, we will compare Hostinger vs. Bluehost with their pros and cons so that you can make the right decision.
Bluehost is an official WordPress.org recommended hosting provider, and Hostinger’s plans start at an even more affordable price point. At WPBeginner, we recommend them as two of the top WordPress hosting services for all kinds of users.
In this comparison, we will take a closer look into the pros and cons of Hostinger vs. Bluehost in detail so you can see which is better for your needs and make an informed choice.
Are you wondering which is the best platform for your WordPress site? Here is a quick summary:
With that being said, let’s compare both services and see how they compare.
Hostinger Comparison
Hostinger is a popular web hosting provider with a reliable and user-friendly platform to launch websites. They offer affordable shared hosting plans with great customer support, a free domain name with most plans, a free SSL certificate, and more.
Their shared hosting prices are more affordable than most of their competitors. This makes them a good choice for beginners and small businesses looking for budget web hosting.
Pros of Hostinger
Hostinger has the lowest price hosting on the market, but what are some of their pros and cons? Let’s start with some of the benefits of using Hostinger as your hosting service:
Affordable Plans – They offer very low-cost hosting plans, making Hostinger a great option for people who just want to test out an idea or launch a small website.
Excellent Performance – Considering Hostinger’s low price point, their performance and speed are impressive.
Excellent Customer Support – They offer great customer support for all of their hosting plans, making them a great choice for beginners.
Cons of Hostinger
Are there any disadvantages to using Hostinger? Here are some of the downsides that you may want to know:
Plan Limitations – So that their low-cost hosting remains viable, Hostinger places limits on entry-level and low-level hosting plans. However, as your website grows, you can always remove those limitations by upgrading to more expensive cloud or VPS plans.
No Daily Backups – Hostinger’s single and premium plans provide weekly backups instead of daily backups. While this is a downside, we always recommend that users set up their own backup solution to be on the safe side.
Hostinger Review
Hostinger has a 5-star rating on WPBeginner based on over 800 user reviews. In our detailed Hostinger review, you can also see the results of our performance and stress tests on Hostinger servers.
If you would like a free domain name, then you won’t get one with Hostinger’s cheapest plan. However, their second-tier plan includes a free domain and is still a little more affordable than Bluehost’s cheapest plan. All Hostinger plans include a free SSL certificate.
We found their customer support team to be very responsive, with almost immediate response times over live chat. Plus, Hostinger has a detailed knowledge base with step-by-step tutorials that answer the most common customer questions.
Bluehost Comparison
Bluehost is an officially recommended WordPress host and one of the biggest web hosting companies in the world. Their hosting is designed for WordPress websites, and they provide great performance with fast servers.
Their hosting prices are lower than most other hosting companies, though their plans cost a little more than Hostinger’s. All the same, they are a good choice for beginners and small businesses with limited budgets.
Pros of Bluehost
Bluehost offers great value at low prices, but you might be wondering what their pros and cons are. We will start with some of the advantages of picking Bluehost as your hosting service:
Low Costs – Bluehost’s most affordable plan allows you to get started with your website for a low price. Overall, it’s excellent value for new small businesses, bloggers, portfolios, and other WordPress websites.
Ease of Use – Bluehost has one of the most user-friendly hosting control panels, which makes it easy to install WordPress with one click and manage your website with ease.
Free Domain – Bluehost provides a free domain name, and this saves you extra money on your start-up costs.
Free CDN + Free SSL – Bluehost provides a free CDN to boost your website performance, and all plans come with a free SSL certificate to improve security.
Website Speed – We found that Bluehost performed well in our tests, even without performance optimization. You can also add WordPress caching plugins to unlock further speed improvements.
Staging Sites + Dev Tools – Bluehost plans come with staging site access, automatic WordPress updates, the ability to change PHP versions, secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) access, and more.
Cons of Bluehost
Now, we will take a look at some downsides to using Bluehost. Here are some cons that you may want to know:
Higher Domain Renewal Price – Their renewal price for the free domain name is higher than average. This won’t have an immediate impact but is worth keeping in mind.
Upselling Addons – During signup, you will see a lot of upselling. Most beginners won’t need these products right away, so it is safe to skip them and add them later if needed.
Bluehost Review
Bluehost has a 5-star rating on WPBeginner based on over 300 user reviews and the high value they offer at low prices. You can also check out our detailed Bluehost review to see the results of our performance and stress tests on the Bluehost servers.
The best thing about Bluehost is all of their plans include a free domain, unlimited bandwidth and SSD storage on their Plus plan, and great overall value for what you pay.
Additionally, their eCommerce hosting plan for WooCommerce comes with over $1000+ in premium WooCommerce and WordPress extensions, which can save you a lot of money.
Hostinger vs. Bluehost – Which Is Better?
Now that we have compared the different features of Hostinger vs. Bluehost, you may still be wondering which one of them is better. The answer depends on your needs and requirements.
Hostinger and Bluehost offer slightly different services, but they are both great providers that offer hosting plans at affordable prices.
Both companies provide fast response times to visitors all around the world. Hostinger has a slight advantage in Europe, and Bluehost excels in North America.
Which hosting provider should you choose?
We recommend Hostinger to people looking for cheaper website hosting with some limitations. On the other hand, Bluehost is better for users looking for unlimited everything by paying a little extra.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
We have helped thousands of our users choose the best web host for their needs, and we have been asked quite a few questions. Here are some of the answers to the most frequently asked questions about Hostinger vs. Bluehost.
Where are Hostinger and Bluehost located?
Hostinger’s headquarters are located in Kaunas, Lithuania. Their servers are located in several locations, including the USA, Europe, Brazil, Indonesia, and Singapore.
Bluehost has their own in-house data center in Utah, US. It is a huge 50,000-square-foot facility that acts as its primary data center.
How did you test the speeds of Hostinger’s and Bluehost’s web servers?
We started by creating identical test sites on each hosting provider and installed the default WordPress theme. After that, we imported sample content, including images and media.
We then used independent third-party tools like Pingdom to time page load time and Bitcatcha to test response times under load and from different geographical locations.
Can Hostinger and Bluehost handle high traffic?
Yes, in our stress tests, the shared hosting plans of both companies were able to handle 100 virtual users without any slowdown.
These plans can handle reasonable and sudden traffic spikes. However, they are still quite limited in server resources. If you are expecting high traffic, then we recommend you upgrade your hosting plan.
Are there other hosting providers that you haven’t covered in this comparison?
This article compares Hostinger and Bluehost because they are two of the most affordable hosting companies on the market.
Do you have any special discounts for Hostinger or Bluehost?
Yes. Because WPBeginner is the largest WordPress resource site, our users can get special discounts on popular hosting providers as well as other WordPress plugins. You can see all 100+ WordPress deals here.
Our Hostinger coupon will get you up to 81% off their web hosting plans.
You can use our Bluehost coupon to get over 75% off + a free domain.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Are you looking for the best video communication service for your business?
The right conference call software will make it easy to communicate with co-workers, partners, suppliers, clients, and more. This can help you be more productive, reach your goals, and build stronger relationships even across big geographical distances.
In this article, we will compare Google Meet vs Zoom to help you decide which video chat software is right for your website.
Why Should Your Business Use a Video Communication Service?
With the rising trend of remote working, many teams no longer work in the same building. If you are a big company, then you may even have staff in multiple countries.
This can make it difficult to collaborate and build relationships with co-workers. While you could communicate using email, phone calls, or call center software, there’s no substitute for face-to-face interaction.
These services can help people to communicate effectively and build successful business relationships, even when they are in completely different locations.
Even if you work alone, conference call services are an easy and flexible way to communicate with partners, suppliers, clients, interview candidates, and more.
When all your contacts are using the same service, it’s easier to set up meetings, send invites, manage attendees, and share and record important meetings.
However, with so many tools on the market, it can be difficult to find the best software. For example, if you are looking for unlimited video meetings, Microsoft and Salesforce integrations, and business text messaging, then Nextiva is a great choice.
Meanwhile, if you want video chat that integrates with top services such as Gsuite, Dropbox, and Microsoft, then RingCentral is one of the most feature-rich business phone and online meeting systems on the market.
There are also plenty of tools that offer free plans, including Google Meet and Zoom.
In this Google Meet vs Zoom guide, we are comparing these two popular tools to see which is right for your business. Simply use the quick links below to jump straight to the feature you want to compare:
Even if you are already using software like a virtual business phone number app, the right video communication service can help you run a successful business.
