Nixbly
The hidden price of building on the world’s “cheapest” CMS
🧾 WordPress.org homepage: “Free and open-source.”
🎯 Client pitch deck: “Low-cost development.”
🙌 Everyone agrees: WordPress saves money.
But does it?
Let’s break it down.
🧨 The real cost of a “free” WordPress site:
- $89 premium theme
- $199/year for a form builder with basic logic
- $300/year for security + firewall
- $180/year for performance optimization plugins
- $25/month for backups + staging
- $150/year for custom WooCommerce add-ons
- $200+ for a dev every time something breaks
Suddenly your “free” WordPress site costs more than Shopify or Webflow — with 10x the maintenance.
🤯 Self-hosted ≠stress-free
- You manage hosting, updates, backups, uptime, scaling, performance, support — or pay someone else to
- Plugin and theme updates break sites regularly
- You need a developer just to fix core web vitals
- You’re stuck in plugin subscriptions that never stop charging
Free software. Expensive chaos.
📉 You’re not saving money — you’re shifting responsibility
Many businesses:
- Pay less upfront
- Pay more over time
- Lose money from downtime, slow performance, or security breaches
- End up rebuilding the site entirely after a year or two
“Budget-friendly” becomes technical debt no one wants to maintain.
✅ What’s the alternative?
🧠Be honest about total cost of ownership
📦 Choose managed platforms if your team isn’t technical
📉 Use fewer plugins and invest in custom development early
đź“Š Do a long-term ROI analysis, not just upfront costs
🚀 Don’t upsell WordPress as “cheap” — sell it as powerful, scalable, and professional (when used right)
âť“Ask yourself:
- Is WordPress really saving you money — or just hiding the real bill in fine print?
- Are you choosing WordPress because it’s best… or because it’s “free”?
- If you weren’t a developer, would you recommend WordPress to a client with zero tech skills?
👉 Open-source doesn’t mean low-cost.
It means freedom — and freedom requires responsibility.
Post inspired by conversations with business owners, overwhelmed freelancers, and developers who’ve had to clean up the mess left behind by the “free” WordPress pitch.