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Why is WordPress Free? Examining the Reasons why WordPress is free

When we receive a free service, we often doubt why this product or service should be free. Or maybe it doesn’t have much quality! Naturally, quality is very important to us, and in the case of WordPress, a question arises for many people, how can a system with such power and features be free? Unfortunately, the situation is such that when we hear that a product is free, we fear that our information may be at risk or we may have security problems; Such fears and doubts about WordPress being free may also arise for you, which we intend to address in the following content. Be with us.

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system that enables expert users to improve the performance of their WordPress website with the help of programming knowledge. WordPress is free with its powerful features, but it is not free to use more advanced services, and like every company we have come across, it has its unique way of making money.

Interesting story of WordPress

On May 27, 2003, Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg founded WordPress and released it, quickly becoming the most popular content management system in the world.

WordPress is under GPL or General Public License and was created by an open-source community.

To summarize, we must say that the GPL turns WordPress into an open-source software where all actions, such as modification, sharing, distribution, etc., are completely free.

The GPL generally has four basic freedoms that it currently adheres to:

• No restrictions on the use of software for any purpose
• No restrictions on learning to work with the software and making changes to it
• No restrictions on software distribution
• Feel free to make mods, tweaks, fix bugs and distribute them in the forums so everyone gets the same benefits.

Is the WordPress content management system free?

Surely you are familiar with WordPress, and in the article What is WordPress, we fully explained this content management system; WordPress is a ready-to-use system for publishing content on the web, and in fact, it is a free and open-source content management system that any normal user without technical or coding knowledge can get a blog or website in the shortest time and in the simplest way. And start and manage your work with the help of WordPress. This is where the question arises for users, why should this system, with its powerful capabilities, be provided for free?

In answer to this question, I must say that WordPress is free for a reason; To put it more simply, every business uses some marketing strategy and income generation method in its business; For example, we often see in social and virtual networks that people or institutions instead of selling training courses; They provide valuable educational articles for free in their content platform and in this way attract customers and audiences; This is a strategy and policy to earn money.

Is the WordPress content management system free?

Advantages of WordPress being open source

WordPress is an open-source content management system that enables its most knowledgeable users to improve the performance of their WordPress website with the help of programming knowledge. Due to their open-source nature, WordPress and Android are always making great improvements; Because there are many people who, when faced with problems while using and setting up these systems, can solve the problem by themselves and use the production of free or non-free plugins to solve these problems.

Why is WordPress not selling?

For many people, there is a question of why WordPress is not paid. This would make sense if a company or an individual owned WordPress, but WordPress is an open-source project that has become great software with the help of other people.

Although there is a core team for the WordPress project, others can develop its features and capabilities, find bugs and improve it.

Anyone can contribute to the growth and development of WordPress, even you, dear friend!

What is the story behind open-source software?

Open source software cannot be touched like other software, and when software is created, it can release many different and copied versions of it, which has a much lower cost.

A factory that manufactures a product pays costs for each component of the manufactured product. Finally, it determines the unit price that can earn a good profit by selling the manufactured products. Now imagine that other people copy that product for which they did not pay much, which is not fair.

Copyright WordPress

For many people, there is a question of whether WordPress copyright is free or there is a fee.

In answer to this question, we must say that it is true that the copyright of WordPress is free, but the license that is provided to the users allows them to use the software without paying.

Since this software is released under the GPL, you will be able to use it for free and make your changes to its code; The thing you should pay attention to is that the codes you create in the software are legal, not the changes you make to the entire internal code.

You can assign copyright to your work automatically under the GPL, which allows users to use the service you’ve distributed for free while making any changes to its code. Create for their work.

Are the contents published by WordPress under GPL?

Our answer to this question is negative, you have the ownership right on any licensed content you publish on your site, and you can have your own rules about copying and licensing content.

But there is an issue in between that you should pay attention to: if you publish content on your site using WordPress templates or WordPress plugins as an example, then the law of copying your content is violated. The GPL covers the copyright license of your content.

Why is WordPress offered for free? How does WordPress make money?

By now, you must have noticed while downloading applications on Google Play or other programs for downloading and installing software that in addition to some programs, In-app payment is set to download them, but you can also benefit from many of its features for free; WordPress is the same.

WordPress is at your service with many useful features and functions for free, but to use more advanced features and services, such as using the special services of some plugins, you need to pay.

The open-source of WordPress is considered one of its outstanding advantages. Because of this advantage, in addition to the fact that the company that created WordPress earns from the production and development of various plugins and software or even its multiple skins, experts can also produce such products. Also, generate income.

One of the income methods of the WordPress company is through Word Press VIP, a content management service with fast performance for organizations and stores that want to manage groups and sections separately from their site; It is applicable.

How do people make money with WordPress?

WordPress has different monetization sections that include products, services that are and services that are along with the services.

A mistake that many people make is that they confuse wordpress.org and wordpress.com. The difference between these two sites is that wordpress.com is a free web hosting and site builder.

Note: In short, wordpress.org is an enterprise address, and wordpress.com is a public address; it is ultimately up to you to choose which one to use.

A company called Automattic, founded by Matt Mullenweg, offers free hosting, website building, and blog creation services through wordpress.com.

But this site is not completely free, but it also provides other services that are not free and incur costs, and people can use these services to create more features on wordpress.com. Develop their own site.wordpress.com. To get a complete and powerful WordPress, you must buy a VIP account which requires more than 5000 dollars per month and 5000 dollars to start and develop the site. Pay yourself.

The Automattic company earned 317.3 million dollars in 7 different periods; according to published statistics, the last budget earned by this company was on January 1, 2015, which was the result of the investment.