That being said, let’s start with an overview of these two popular conference call services.
It’s essentially an enhanced version of Google Hangouts that’s designed specifically for business owners. Google Meet is a fully web-based service, so you don’t need to install any software to use it.
To try the service for yourself, simply head over to the Google Meet website and click on ‘New Meeting’. You can then select ‘Start an instant meeting’ to launch a test meeting and try the Google Meet features for yourself.
Zoom – Overview
Zoom is a popular online video conferencing and meeting tool that allows you to set up an online conference call simply by sharing a link.
Zoom may be easy to set up, but it’s also packed with advanced features that can make your meetings more productive. These include searchable transcripts, instant messaging, screen sharing, and collaborative note-taking.
Price Comparison – Google Meet vs Zoom
When choosing business tools, it’s important to find a service that fits your budget. Some video conferencing plans also put limits on the call duration and the total attendees.
When deciding whether a service is good value for money, it’s important to take these factors into consideration. With that in mind, let’s compare the price for Google Meet and Zoom.
Google Meet – Price Comparison
Anyone with a free Google Account can create a video meeting and invite up to 100 participants for a maximum of 60 minutes.
If you want to meet for longer than an hour, then you will need to upgrade to Google’s Business Starter plan ($6 per user, per month, with a one-year commitment) or higher. All of Google’s paid plans allow you to meet for 24 hours, which should be enough for most businesses.
The Business Starter plan limits you to 100 attendees, so if you want to invite more people, then you will need to buy a Business Standard plan ($12 per user/month, one-year commitment), which allows you to invite 150 participants.
Need to invite even more people? Google’s Business Plus lets you run 500-participant video meetings for $18 per user/month if you buy a one-year plan. Meanwhile, the Enterprise Plan allows you to invite 1000 participants to a video meeting.
All the paid plans come with a custom business email address, Gmail Business email, phishing and spam protection, US or international dial-in phone numbers, and a digital whiteboard.
You will also get Chat Team messaging and Drive Secure storage. However, the amount of storage you get will vary based on your plan.
If you upgrade to Business Standard or higher, then you will also get access to noise cancellation, the option to record meetings and save them to Google Drive, appointment booking pages, Cloud Search Smart search, and advanced security features.
Zoom – Price Comparison
Like Google Meet, Zoom has a free plan that allows you to invite up to 100 attendees. However, you can only meet for 40 minutes, compared to the 60 minutes allowed by Google Meet’s free plan.
If you need to meet for longer than 40 minutes, then all of Zoom’s paid plans allow you to run 30-hour meetings. While this is longer than the Google Meet plan, it may not be required unless you run unusually long meetings or livestream virtual events and conferences.
Unlike Google Meet, the cheapest paid plan (Pro, priced at $15.99 per month, per user) still limits you to 100 attendees. If you want to invite more than 100 people, then you will need to upgrade to Business (19.99/month/user), which allows 300 attendees.
If you want to invite over 300 people, then you must contact Zoom and discuss upgrading to their Enterprise plan.
If you upgrade to a Pro or higher plan, then you will get access to an Essential Apps package. This is a package of third-party apps that Zoom has curated to make your meetings more productive. It includes apps that allow you to take notes, create a visual agenda, get personalized meeting reports, and create automated workflows.
The Business plan introduces some powerful extra features, including single sign-on and managed domains. You can also add your own branding, which is useful if you are a freelancer, designer, or developer who regularly uses Zoom to chat with clients.
If you want to make voice calls, then both Business Plus and Enterprise come with Zoom Phone, which allows you to make secure voice calls across all supported devices.
Winner – Google Meet
For running short meetings with 100 or fewer attendees, both the free Zoom and free Google Meet plans are great options. However, if you want to run longer meetings with over 100 attendees, then you will need to upgrade to a paid plan.
Generally, Zoom’s plans are slightly cheaper than the Google Meet equivalent. However, all of Google’s paid plans include the Google Workspace bundle of business and personal productivity tools and a secure business email.
This gives Meet a big advantage over Zoom, especially if you are a new business that needs a full suite of productivity tools and a professional email address.
If you are already using the Google apps, then it also makes sense to choose Google Meet since it works seamlessly with the other Google tools.
With all that in mind, the paid Google Meet plans do have a slight advantage over Zoom, even if both free plans represent great value for money.
Ease of Use – Google Meet vs Zoom
Choosing easy-to-use tools can save you a ton of time. This leaves you free to focus on more important tasks, including growing your business.
Here is how the two video conferencing software options compare for user-friendliness.
Google Meet – Ease of Use
Google Meet aims to make the user experience as effortless as possible. You can visit the Google Meet website in any supported web browser and start a meeting with just a few clicks.
If you have already accepted a Meet invite, then you can click on the event in your Google Calendar. This will open a popup with a ‘Join with Google Meet’ button.
Another option is to click on the ‘Meet’ button inside your Gmail account.
As you can see, it’s very easy to create or join a meeting, especially if you are already using Google tools.
Google Meet also has a pre-meeting ‘waiting room’, where you can toggle the camera and microphone on and off. You can also check the sound and video quality and change the settings before joining the meeting.
Google Meet’s settings are very simple, with just a few options. You can change the microphone, speakers, and camera that Google Meet uses and tell Google to log you out of meetings automatically if no one joins after a few minutes.
During meetings, you will find a row of buttons at the bottom of the screen where you can access some basic settings, send emojis, raise your hand to ask a question, and perform other basic tasks. You can also enable closed captions, which is great for accessibility.
To invite other people, simply share the link or dial-in number that Google Meet creates for you automatically.
If you want to schedule a team meeting, then just create a new event in Google Calendar. Then, click on the ‘Add Google Meet video conferencing’ button.
This creates a meeting link automatically.
With that done, just click on ‘Add Guests’ and type in the name or email address of every contact you want to invite.
As you can see, Google Meet is designed with simplicity in mind.
Most of the time, the video conference software works out of the box, and you can schedule meetings with just a few clicks. However, this ease of use does mean that Google Meet lacks some of the more advanced features you get from platforms like Zoom.
Zoom – Ease of Use
When it comes to ease of use, the Zoom experience is very different depending on whether you are using the online client or the desktop app.
The Zoom online client isn’t particularly user-friendly compared to the Google Meet experience. For example, if you want to schedule a meeting, then you will need to fill out a form.
However, the desktop app is much easier to use.
You can schedule a meeting or create an instant meeting with the click of a button.
You can also easily share your screen or join a meeting by typing in the meeting ID or link.
Before you join a meeting, you will get a chance to enable or disable the audio and video. However, unlike Google Meet, there’s no ‘waiting room’ where you can preview how the video feed will look before joining the main meeting.
No matter whether you are using the desktop app or the online client, Zoom’s settings are much more detailed and in-depth compared to Google Meet.
This does mean there’s a steeper learning curve, and non-techy users, in particular, may struggle with some of Zoom’s more advanced features.
However, Zoom’s comprehensive settings do mean the tool is far more flexible and powerful compared to Google Meet. For example, with the right Zoom settings, you can share a second webcam, which can be useful if you run webinars, demonstrations, or virtual classrooms.
Zoom can even recognize gestures and translate them into a corresponding meeting reaction. For example, you can trigger the thumbs-up emoji by putting your thumb up to the camera.
With that in mind, it’s no surprise that Zoom’s settings can be a bit overwhelming and confusing at first.
Winner – Google Meet
When it comes to ease of use, Google Meet definitely has the edge, particularly if you already use Google’s services. You can start a meeting instantly from the apps you are already using, including Gmail and Google Calendar.
If you already have a Google account, then getting started with Meet feels effortless. The default settings are also a good fit for most users, so Google Meet often works out of the box.
If you download the Zoom desktop app, then you will get a much better experience compared to the online client, and you will also have a ton of advanced features to explore.
However, if you are simply looking for click-and-go video chat software, then Google Meet is the clear winner.
Cross-Platform Support – Google Meet vs Zoom
A good video conferencing solution should always be within easy each, no matter what device or web browser you are using. This is particularly important if you regularly work from different places or give employees the option to work from home.
That said, let’s see how Google Meet and Zoom stack up in terms of the devices and operating systems they support.
Cross-Platform Support – Google Meet
Much like Google’s other web-based tools, Google Meet runs completely in the web browser. It supports Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Apple Safari.
