By WordPress is no doubt the #1 content management system largely used by developers and webmasters around the world to build beautiful & SEO-friendly websites.
According to the statistics, more than 409 million people view more than 23.6 billion WordPress pages monthly, and users publish 80 million new posts monthly.
WordPress’ market share is 40% of all websites and as per an estimate, nearly 64 million websites on the internet are based on WordPress.
Interesting numbers! Aren’t they? But do these numbers matter when you want to start your crowdfunding platform website using the WordPress platform? Not really.
If you observe the statistics above, you will notice that WordPress has covered 34% of all websites market on the internet.
This means the remaining 66% of websites are not using WordPress as a CMS or base of their platform.
Technically WordPress can do anything and has no limitations. A motorcycle CAN be used as an airplane if you enclose it in a fuselage and attach wings and a propeller to it…. but at that point… the motorcycle itself isn’t buying you much.
As a pilot, do you want your airplane to fly with a motorcycle engine? Not right? You want a jet engine.
Similarly, WordPress is good if you want to design static websites for your business, product, service showcase, landing pages, blog & magazine, image & video galleries, etc.
WordPress is a 15-year-old CMS platform that is mature now with a simple structure, ease of coding, and support from thousands of WordPress developers and contributors.
WordPress also offers easy access to the ecosystem from where one can download plenty of free plugins and themes.
On the other hand, the crowdfunding platform is not just a website but a marketplace engine that includes a complex sequence of algorithms to support the marketplace business model for fundraisers and supporters.
WordPress would not best fit if you want to launch an enterprise application or marketplace-based website with continuous involvement with lots of dynamic data from users on both front-end and back-end.
Still not convinced? Look at the list of some of the most popular crowdfunding platforms that do not use WordPress as a base of their structure.
| kickstarter.com | Ruby on Rails, Angular JS |
| indiegogo.com | Ruby on Rails, Angular JS |
| crowdrise.com | Foundation, PHP, Bootstrap |
| gofundme.com | Foundation, Bootstrap |
| mightycause.com(aka Razoo) | Firebase, PHP, Angular JS |
| fundrise.com | J2EE, Angular JS |
| crowdfunder.com | PHP, Bootstrap |
| crowdcube.com | Foundation, Bootstrap |
However above are not the only reasons to say “NO” to WordPress for your crowdfunding site.
There are other cons too of using WordPress, as mentioned below.
Say “NO” to Crowdfunding WordPress Theme & Plugin: Here is Why?
- Version Incompatibility
- Data Security
- Scalability
- Troubleshooting & Support
- Customization
- Security Threats
1. Version Incompatibility: As mentioned earlier, WordPress is a very popular and active community with thousands of WordPress developers and contributors.
This is the reason WordPress users receive frequent updates in their core files. Free updates are cool, and everyone loves updating their website, right? But there is a problem here.
WordPress doesn’t support crowdfunding platform features on its own.
One has to depend on 3rd party vendors who have already developed themes and plugins to run a crowdfunding website.
These vendors may or may not release version updates frequently, which may cause version incompatibility of their theme or plugin with core updates of WordPress.
This version mismatch may cause an error in the crowdfunding website and finally result in the website being down until version incompatibility is fixed.
6 Reasons to Say 'NO' to Crowdfunding WordPress Theme & Plugin Click To Tweet2. Security Threats: WordPress version updates are essential, avoiding which may leave WordPress websites vulnerable.
However, due to the version incompatibility issues mentioned above, many WordPress users avoid upgrading their core WordPress files, making their websites more prone to malware and hacking attacks.
Moreover, upgrading the WordPress website to its latest version doesn’t ensure complete security to a WordPress website.
It has been found in many cases that outdated WordPress themes and plugins are responsible for malware attacks.
Researchers believe intruders are gaining access to these sites not by exploiting flaws in the WordPress CMS itself, but vulnerabilities in outdated themes and plugins. Source
Read more on security threats of WordPress websites here: 100,000 or more WordPress sites infected, here: Attacks on Closed WordPress Plugins, and here: Thousands of WordPress sites backdoored with malicious code
3. Troubleshooting & Support: Platforms with active users need ongoing support and maintenance troubleshooting.
Many WordPress plugins and theme developers do not provide this crucial support to the platform to keep operations running smoothly.
This may result in a temporary or semi-permanent shutdown of certain operations/features or the entire website.
Of course, hiring a dedicated WordPress developer may solve this issue to some extent however, WordPress developers may not be able to provide support for plugins and themes developed by 3rd party.
4. Data Theft: Are you sure your data is safe with your WordPress website even after installing tons of free and paid WordPress plugins?
What if a copy of your user data, including personal and credit card information, is also being stored elsewhere without your knowledge?
This is enough to scare you because if you are running a crowdfunding website on WordPress, you will need to store many personal and other sensitive information of users in your database.
You wouldn’t know which 3rd party WordPress utility plugin is stealing your data and storing it on its server to sell it further to Data Vultures.
5. Customization: Every crowdfunding platform has different needs, requiring custom features.
WordPress has a very simple structure, and the ability to customize WordPress websites as per needs is a real beauty.
However, many core features and modules of WordPress are not user-friendly.
To ease this inconvenience, each of them will need to develop a separate plugin or utility(to avoid getting them replaced with WordPress version updates).
This rework will push away all luxuries expected from the WordPress platform.
On top of that, customization to 3rd party plugins and themes is sometimes
1. Impossible due to code encryption or licensing
2. Won’t be cost-effective because hiring a plugin/theme vendor will be very costly
3. Or won’t be efficient due to either poorly coded or complex coding methods
6. SEO Friendly: WordPress coding structure is carefully crafted to design lightweight and SEO-friendly websites.
These efforts by the WordPress community give an advantage to WordPress websites being indexed easily, quickly, and ultimately ranking top in search engine results.
But WordPress doesn’t come with a built-in drag-and-drop page-building feature.
For this, WordPress users must depend on 3rd party page builder plugins.
Also, to extend WordPress capabilities, WordPress users use an average of 8-10 various WordPress plugins(free or paid).
These WordPress plugins give a very user-friendly option to easily design and build the content page per the user’s custom requirements.
But this easiness comes with a significant challenge.
These page builders and other utility plugins are notorious for rendering many HTML, CSS, and Javascript code and related dependencies.
This may result in slow-loading content pages, less SEO friendliness, and ultimately removing all benefits of the core SEO-friendly features of the WordPress platform.
How to create a crowdfunding site if not WordPress, then?
The crowdfunding platform is not just a website with a few dynamic pages.
You need a complete crowdfunding engine with various modules in the front end and back end to support the crowdfunding business model.
Read another post on How to Start a Crowdfunding Business?
How to create a crowdfunding site without using WordPress Click To TweetThe technology behind this crowdfunding engine also has to be user-friendly, robust, secure, and reliable to remove all limitations and challenges raised by the WordPress platform mentioned above.
We at Fundraisingscript.com are developing an open-source crowdfunding platform per our customers’ custom needs. Contact us to know more, or check out the demo of our crowdfunding software now.