It is interesting to know that other developers have also managed to start a million dollars by creating and developing commercial templates and plugins and providing hosting specific to WordPress.

If we want to mention the companies that have managed to reach millions of dollars in revenue with the help of WordPress, we should mention the following:

WPEngine

This company is a WordPress hosting company that has managed to earn more than 290 million dollars, and now it has launched studiopress, one of the famous studios in the field of WordPress theme development.
Awesome Motive

The company has been developed under the leadership of Syed Balkhi and has managed to earn millions of dollars in profits by creating the following plugins:

• optin monster
• monsterinmonster insightsseedprod

Yoast

You have probably heard of Yoast. This company launched a successful business by developing the Yoast seoYoastin. It is interesting to know that the t plugin is active on more than over sites.
ElegantThemes

The products of this company are drag and drop div page builder and div template, which was able to launch a successful business by developing these plugins.

These things we mentioned were just a few examples of successful businesses in the field of WordPress that we mentioned. Many people have successfully launched businesses by designing specific templates for sites, building and developing applications, and developing various plugins.

What are the advantages of choosing WordPress?

WordPress has many advantages that we mention only a few of them in this section:

• No restrictions

With the help of WordPress, you can create your site any way you want and personalize it.

• Effortless customization

With the help of WordPress, you can access many free and premium templates and customize the appearance of your site.

• Site empowerment

With the help of WordPress, you can download and install many free plugins from the WordPress plugins repository and upgrade your site.

You can personalize and strengthen your site unlimitedly if you buy premium plugins.

• earning income

You can easily earn money from your website, which we will explain in the following.

Ways to earn money from WordPress

There are many different ways to make money from WordPress. There are two ways to earn money in open-source software: a product and a service based on the same open-source software.

In this section, we present the ideas that can be used to earn money from WordPress so that you can start earning money:

• Web design

WordPress has all kinds of sites with its help. You can also learn WordPress and use it to kinds of sites. Designing a WordPress site with or without coding is possible, and you can learn both.

• Site support

Many people need website support so that they can learn WordPress and serve these people.

• Designing templates and plugins

If you have a lot of knowledge in the field of programming, you can design different templates and plugins and sell them on domestic and even foreign sites and earn money.

• You are setting up a site for yourself.

You can design a site for yourself and make your site profitable.

• WordPress Training

You can earn through education; You can provide your training in video content or teach privately and publicly in schools. But be careful that to enter the field of education, you must have enough experience and knowledge.

Subcategory services of WordPress company

Addressing this topic is to make it clear to you that WordPress, like any other company, has its unique eve strategy; The company that created WordPress has many different free and non-free subcategories; In the following explanation, you will get to know some of the subsets of this company.

Of course, it should be noted that for large and heavy businesses that require more advanced capabilities; You have to pay a fee to use more WordPress services or buy a license; The subcategories and services that we are going to introduce are free for small and medium businesses with normal and normregularformance.

WooCommerce

WordPress provides plugins and available services that are very important for the user. When you plan to use WordPress to launch your store website, It’s important to remember that WordPress is a content management system for your website, not a store.

For this reason, they need a professional WordPress plugin to set up a professional store. WooCommerce is one such useful WordPress plugin. This is one of the millions of plugins that have been downloaded. Although this plugin is free, other plugins must be created to modify or extend its functionality, which costs money.

wordpress.com website

This service is different from the WordPress.org service, which means that with the help of WordPress.org, you will be able to set up your website on your domain and host it in any way you like, which is the core of your website…

But WordPress.com is a site builder where the URL of your site is added to the WordPress section as one of the WordPress subcategory addresses, and you get 3 GB of hosting space as part of the free service panel. For example, your site domain is changed from example.com to example.wordpress.com, and you need to know that if you want to use more advanced features of the collection, you have to spend money.

WordPress brand

Although the WordPress code has been released under the GPL, the WordPress name and trademark still belong to the owners of WordPress.

The GPL requests users not to use the word WordPress to distinguish between sites and their official source. If you plan to create a site related to WordPress, you can use its abbreviation, the word WP, ​​instead of the word WordPress. Most legitimate WordPress-related businesses operate under these rules.

The costs involved in using WordPress

Although WordPress is a free software that is available to the public to download and use, for you to have a professional site for yourself, you need to have a host and domain, which you have to pay for. You can use a WordPress host as well as a virtual server or a dedicated server (depending on each person’s site and the site’s needs, the choice will be different.)

You will be able to create a site or blog from WordPress.com for free, but if you want to use its professional plans, you will need to pay for it and have more features. . But that’s not all; There are premium and professional plugins and templates in WordPress that you can purchase if you want to make your site work more professionally.

How secure is WordPress?

One of the concerns people have about using WordPress to build a website is how to keep it secure. No system in the world is completely secure, and any website can be hacked. However, we can increase the site’s security from being hacked. If you want to improve the security of your site, I recommend you to check out the free article in the How to increase the security of WordPress sites category.

Is it appropriate to use WordPress?

I indeed asked a strange question; As mentioned earlier, adding professional plugins with more advanced functionality than regular WordPress to your website can cost a lot. If you want to change anything on your site that isn’t covered by a free WordPress plugin, you’ll have to pay for it. Regardless of how you look at WordPress, using WordPress to manage a website is still less expensive and less time-consuming than starting from scratch with coding.

Conclusion

The purpose of this article was to clear your doubts about whether WordPress is free and why we mentioned that every company we have come across has its unique way of making money and thus making a living. And we have also talked about the benefits of WordPress and its freeness.