This means you should have no problems joining a meeting from your desktop computer, assuming you have a good internet connection and one of the major web browsers.
If your browser doesn’t support Google Meet, then you can still dial in using a phone number or PIN that Meet creates automatically.
If you regularly have video calls on your smartphone or tablet, then you can download the Google Meet app for iOS or Android. This app has a similar user interface to the desktop version, which allows you to join and create meetings with just a few taps.
Cross-Platform Support – Zoom
Unlike Google Meet, Zoom has a desktop application for Windows, macOS, and Linux. It may take longer to set up compared to Google Meet, but the desktop app provides a much better user experience compared to the Zoom online client, so it’s well worth the effort.
If you don’t want to install the app, then the web client supports Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Chromium Edge. There’s also a mobile app for Android and iOS.
Winner – Zoom
No matter what device you are using, you should have no problems accessing Google Meet or Zoom. Both video communication services also have well-designed mobile apps, which we highly recommend if you regularly make calls from your smartphone or tablet.
However, Zoom is the winner simply because it’s the only platform that has a dedicated desktop app. If you have a busy schedule, then you can just leave Zoom running in the background while you work on other tasks. You can then connect to meetings, create new events, check your schedule, and more simply by checking the desktop interface.
Text Chat and Channels – Google Meet vs Zoom
Google Meet and Zoom allow you to have face-to-face conversations with people no matter where they are in the world. However, they both also support text chat, so let’s see how these features compare.
Text Chat and Channels – Google Meet
Google Meet allows you to send messages that appear alongside the main video screen. However, everyone on the call can see these messages, so there’s no way to have private one-on-one conversations.
You also can’t see any messages that people sent before you joined the meeting. Unless the meeting is being recorded, the entire conversation history will also disappear as soon as you leave the call.
You can’t add emojis or GIFs to your messages, although you can send a limited number of reactions that float across the main video window.
Text Chat and Channels – Zoom
Unlike Google Meet, you can send private messages to individual attendees in a Zoom call. This is particularly useful if you regularly host large meetings with lots of attendees. Without the option to send private messages, the chat could easily become too noisy and distracting, with multiple conversations happening at once.
Zoom also makes it easy to add emojis to your messages, although, just like Google Meet, there’s no option to add GIFs.
Similar to Google Meet, Zoom also adds a conversation log to recorded meetings, so people can follow along with the chat.
It also hides any messages that were sent before you joined the call. This is exactly the same behavior as Google Meet, but it may still be frustrating for some users.
Winner –Zoom
With the option to send private messages and built-in support for emojis, Zoom is the clear winner when it comes to text chat.
WordPress Integrations – Google Meet vs Zoom
If you have a WordPress website, then you may be wondering whether you can integrate WordPress with your video conferencing software. Let’s take a closer look at how both tools handle WordPress integration.
WordPress Integrations – Zoom
There are several ways to connect Zoom to your WordPress website. If you run webinars or online conferences, then you can use WPForms and the Uncanny Automator plugin to automatically register attendees when they fill out a form on your website.
In this way, you can onboard new clients, schedule coaching calls, and more. If you sell online courses or training, then you can even add students to an upcoming webinar or session as soon as they enroll.
Then, you can use Uncanny Automator to create a recipe that registers the visitor automatically when they complete the form.
If you have a WooCommerce store, then you can use the same Uncanny Automator recipe to enroll new customers in a product webinar after they buy an item in your online store.
Additionally, if you want to manage your Zoom meetings from the WordPress dashboard, then you may want to look at Video Conferencing with Zoom. This plugin allows you to import all your Zoom meetings into the WordPress dashboard with a single click.
You can even restrict your Zoom content using a membership plugin. In this way, you can make money online by selling access to your Zoom recordings.
WordPress Integrations – Google Meet
You can connect Google Meet to your WordPress website using Zapier. This popular automation tool comes with a ready-made workflow that will automatically schedule a Google Meet every time you publish a new post.
This can improve your editorial workflow by giving all team members a time to meet and review the new content, provide feedback, or review the post’s traffic, conversion rates, and other important metrics using a tool like Google Analytics.
Even better, you can build your own custom Google Meet and WordPress automation workflows using the Zapier editor. This gives you the freedom and flexibility to integrate WordPress and Google Meet in the way that works best for you.
Winner – Zoom
You can integrate Google Meet and WordPress in lots of ways using Zapier. However, the combination of Uncanny Automator and WPForms gives Zoom a definite advantage.
These two must-have WordPress plugins allow you to automatically add students, customers, co-workers, and other contacts to your Zoom webinars and calls. For this reason, Zoom is a great choice for WordPress blog and website owners.
Professional and Community Support – Google Meet vs Zoom
Google Meet and Zoom are both easy to use, but everyone needs help from time to time. Let’s compare their support options to see the help that’s available.
Professional and Community Support – Google Meet
If you prefer to find answers yourself, then there is an entire library of tutorials and videos in the Google Meet Help portal. You can look through the different pages or type in your question and get articles recommended to you.
There’s also a Google Meet Community where you can browse questions that other people have posted.
While there is a lot of information here, thankfully, Google has created a detailed sorting and filtering system that can help you find the information you are looking for, fast.
If you can’t find a relevant thread, then you can always create your own.
Simply post your question to the Community portal, and wait for a response from the Google Meet community.
If you want to improve your Google Meet knowledge and boost your productivity, then you can check out the Google Workspace Learning Center. Here, you will find quick start guides, cheat sheets, productivity guides, and many other useful resources.
Do you prefer professional support instead?
Google’s Business Starter, Business Standard, and Business Plus all come with standard professional support. However, if you buy an Enterprise plan, then you will get access to Enhanced Support, which promises faster response times, more advanced product knowledge, and even support for third-party technologies.
Professional and Community Support – Zoom
If you have any questions, then the Zoom Support portal should be your first stop. Here, you will find a knowledge base with thousands of articles, a learning center with on-demand video courses, and an active community question-and-answer site.
If you are interested in community support, then the Zoom Q and A threads are helpfully divided into categories and organized into Latest, Trending, Solved, and Unanswered tabs.
This system should help you get answers to common questions, fast.
If you have a Zoom problem that no one else has posted about, then you can always start a new thread and get direct help from the Zoom community.
The Zoom support portal also has a chatbot, so you can type in questions and get answers at any time of the day or night. Often, this is much faster than looking through all the Zoom documentation yourself.
If you buy a Business plan or higher, then you will also get live chat support, phone support, and the option to submit web tickets.
Alternatively, if you have a Pro plan, then you can submit web tickets and may be entitled to live chat and phone support, depending on the total cost of your Zoom subscription.
Additionally, if you need professional support, then Zoom offers a range of premium support plans.
Winner – Tie
While both Google Meet and Zoom offer professional support, it’s the community support and online resources that really put these two popular video services ahead of the competition.
No matter whether you choose Meet or Zoom, you will get access to detailed and extensive articles, tutorials, video guides, forums, and countless other online resources.
That said, both Google Meet and Zoom are excellent choices when it comes to support.
Google Meet vs Zoom: Which Is Better For Your Business?
If you are looking for an easy, convenient video conferencing tool with excellent support, then both Google Meet and Zoom are great options.
Both video chat platforms make it easy to communicate with teammates, employees, customers, and other contacts around the world. They are also available across all major browsers and work on smartphones, tablets, and desktop computers. This means you can use both Google Meet and Zoom from any location.
Ultimately, the software that’s right for you will vary depending on the features your business needs, the size of your organization, and how long your meetings typically last.
Each tool has its own strengths and drawbacks. If you want a solution that works out of the box for most users and integrates with the full suite of Google Workspace apps, then Google Meet is likely better for your business.
But if you want more advanced features and a dedicated desktop app, then Zoom is the better option. We also recommend Zoom if you run a WordPress website due to its seamless integration with WordPress via powerful plugins like Uncanny Automator and WPForms.
Alternatives to Google Meet and Zoom
In this guide, we focused on Google Meet vs Zoom, but there are lots more communication tools on the market that might be better for your business.
If you are looking for an alternative solution, then Nextiva is the best virtual business phone number service on the market.
At WPBeginner, we use Nextiva for all our business phone needs because it helps our team answer incoming customer calls from anywhere in the world without having to share their personal cell phone numbers. Plus, the Nextiva Video plan comes with video conferencing, screen-sharing, and file-sharing features.
