- This is the MOST important thing to know about WordPress: It’s COMPLETELY FREE. Again, for the folks in the back: 100% FREE. If any hosting provider or other service is trying to get you to pay for WordPress, look elsewhere immediately. The basics are as follows: you pay for a domain, anywhere from free (included with a hosting purchase, for example) to over $1,000, with options domain ownership from lengths of 1 year and beyond. You also pay for hosting, which ranges based on providers but should never be more than $1,000/month for a small business. The vast majority of small businesses and nonprofits spend well below $1,000 per month on web hosting. You can often purchase a domain and hosting service with the same provider. Click HERE for my recommendations for the best domain and hosting providers for small businesses and nonprofits.
- The hosting providers you need to STAY AWAY from as a nonprofit/small business owner:
- WP Engine: Offers WordPress hosting starting around $30 per month and going up to $290 per month for higher-tier plans. From my personal experience, I know they try to upsell you to these higher tier plans every single chance they get. For example, if you have a sudden uptick in traffic from bots crawling your site, WP Engine will quickly let you know you need to “upgrade” to take care of this increase in bandwidth, rather than identifying and blocking the bots on their end (which is what would be expected of a such a high-cost hosting provider). Beware the upselling nature of WP Engine as a hosting provider.
- GoDaddy: Despite being one of the largest hosting companies, GoDaddy has been criticized for frequent upselling, slow website speeds, and customer service that can be hit or miss. Their shared hosting plans, in particular, have been noted for performance issues. However, they have a robust domain purchasing platform, so you can consider purchasing a domain with GoDaddy and obtaining hosting services elsewhere.
- HostGator: HostGator has faced criticism for slow loading times, inconsistent customer service, and frequent upselling. Some users have also reported issues with security and downtime.
- Providers to consider as a nonprofit/small business owner:
- DreamHost: DreamHost offers a FREE Shared Hosting plan (including email hosting) to non-profit, charitable organizations registered in the United States. This discount remains active for the lifetime of the DreamHost account. Additionally, a single qualifying domain registration is included free for the first year only. Depending on the expected traffic to your site, this free shared hosting plan may well be enough capacity for your needs, and DreamHost has transparent pricing and solid performance if you need to upgrade at any point. Another feature of DreamHost I like is the dashboard file manager, which means that if anything goes wrong in the backend of your site, you can use this feature to fix the files instead of having to install and login to an FTP Client like Filezilla.
- Bluehost: Recommended by WordPress with affordable pricing and good support. Bluehost offers discounts for nonprofits and works closely with organizations to provide tailored solutions. Features include a free domain, SSL, and 24/7 support.
- The hosting providers you need to STAY AWAY from as a nonprofit/small business owner:
- Your domain is the location of your business or organization on the web, and the host is where your content lives on a server. Once you have your domain and hosting purchased, you set up your website by connecting the two, and “hosting” your domain adress on the server provided by your chosen host. Once your domain is hosted and active, it is entirely free to download and install wordpress. Many hosting providers have an option to install WordPress for you automatically, but for information on how to do this manually, click HERE.
- Once you have WordPress installed, you get to begin designing your site and adding features and content that represent your goals and online identity. The first choice you will make within WordPress is your website theme. This is the template to structure your website and display your content. There are thousands of professionally designed free themes available for WordPress that you can easily install. View both paid and free themes within the WordPress gallery HERE, or look around online for countless more options.
- When choosing a theme, be mindful of not only the cost, but the included features of the theme as well. Even though some themes that come with comprehensive feature lists, like Elementor and Divi, may seem attractive at first, keep in mind the purpose and goal of your website. These themes take a lot of server power to run, require frequent updates, and, due to the many available features, are not straightforward and easy to use. You may not need the extensive built-in features and design elements included with these themes, and choosing a theme like this could severly impact your site speed and performance. If you want to prioritize speed, simplicity, and efficiency, consider free themes from within the WordPress library, like the “Twenty Twenty __” default WordPress themes, or simple minimalistic themes from SiteOrigin.
- If you go with an automatic installation of WordPress, some features may be installed automatically for you, called “Plugins.” These are tools that extend your theme and provide solutions for incorporating almost anything into your site, from an accordion drop down menu to email signup forms, and so much more. There are analytics plugins to analyze users, performance plugins to analyze site speed and efficiency, security plugins to protect your site from spam and hackers, and feature-specific plugins like the examples above. Most plugins you will need are free. However, beware of plugins that begin free but require paid upgrades to access the full feature promised by the plugin. For example:
- WPForms Lite – Adds contact forms to your WordPress site. Sounds nice, right? Wrong – it doesn’t keep records of the form entries unless you pay for it. They get emailed to you as they come in, but there is no way to access those inquiries from your WordPress dashboard without paying. What a scam.
- Longevity of plugins and plugin updates: Unfortunately it’s not as simple as “install one plugin as a feature solution and leave it alone forever.” WordPress itself has frequent updates (to what it calls its “core”), and plugin developers must keep their plugins updated accordingly. You can decide to update plugins manually by logging into WordPress and navigating to the “Updates” page, or you can enable automatic updates for both WordPress core and your plugins. There are pros and cons to both: updating manually means you know exactly when and what went wrong if an update causes your site to crash. However, if you delay at all, out-of-date plugins are prime targets for WordPress hackers and you are more at risk for your site being hacked the longer you wait to update. If you choose to have plugins update automatically, you are less at risk for security issues, but a new version of either a plugin or WordPress core can break your site by updating automatically, and you may not be immediately aware. I prefer to turn on automatic updates and have a security plugin notify me of every change, so I can quickly check and verify the site is operational after receiving each notification.
- Secure your site with WordFence. This is my recommended plugin for WordPress security. You can create custom scans that run daily, and it’s (of course) completely free. The scans are detailed and comprehensive, and you can monitor any suspicious activity from login attempts to file corruption and user password changes. The email notification system can be personalized, but consider turning on notifications for frequent activity reports to be able to monitor any changes real-time.
- Now that your site is secured, you need to start thinking about saving it in case of, well, anything. Backups are essential – with all the elements that go into a WordPress site, it’s not uncommon for things to break. My favorite backup plugin is – you guessed it – FREE, and can backup your entire site to a google drive for easy access and restoration, even when your WordPress site is completely down. It’s called UpdraftPlus, and is straighforward and easy to use.
- If you have a free or low-cost hosting plan, it’s important to keep your website storage amounts in check. Images take up a lot of space on a server, so consider serving images in a next-gen format like WebP. By using WebP, we can create smaller, richer images that enhance web performance and speed and won’t crowd your server space. I recommend the Performance Lab plugin, authored by the WordPress Performance Team. The Performance Lab plugin is a collection of features focused on enhancing performance of your site, including an option for automatically creating WebP versions for new JPEG image uploads if supported by the server.
- Ecommerce and Donations: Web management is made a little trickier when financial transactions enter the picture. But not to worry – we can still do this for free. If you are creating an online store, you need to select a WordPress eCommerce plugin. WooCommerce is by far the most popular, allowing you to build robust online stores to sell your products/services. WooCommerce is free, but if you need additional features you will need to pay for those add-ons. Creating a donation page is less complicated than an online store, but you will still need to find a payment plugin that works for your needs. There are several free PayPal plugins that faciliate receiving payments from your website to your PayPal account. Also, if you have a CRM (customer relationship management) software for your business or nonprofit, there will be a way to incorporate their own donation form into your WordPress site.
Thanks for reading! If you need a custom WordPress site, please don’t hesitate to contact me HERE. I keep costs low as a self-employed freelancer – you won’t be paying agency prices.