If you regularly video chat with customers or offer customer support, then RingCentral is another popular business VoIP service provider that lets you set up a cloud call center solution for your business.
They also offer an AI-powered video meeting experience with advanced features such as live transcription, intelligent meeting summaries, and virtual backgrounds.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Are you thinking about switching to a career in WordPress?
When planning any changes to your job, you will want to look at all the options and make sure your new career path will be secure for years to come.
In this article, we will show you the best WordPress careers so that you can learn how to make a living with WordPress.
Why Choose WordPress Careers?
WordPress is a highly successful content management system. It’s one of the best website builders, it’s free and open source, and it powers 43% of sites on the internet.
Note: When we talk about WordPress, we are referring to the self-hosted WordPress.org instead of WordPress.com. To learn the differences, you can see our complete guide to WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com.
Since the WordPress platform is so popular, you may be wondering if you can make your living with it.
The good news is that pursuing a new job in WordPress can be safe and rewarding. The demand for WordPress professionals remains high due to the platform’s popularity and constant growth. Plus, there are lots of WordPress careers for individuals with a wide range of skill sets.
Note: While other tech companies have been struggling in today’s economy, Awesome Motive has continued to hire WordPress developers, WordPress support specialists, technical content writers, and more. We now have more than 300 employees in over 50 countries.
That being said, let’s look at the best WordPress career options for making a living with WordPress.
WordPress Developer
WordPress developers are responsible for creating and customizing WordPress websites, eCommerce sites, plugins, and custom themes using programming languages like PHP, JavaScript, CSS, MySQL, HTML, and more.
You will spend time adding functionality, optimizing performance, and resolving technical issues. While this can mean writing new code, you will also need to enhance old code, diagnose and fix bugs, update legacy code, and provide feedback to other developers.
Employment of web developers and web designers is projected to grow 13% from 2020 to 2030, much faster than the average for all occupations. WordPress developers, including both back-end and front-end developers, are in especially high demand since WordPress powers 43.2% of all websites.
If you are interested in becoming a WordPress developer, then you can get started by reading our guide on how to learn WordPress for free.
WordPress UI/UX Designer
UI/UX designers are responsible for the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) of WordPress plugins and WordPress themes. You will focus on creating visually appealing and user-friendly interfaces and perform UX audits to provide a good user experience.
While developers are more focused on the technical side of software development, UI/UX designers focus on the user experience. Developers typically work with code, while UI/UX designers usually work with images, text, and other visual elements.
However, there is some overlap between the two roles, and many developers and UI/UX designers have skills in both areas. Ultimately, the goal of both developers and UI/UX designers is to create software that is both functional and enjoyable to use.
The best way to decide whether you want to be a developer or a UI/UX designer is to consider your own strengths and interests. If you are most interested in creating visually appealing and user-friendly interfaces, then you might be a good fit for a UI/UX designer role.
WordPress QA Engineer
A QA engineer, or quality assurance engineer, is responsible for ensuring the quality of software. They do this by finding bugs before the software is released to the public. This involves designing and running tests, analyzing test results, and reporting bugs to developers.
They will often automate these tests to save time and improve the efficiency of the testing process. After that, they look for bugs in the test results and decide whether they are critical.
They need to communicate the bugs to the developers in a clear and concise way so that they can be fixed as quickly as possible. This can involve working with the developers to find the root cause of the bug and develop a fix.
If you are looking for a career where you can use your analytical and problem-solving skills to make a difference, then QA engineering may be the right career for you.
Marketing Specialist
Marketing specialists do market research and make marketing strategies to drive the sales of a WordPress company’s plugins, themes, or services.
Marketing specialists spend a lot of time working with other team members, including developers and designers. You will typically need to design and optimize landing pages and create an email newsletter to generate leads and sales.
You will also need to build relationships with potential customers and influencers in the industry. This will often mean attending WordPress events and conferences like WordCamp.
WordPress Support Specialist
Support specialists make sure that customers can successfully use their plugins and themes on their own WordPress websites. You will troubleshoot errors, answer customer questions, and provide solutions to ensure a positive user experience.
Technical support is more focused on resolving specific problems, while customer support focuses on providing a positive overall experience. However, there is some overlap between the two, and many technical support representatives also have strong customer service skills.
Customers may contact support staff via a toll-free phone number, email, a help desk, or live chat. You will aim to build relationships based on trust by listening to your customer’s needs. This will result in happy, passionate, and loyal customers.
This means that a support specialist is one of the best WordPress careers if you are patient, understanding, and able to place customers at ease. You also need to provide confident and timely answers by being familiar with the product’s documentation and common issues.
WordPress Content Writer
A content writer creates engaging and informative content for WordPress plugins, themes, and services. You research and write documentation, tutorials, marketing materials, and blog posts to promote and support your company’s products.
This will involve writing accurate descriptions for the plugin or theme’s landing page, marketplace listings, or sales pages. You will highlight key features and benefits and include screenshots and unique selling points to attract and educate potential customers.
You may also be responsible for writing technical documentation for WordPress plugins and themes. This means you need to have a strong understanding of WordPress and its features.
You will collaborate closely with the development team to understand new features, updates, and bug fixes. You need to keep track of upcoming changes and ensure that the documentation reflects the most current version of the plugin.
Professional WordPress bloggers and writers will also need to optimize their content to improve search engine rankings. This includes doing keyword research, writing meta descriptions and tags, optimizing titles and headings, and following search engine optimization (SEO) best practices.
Video Content Creator
A video content creator is responsible for creating videos to promote the company’s products, such as WordPress plugins or themes. You may also make tutorial videos that explain how to do specific tasks and cover different use cases.
As a video creator, you will need to plan content, write scripts, and find ways to present complex topics simply. You will research trends, analyze audience preferences, and identify the topics that need to be covered.
You will shoot high-quality videos using cameras, lighting equipment, and other necessary tools. Plus, you will set up appropriate backgrounds, props, and settings to improve the visual appearance of the videos with proper framing, focus, and audio quality during recording.
You will need to edit the video and optimize it for online viewing, though, at this point, another team member may take over. You will also add appropriate metadata, such as titles, descriptions, and tags, to improve video SEO.
Finally, you will upload the video to a streaming service such as YouTube or Vimeo and then embed the video in WordPress so that it can be viewed on the website. You may also work with the marketing team to promote the videos.
Graphic Designer
Graphic designers create the visual elements, icons, logos, and overall aesthetics for WordPress plugins and themes. You work closely with developers and other team members to improve the products’ visual appeal, usability, and branding.
Usability principles are important when designing WordPress plugins and themes. WordPress designers focus on creating clear and understandable visual cues, buttons, and icons, making it easier for users to interact with the product and achieve their goals.
You may also create graphics for blog posts, social media posts, and video thumbnails. Plus, you will collaborate with marketing teams to create promotional materials, banners, and graphics.
FAQs About WordPress Careers
Do you have any questions about the best way to get into a WordPress career? Here are some of the most frequent questions we are asked about WordPress careers by our readers.
Are WordPress jobs in demand?
Yes. With WordPress powering 43% of all websites, freelance WordPress developers and other roles are in high demand. When visiting online job boards, you can be confident there will be plenty of WordPress careers being advertised.
How can I prepare for a WordPress career?
The best way to prepare for a WordPress career is to become familiar with WordPress. You can learn a lot of WordPress skills by reading WPBeginner tutorials and watching content on our YouTube channel. You can also take advantage of our paid courses at WP101.
It’s also important to get involved in the WordPress community. There are many ways to get involved, like going to WordPress meetups, participating in forums, and contributing to open-source projects.
WordPress plugins and themes are written in PHP, so if you want to become a developer, then it is important to have strong coding skills in PHP. You can also learn JavaScript and MySQL, which are other important languages for WordPress development.
How long does it take to learn WordPress to get a job?
It can take beginners between 6 months to a year to become familiar with WordPress, depending on how much time you spend learning and using the platform.
However, if you want to become a skilled WordPress developer, then you will need to invest even more time in learning WordPress and the PHP programming language.
Can someone who doesn’t know how to code get a job in WordPress?
Yes. While there are plenty of jobs for WordPress developers, there are also WordPress careers that don’t need any coding skills.
These include graphic design, creating written and video content, customer support, and marketing.
Where can I apply for WordPress jobs?
There are many places to find WordPress job postings when looking for new career opportunities.
You can start by checking online job boards like Indeed, Monster, and CareerBuilder. There are also a number of WordPress-specific job boards, such as WordPress Jobs.
Social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter can also be a good way to find WordPress-related job opportunities. You can also attend WordPress meetups and join online WordPress communities to network with WordPress companies.
Make sure you visit our Careers page to learn about the benefits of working at Awesome Motive and see the jobs we have available. We often advertise new full-time job openings, so make sure you come back regularly.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Have you seen claims and rumors that WordPress is dying or about to be replaced by some newer website builder or software?
You may be wondering if the rumors are true. Maybe you are even questioning whether it’s worth using WordPress at all.
In this article, we will take a look at the state of WordPress to show you there’s absolutely no truth to the rumors that WordPress is dying.
Why Are There Rumors About WordPress Dying?
Some people are spreading rumors to discourage you from building a WordPress website. They may make claims on Twitter or Reddit that WordPress is dying or even write full blog posts about it.
It’s hard to know why. Maybe when they see the huge success of WordPress, they wonder how long it can continue. Or maybe they are using an alternative to WordPress that they are convinced is about to take over the world.
Whatever their motives, when you look at the facts, these rumors are simply not true. There is absolutely no indication that WordPress is dying or its loyal users are about to abandon it.
With that being said, let’s take a careful look at the state of WordPress to see if there is any reason to believe that WordPress is dying. You can use the quick links below to jump to different parts of our article:
We will start by looking at WordPress search volume. We will start here because these figures are often used as evidence that interest in WordPress is declining.
Here is a graph from Google Trends showing search interest in WordPress since 2004.
This graph shows that there was an astonishing level of search interest in WordPress around 2014. However, there is still a lot of interest in WordPress today.
You can’t easily see that by looking at the graph above. So let’s add some context. Here is the same graph, but this time we have added some of the top WordPress alternatives.
Recently, you can see that searches for alternatives like Wix and Shopify have been increasing. These platforms may be easier for beginners to get started with.
However, over time, many users become frustrated with their lack of customization or that they can’t run these websites on their own servers. You can learn more in our comparisons of Wix vs. WordPress and Shopify vs. WooCommerce.
WordPress Market Share
Now that we have looked at search volume, you may be wondering how many websites are actually using WordPress and how that compares with other web platforms.
In short, WordPress dominates the market. No other platform comes close.
Currently, more than 43% of all websites are using WordPress as their content management system. That’s 810 million websites in total. And WordPress holds nearly 65% of the global CMS market share.
Also, WordPress is being used by the most successful companies. 38% of the top 10,000 websites are powered by WordPress. WordPress powers websites for big-name brands, including Disney, Sony, Facebook, and more.
This graph from Colorlib can help you visualize WordPress’s huge market share.
You can see that websites that don’t use a content management system (green line) have been steadily declining. Meanwhile, WordPress adoption (red line) has been steadily growing, and other content management systems barely register on the graph.
For example, Shopify is the second most popular, but it only powers about 4.4% of all sites, and Wix spends tens of millions in marketing, but it only powers 1.9%.
WordPress is alive and well, and it’s hard to believe that over 43% of website owners who have carefully chosen WordPress are all suddenly going to change their minds.
The State of WordPress Security
Having such a large market share, WordPress is a common target of hacking attempts, DDOS attacks, malware, and trojans.
The good news is that WordPress core goes through rigorous security audits, and it’s more secure than many other platforms.
However, you can never take website security for granted. Statistics from Sucuri, a leading website security company, show that about 97% of WordPress website hacks occur when their owners don’t follow safe security practices:
Nearly 50% of WordPress sites are affected by a security vulnerability caused by an outdated or poorly-coded WordPress plugin or theme.
Around 8% of WordPress sites were hacked due to a weak password.
You can make your WordPress site as secure as possible by following some basic security best practices. To learn more, see our complete WordPress security guide for step-by-step instructions.
The State of WordPress Updates
WordPress has been around since 2004. However, the software is regularly updated to add new features and keep the user interface current.
WordPress is an open-source project and is driven by a global community of users. This means that anyone can contribute to the project in many different ways:
The WordPress translation community has fully translated the CMS into over 50 languages and partially translated more than 200.
WordPress communities around the world organize multiple WordCamps each year, as well as thousands of other meetups in various countries.
There are dozens of WordPress groups on Facebook, with WPBeginner Engage being the largest WordPress Facebook group with 95,000+ members.
The development team release updates several times a year, such as WordPress 6.3, which was released in August 2023. These can include bug fixes, security updates, and new features.
Past WordPress update highlights include the Gutenberg editor, which lets you easily add new elements to blog posts using blocks. The full site editor works in a similar way with customizing themes. And the command palette tool lets you be productive by quickly doing tasks from the keyboard.
Every year the platform becomes more powerful and easier to use. If you take a look at our article on the evolution of the WordPress user interface, then you will see at a glance how modern the latest interface is.
Besides the new features in WordPress itself, you can also add new features using plugins.
The State of WordPress Plugins
The biggest reason behind WordPress’s popularity is its large plugin ecosystem. No other web platform has as many to choose from.
Plugins are like apps for your WordPress website. You can install them to add new features to your site and extend its functionality. To learn more, see our guide on WordPress plugins and how they work.
There are more than 60,000 free WordPress plugins in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory alone. Currently, the 61 top WordPress plugins are installed on more than 1 million websites, and 9 of those plugins are installed on 5 million+ websites.
With a healthy plugin ecosystem, you can add custom functionality to your website at a fraction of the cost of custom development.
Whatever feature you wish to add to your WordPress website, you are sure to find a plugin that can do it.
The State of WordPress Themes
Themes control the appearance of a WordPress website. They are WordPress-specific website design templates that you can install on your website to change the way it looks.
The WordPress theme ecosystem is very rich. There are thousands of free and paid WordPress themes available, offering WordPress users an endless combination of design, layout, color schemes, and features.
WordPress.org’s free theme directory has more than 10,000 free WordPress themes.
Besides this, there are many excellent premium themes like Divi and Astra. You can even build your own custom theme with SeedProd. No other CMS offers the same level of customization as WordPress.
The WordPress Economy
While WordPress itself is free, it has inspired a thriving, multi-billion-dollar ecosystem that creates thousands of jobs all over the world. These include freelancers, developers, and companies that sell WordPress-related products and services.
Thousands of WordPress jobs are currently open on many popular freelancing websites and job boards. The average hourly rate for WordPress developers can be anywhere between $20-$100 per hour, depending on their expertise and the job at hand.
There are hundreds of small and large businesses, agencies, and developers selling WordPress-related products. You can see our list of the most influential WordPress businesses and companies and what they do.
These companies are highly invested in WordPress and strongly contribute to its success.
The State of WPBeginner and Awesome Motive
As you know, WPBeginner and our parent company, Awesome Motive, completely rely on WordPress for our success. We have no doubt that WordPress is alive and well and is the best choice for you to build your website.
Thanks to our awesome community, WPBeginner and Awesome Motive have continued to grow year after year.
In 2022, we reached a huge milestone. We were featured on the NASDAQ billboard in Time Square for passing 20 million active installs of our products.
That was huge, but we soon reached an even bigger milestone. In 2023, we were featured on the NASDAQ billboard again for passing 25 million active installs of our products.
As a result, our confidence in WordPress is bigger than ever. We have continued to invest more resources in WordPress and hire new staff, and now have over 300 team members in 50+ countries. We only see the success of WordPress growing and want to be part of it.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Are you looking for an honest web hosting comparison of Bluehost vs GoDaddy?
These are two of the most popular affordable hosting companies on the market. However, for beginners, it’s often not clear which one is better for their website.
In this guide, we will compare Bluehost vs GoDaddy with their pros and cons so that you can make the right decision.
Both are very popular. GoDaddy has a large market share and hosts over 40 million websites, while Bluehost is an official WordPress.org recommended hosting provider.
In this comparison, we will take a closer look into the pros and cons of Bluehost vs GoDaddy in detail. However, if you don’t want to go through the full comparison, here is a quick summary:
That being said, let’s compare each one of them and see how they stack up.
Bluehost Comparison
Bluehost is one of the biggest web hosting companies in the world and an officially recommended WordPress host. They offer WordPress-optimized hosting plans with faster servers and reliable performance.
Their shared hosting prices are lower priced when compared to other hosting companies. This makes them a good choice for beginners and small businesses on a limited budget.
Pros of Bluehost
Bluehost offers great value at a low cost, but what are some of their pros and cons? Let’s start with some of the benefits of using Bluehost as your hosting service:
Lower Costs – Bluehost’s entry-level plan allows you to get started with your website for a lower price, which is great value for new small businesses, bloggers, portfolios, and other types of websites.
Ease of Use – Bluehost has one of the most beginner-friendly hosting control panels that makes it super easy to install WordPress (one click) and manage your website.
Free Domain – They offer a free domain name, which saves you additional money on your start-up costs.
Free CDN + Free SSL – Bluehost offers a free CDN to speed up your website, and all plans come with a free SSL certificate to improve website security.
Website Speed – In our tests, we found that Bluehost performs well, with no performance optimization done on our test sites. You can also add WordPress caching plugins to unlock further speed improvements.
Staging Sites + Dev Tools – Bluehost plans come with staging site setup, automatic WordPress updates, the ability to change PHP versions, SFTP access, and more.
Cons of Bluehost
Obviously, there are some downsides to using Bluehost as well. Here are some of the disadvantages that you may want to know:
Higher Domain Renewal Price – Their free domain renewal price is higher than average. This does not have an immediate impact on most businesses, but it is something you may need to keep in mind.
Upselling Addons – You will see a lot of upselling during signup. Most beginners usually don’t need these products right away, so you can skip them.
Bluehost Review
Bluehost has a 5-star rating on WPBeginner based on over 300 user reviews and the high value they offer at low prices. We also ran our own performance and stress tests on their servers, which you can read all about in our detailed Bluehost review.
The best thing about Bluehost is that you get a free domain with all plans, unlimited bandwidth and SSD storage on their Plus plan, and great overall value for what you pay.
Plus, their eCommerce hosting plan for WooCommerce comes with over $1000+ in premium WooCommerce and WordPress extensions, which is a huge cost saving for online store owners.
GoDaddy Comparison
GoDaddy is a famous web hosting company and the world’s biggest domain registrar. They offer a huge variety of hosting plans for individuals and businesses of every size.
GoDaddy has a large market share in the website hosting space, and many popular websites use them. However, they are not always the best option when you are building a website, creating a blog, or starting a new business.
Pros of GoDaddy
GoDaddy is a popular low-cost hosting provider, but what are some of their pros and cons? Let’s start with some of the benefits of using GoDaddy as your hosting service:
WordPress-Optimized Hosting – GoDaddy’s managed WordPress hosting plans are run on servers optimized for WordPress for faster and more secure hosting.
Managed Hosting – GoDaddy handles some basic administrative tasks for you, such as installing WordPress, automated daily backups, WordPress core updates, and server-level caching. Bluehost shared hosting plans also include some of these tasks.
Free Domain – They offer a free domain name, which helps you save money on your start-up costs.
Free CDN + Free SSL – GoDaddy plans come with the Cloudflare CDN to speed up your website, and all plans come with a free SSL certificate to improve website security.
Affordable – GoDaddy has very reasonable prices for all the features they offer.
24/7 Support – No matter when you need help, GoDaddy support is available any time of day or night.
Monthly Billing Option – For those who prefer to pay month to month, there is a monthly billing option. However, you get a bigger discount if you pay for at least a year in advance.
Cons of Bluehost
Are there any downsides to using GoDaddy? Here are some of the disadvantages that you may want to know:
Addons – GoDaddy offers a huge variety of services. During the checkout process, many of these tools and features will be offered to you as addons. These are completely optional, but some users may find all the upsell offers to be too aggressive.
Controversial Ads – GoDaddy has come under fire several times over the years due to its controversial advertising. While this does not affect their hosting services, some users have moved away from GoDaddy in protest against their ads.
No Email Support – While still offering 24/7 support by live chat and phone, GoDaddy has discontinued email support.
GoDaddy Review
GoDaddy has a 5-star rating on WPBeginner, but this is based on 16 reviews compared to over 300 for Bluehost. You will find detailed information about their hosting in our GoDaddy review.
Like Bluehost, GoDaddy’s plans offer excellent value. You get one year of free domain registration, a free SSL certificate, SSD storage, and unlimited bandwidth with all plans. Plus, their hosting plans are managed, saving you some ongoing maintenance work.
However, GoDaddy’s overall onboarding experience is not as beginner friendly. And while they offer 24/7 support via live chat and phone, they no longer offer email support.
Bluehost vs GoDaddy – Which Is Better?
Now that we have compared different features of Bluehost vs GoDaddy, you may still be wondering which one of these hosting providers is better.
If you are looking for the most affordable hosting, then the best choice is Bluehost. They offer better pricing for small businesses. They also have better support, and their My Sites dashboard and overall onboarding experience is a lot more beginner-friendly.
But maybe you would prefer the convenience of managed hosting, where the routine maintenance work such as updates, backups, and more is done for you.
In that case, GoDaddy offers basic managed hosting plans at a very affordable rate. In fact, they are much cheaper than Bluehost’s managed hosting. However, GoDaddy’s managed hosting plans offer fewer features when compared with the best managed hosting providers.
Although it will cost you more, we recommend WP Engine for managed WordPress hosting. They are the best for scaling your website, and they can even offer custom cloud hosting using Amazon’s infrastructure and more.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) About Bluehost vs GoDaddy
Having helped thousands of users choose the best web host for their needs, we have answered quite a few questions. Here are some of the answers to the most frequently asked questions about Bluehost vs GoDaddy.
Which is better for beginners, Bluehost or GoDaddy?
Bluehost is the most beginner-friendly WordPress hosting company on the market. They automatically install WordPress for you when you sign up. They also have an easy-to-use control panel that allows you to manage your hosting account by yourself.
There is plenty of help available with detailed guides, video tutorials, and articles. You also have 24/7 access to their expert support via live chat and phone.
GoDaddy is also a good option for beginners, but their hosting can be more complex to use.
Does Bluehost or GoDaddy have the greater market share?
Over 4 million websites are hosted on Bluehost. Out of the top 1 million websites based on traffic, just 0.37% use Bluehost.
GoDaddy has a much bigger market share, hosting over 40 million websites. And when we look at the top 1 million websites based on traffic, 2.06% host their sites with GoDaddy.
Where are Bluehost and GoDaddy servers located?
Bluehost operates their own in-house data center located in Utah, US. It is a massive 50,000 square feet facility that serves as its primary data center.
GoDaddy has nine server facilities around the world, located in North America, Europe, and Asia. These facilities house over 37,000 servers in total.
Can I use subdomains for my site?
Yes, you can use subdomains on either Bluehost or GoDaddy.
Are there other hosting providers that you haven’t covered in this comparison?
We only compared Bluehost vs GoDaddy in this article because they are the most popular affordable WordPress hosting companies.
Do you have any special discounts for Bluehost or GoDaddy?
Yes, because WPBeginner is the largest WordPress resource site, our users can get special discounts on popular hosting providers as well as other WordPress plugins. You can see all 100+ WordPress deals here.
You can use our Bluehost coupon to get over 60% off + a free domain.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Are you wondering about the best way to handle old posts in WordPress?
Over time, some of your content may become outdated, irrelevant, or inaccurate. This can lead to a bad user experience and a drop in your site’s SEO rankings.
In this article, we will discuss whether it’s better to keep or delete old posts in WordPress.
What Is the Problem With Old Content in WordPress?
As you grow your website, you might focus on creating new content. However, old content can quickly become a problem on growing WordPress blogs. It can affect your business, sales, and profits if left unchecked.
Depending on your niche, your content may become irrelevant, incorrect, or inappropriate over a period of time. This may cause a bad user experience, a higher bounce rate, and lower search rankings. It can also hurt your credibility.
In our guide on content decay, we explain why some of your older articles decline in rankings. We also show you how to find decayed content using an SEO plugin like All in One SEO.
You may also have old articles that are still ranking but now contain outdated information. There is no easy way to find this content except to systematically review all of your articles. Then, you can decide if you should keep or delete the old content.
Should You Keep or Delete Old Content in WordPress? (7 Scenarios)
Luckily, there are a number of ways you can handle old posts so that your website doesn’t suffer. The best approach will vary depending on each post, and it normally won’t be a choice between simply keeping or deleting the content.
For example, you may want to keep evergreen content that is decaying in rankings. However, you will also need to update that content so it’s up-to-date and accurate to boost rankings.
On the other hand, deleting old posts that are no longer relevant can improve user experience and your site’s SEO. But you will also need to redirect the posts to avoid 404 errors.
For most blogs, a combination of strategies will be the right answer.
With that being said, let’s take a look at some different ways you can deal with old content on your WordPress website:
Whether your old posts contain outdated information or not, it’s important to update or rewrite them from time to time to keep them fresh.
That’s because Google takes into account the freshness of an article when ranking your content. In general, it will prioritize newer posts over older posts.
At WPBeginner, we update our old content at least every 6 months. In fact, as soon as a post is published, we schedule an update.
You will need to update any details of the post that are now out-of-date and add any new information that wasn’t available when the post was first written.
You can also add internal links to relevant posts that you have recently published, and you may need to update the keywords used in the article to match current search trends.
Don’t forget to also update the images in the post, and you can improve engagement by embedding video content.
We recommend that you work through our checklist on how to optimize your blog posts for SEO when updating or rewriting content. This post even has a section on how to optimize older blog posts.
2. Promote Your Old Evergreen Posts
If an old post contains evergreen information that is still accurate, then it may be overlooked as it gets buried deeper on your website.
Promoting older relevant articles allow you to maximize your traffic potential. It gives your visitors the chance to read old and evergreen content.
Plus, you can attract new visitors to your site by sharing old valuable blog posts. This way, your best content always stays visible to users on your WordPress site, and they help generate more traffic.
You can make regular time in your schedule to share your old posts on social media, link to them in your new articles and roundup posts, or use an automated plugin like Revive Old Posts.
Once you start scheduling post updates, you won’t be able to update them all at once. So, what should you do with the old posts until you find the time?
For posts that are not as fresh as you would like but are still accurate, you can add an old post notification at the top of the post. This will make your readers aware that they are not reading the latest information on the topic.
Another solution that many blogs use is simply adding the ‘Last updated date’ instead of the publishing date. That way, readers can quickly see the last time that you changed the content.
If an old post now contains inaccurate information that you don’t want visitors to see, then you can unpublish it until you find time to update it with accurate information.
The post will no longer be visible to your website visitors but will remain in your dashboard as a draft. Once you update the post, you can publish it again.
To unpublish a post, you need to start by editing it. After that, you should click the ‘Switch to draft’ button at the top of the page. This will bring up a popup confirming that you want to unpublish the post.
Alternatively, instead of unpublishing an article, some website owners prefer to password-protect the content or make it visible to members only. We have detailed instructions on all of these methods in our guide on how to unpublish a WordPress page.
Keep in mind that removing a live post from your site can cause broken links and may affect your WordPress SEO, so you will want to think about this carefully.
You can temporarily redirect the URL to another relevant page so you don’t lose SEO rankings. We show you how to do this in the ‘Redirect Deleted, Archived, and Unpublished Posts’ section later in this article.
5. Delete or Archive Old Posts You Want to Remove From Your Site
What if you have content that you no longer wish to show on your WordPress website? Maybe the post is no longer relevant, or you have decided to take your website in a new direction.
In that case, you can delete the post or archive it like you archive your emails.
To delete a post, you just need to edit it and then click the ‘Move to trash’ button in the right-hand menu. WordPress will send that page to the trash.
By default, WordPress automatically deletes anything in the trash after 30 days, so you still have time to change you have time to change your mind.
We show you how to recover deleted posts from the trash later in this article.
To archive a post, you need to install and activate the LH Archived Post Status plugin. Upon activation, the plugin adds a custom post status called ‘Archived’ to your posts, pages, and custom post types.
You can archive a single post or page by editing it. When you click on the ‘Status’ dropdown menu, you will see the new ‘Archived’ post status.
Simply select the ‘Archive’ status, and then click the ‘Update’ button at the top of the screen.
Your post will be marked as archived, and it will stop appearing on the front end of your site. Your website visitors will no longer be able to see it.
If you want to use the content again in the future, then you can edit it if necessary and then publish it by changing the post status back to ‘Published’.
Whether you delete or archive the post, you should redirect the URL to a relevant post that’s still visible on your website. Otherwise, your users will see a 404′ page not found’ error message when they try to visit the page
See the next section for details.
6. Redirect Deleted, Archived, and Unpublished Posts
Once you have deleted, archived, or unpublished a post, your visitors will see a 404 ‘page not found’ error if they try to visit the page by clicking on a link or bookmark they have saved.
This provides a bad user experience and can impact your WordPress SEO, so we recommend you send the user to a different but related page on your website using a 301 redirect.
The simplest way to manage and create redirects is with the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) WordPress plugin. It’s the best SEO plugin for WordPress and is used by over 3 million professionals to improve their site’s SEO.
On the All in One SEO » Redirects page, you can enter the ‘Source URL’ of the page you deleted and the ‘Target URL’ of the post you want to send your visitors to.
Now make sure that the Redirect Type is ‘301 Moved Permanently,’ and then click the ‘Add Redirect’ button.
If you unpublished a post and changed your mind, then you can simply publish it again.
But you might be wondering what to do if you change your mind about a post you deleted. Luckily, you may be able to recover it from the trash.
Just like your computer, WordPress moves deleted items into a trash folder. This removes those items from your website and admin screens, but they are not deleted permanently right away.
After 30 days, WordPress will permanently delete the item from the trash and database. If the page you deleted is still in the trash, then you can go ahead and restore it.
You will need to go to Posts » All Posts (or Pages » All Pages if you wish to restore a page) inside your WordPress admin area.
From here, you must switch to the ‘Trash’ tab to view all the posts that have been deleted during the last 30 days.
If the post you want to recover is listed there, then simply take your mouse over the page title, and you will see the option to ‘Restore’ it.
If it is not still in the trash, then you may be able to restore it from a backup. For this and many other reasons, we recommend setting up regular WordPress backups.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Are you trying to decide between Magento vs WooCommerce for your online store?
Magento and WooCommerce are two popular eCommerce platforms on the market. Both offer multiple features for creating an online store and making money online.
In this article, we will compare Magento vs WordPress and explain their pros and cons, so you can choose the best platform for your needs.
Overview: Magento vs WooCommerce
Before we get into details, let’s take a quick look at both popular eCommerce platforms and what makes them stand out.
What is Magento
Magento, now also known as Adobe Commerce, is an eCommerce platform that allows businesses to create online stores, accept payments, and manage products.
It has an open-source community edition available for free download. It also has paid solutions that come with additional features, cloud hosting, and support.
It allows you to easily create an online store, accept payments, manage inventory, and more. It runs on top of WordPress, which gives you access to thousands of WordPress plugins and themes to grow your eCommerce business.
Both platforms are open-source software and can be extended with extensions, and utilize templates for design. However, they both have different pros and cons which make them unique.
What to Look for in Your eCommerce Platform?
If you are just starting out, then you would want to keep a few things in mind when choosing a platform. These basic factors are crucial when deciding which eCommerce solution will be better for your business.
Budget – Cost of starting your store and recurring expenses that would affect your business.
Ease of Use – How easy is it to use for beginners
Payment Methods – It should support multiple payment gateways. If you require certain payment methods, then you need to make sure that it supports them.
Scalability – Your eCommerce platform should be able to scale with your growing business needs
These are just some of the basic things you need to look at. Depending on your business, you may also want to consider how the platform does other things like inventory, taxes, invoices, and more.
That said, let’s compare Magento vs WooCommerce. You can click the links below to jump ahead to any section:
For most startups, the cost is one of the most significant factors in decision-making. When starting your eCommerce website, you need to evaluate the cost while factoring in how those costs will grow as you need more resources, add-ons, and other services.
Cost of Magento Ecommerce Platform
Magento offers 2 different versions. First, you have a Magento open-source version, also known as the community edition.
You can download and install this yourself on any hosting provider. It does not include all features, and it does not come with any support.
Second, you have Adobe Commerce which includes 2 paid plans. The Commerce Pro plan includes Adobe application, support, deployment tools, CDN, 50GB of testing, DDoS protection, WAF, and more.
On the other hand, there is a Manager Services plan which offers additional features like designated cloud infrastructure, custom site monitoring and personalized run book, go-live process coaching, dedicated escalation management, and more.
To find out the prices for each of these plans, you’ll need to get in touch with the sales team and request a quote.
Having that said, even the Magento community version is not cheap. The core software you can download for free, but you will need at least a VPS hosting plan or a cloud host like Amazon Web Services to run it.
This means even though you will be using the free version, your hosting bill will still be quite higher than a shared hosting plan.
If you purchase paid extensions and themes, or hire a developer to work on your Magento store, then all these will significantly increase your costs.
Cost of WooCommerce
WooCommerce is available as a free software that anyone can download and install. It runs on top of WordPress which means you can install it on any WordPress website.
WooCommerce itself is free. However, you will need to register a domain name, ensure you have a SSL certificate, and purchase WordPress hosting to start your WooCommerce store.
Normally, you can buy a domain name for $14.99 / year, an SSL certificate for $69.99 / year, and hosting for $7.99 / month. This is cheaper than the self-hosted Magento community edition, but still, it is a lot of money for a startup.
Bluehost, an officially recommended WooCommerce and WordPress hosting provider, has agreed to offer WPBeginner users free domain names, SSL certificates, and discounts on hosting.
This offer will help you start your online store for as low as $9.95 / month.
The cost of starting a WooCommerce store is a lot lower than the Magento community edition. There are a lot more choices available for WooCommerce hosting plans than Magento, which helps you choose a plan that fits your budget.
Apart from hosting, using paid extensions and themes for WooCommerce will also affect your costs. However, WooCommerce gives you access to more than 60,000+ WordPress extensions and thousands of free WordPress themes.
You can easily find free WooCommerce plugins as alternatives to paid extensions. There are also tons of free WooCommerce themes that you can use to further reduce your costs.
With affordable hosting plans, and an abundance of low-cost free extensions and themes, WooCommerce is clearly less costly than Magento.
Winner: WooCommerce
Ease of Use: Magento vs WooCommerce
Most folks starting an eCommerce business are not programmers or web developers. They need a platform that they can use easily without paying someone a fortune to help them do basic things.
Even experienced users prefer an easy-to-use platform that helps them focus on growing their business instead of struggling with software.
Let’s take a look at Magento and WooCommerce to see which one is more easy to use.
Magento – Ease of Use
Magento is a powerful eCommerce-specific platform, packing tons of built-in features that work out of the box. It comes with an advanced setup process that can be complicated for new users.
It is not easy to install, and most hosting companies do not offer pre-configured installers for Magento. The installer language is very developer-centric which may leave beginners a bit clueless about several important settings.
After the setup, you will have to spend some time learning the basics. Installing extensions or customizing themes is not always easy, and you may need to seek help to set them up.
You can find tutorials and documentation online, but most often they are written for developers and not for DIY users.
Overall, Magento is extremely powerful and comes packed with a ton of features, but it is not the easiest-to-use eCommerce platform.
WooCommerce – Ease of Use
WooCommerce is a little easier to use compared to Magento. The installation is simple as many WooCommerce hosting providers will automatically install it for you along with WordPress.
Since WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin, you will need to install WordPress first. Even if your host doesn’t automatically install WordPress, chances are that there would be an auto-installer that would let you do it with just a few clicks.
WooCommerce comes with a setup wizard that will walk you through the initial setup like creating pages, setting up payments, choosing the currency, set shipping and tax options.
Once you are up and running, you will find plenty of help to do almost anything. WooCommerce themes and plugins are easy to install and come with their own settings.
WooCommerce still has a bit of a learning curve, but overall it is far easier to use than Magento.
Winner WooCommerce
Payment Methods: Magento vs WooCommerce
As an eCommerce store, you will accept online payments on your website. There are many payment gateway companies that allow you to take credit cards and other services, like PayPal or AliPay.
Some payment gateways may not be available in all regions. You need options that are available for both you and your users.
Let’s see what payment options are available to Magento and WooCommerce stores.
Magento – Payment Options
Magento comes with PayPal, Authorize.net, cash on delivery, bank transfer, and purchase order payment methods by default. It also has extensions available for many popular payment gateways including Stripe, 2Checkout, Braintree, WePay, Google Checkout, Skrill, Venmo, and more.
Magento’s APIs allow developers to easily integrate payment gateways. If the payment gateway you are looking for is not yet available, then you can hire someone to create a custom extension for that.
WooCommerce – Payment Options
WooCommerce offers PayPal and Stripe payments by default. It also supports all major payment gateways through extensions and addons.
WooCommerce even supports many regional and lesser-known payment companies. Since it is so easy to extend, any payment company can create an add-on for WooCommerce support.
We feel that both Magento and WooCommerce do an equally great job in terms of payment support. Both platforms have options for multiple payment choices.
Winner: Tie
Extensions and Integrations: Magento vs WooCommerce
There is a limit to the features your eCommerce platform can add to the core software. This leaves room for third-party extensions, tools, and integrations to extend the platform by offering additional features.
Both Magento and WooCommerce have extensions, themes, and support offered by third-party integration providers.
Magento Extensions
Magento has an active community of developers, agencies, and freelancers. There are plenty of free and paid third-party extensions available for Magento that you can use.
These extensions allow you to easily add new features and integrate other tools and services into your online store.
Currently, Magento Marketplace has 3,783 extensions. Out of those 1,071 were available for free. That’s a decent amount of extensions considering that Magento has a lot of functionality in the core software.
WooCommerce Extensions and Addons
Since WooCommerce runs on top of WordPress this gives you access to more than 60,000 free WordPress plugins and thousands of paid plugins.
Whether you want to add contact forms, lead generation forms, Google Analytics, or any other feature imaginable, chances are that there is already a plugin available that you can use.
A large number of extensions means you can connect your WooCommerce store to any third-party service like your email marketing company, payment gateways, CRM software, and more.
Winner: WooCommerce
Scaling Your Business: Magento vs WooCommerce
Growing your eCommerce business comes with its own challenges. As your website traffic and sales grow, you will need more server resources to keep up with your business goals and growth trajectory.
Both Magento and WooCommerce can handle large eCommerce stores with huge spikes in traffic. However, they are two different platforms which affects their scalability and infrastructure requirements.
Let’s take a look at how Magento and WooCommerce handle scalability on large eCommerce websites.
Scaling Magento
Magento is designed from the ground up to be a robust eCommerce platform. However, when it comes to scaling, your costs and technical challenges will skyrocket.
If you are using the community edition of Magento, then you will have to do it on your own. Magento is a resource-intensive software, which means if you are on a VPS hosting, then you will have to upgrade to a dedicated server and then to a cloud hosting service like Amazon Web Services.
You will also need to optimize your store for caching, manage backups, protect against DDOS attacks by using a website firewall, and more. If you don’t have experience in managing large websites, then you will need to hire Magento specialists.
If your business can afford the growing costs, then the easier option would be to switch to Adobe Commerce plans.
Scaling WooCommerce
WooCommerce stores will face the same technical challenges as Magento. However, the good thing is that you have a lot more options to continue growing while keeping your costs low.
First, you have several easy caching options to improve performance which can be implemented even by beginners. This will keep your server resources low and allow you to continue growing for a while.
Next, you can move to managed WordPress hosting providers like WPEngine or Liquid Web. These WordPress hosting companies allow you to easily scale your website to meet your growing business.
Finding WordPress specialists to help scale your online store is not as costly as Magento. Even at the enterprise level, your eCommerce store would be able to perform well at much lower costs.
Winner: WooCommerce
Magento vs WooComemrce: Which One is a Better E-commerce Platform for You?
Magento and WooCommerce are both full-featured eCommerce platforms that you can use to build any kind of online store. However, it comes down to costs, and your personal skills to choose between them.
WooCommerce obviously has the advantage of a large user base and market share. It runs on WordPress which is already the world’s most popular website builder. WordPress users would feel at home when working on WooCommerce.
It also beats Magento in terms of ease of use, and cost of building and running an eCommerce store at scale.
If you want an easy-to-use, cost-effective, and easy-to-scale eCommerce platform, then WooCommerce is the perfect fit for you.
Magento, on the other hand, is more suitable for enterprise-level businesses with their own development teams or businesses who can spend money on hiring someone.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
Despite facing increased competition from user-friendly website builders and specialized CMSs, WordPress continues to be a strong contender in the content management system market. This article explores how WordPress can combat the decline by embracing a strategy of coopetition, where it collaborates with these competitors to offer enhanced features and user experiences. By leveraging the strengths of its rivals, WordPress can adapt to evolving consumer preferences and maintain its position as a leading choice for website creators and bloggers.
Matt Mullenweg, WordPress Co-founder, WordCamp Asia 2023
