WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla! are three of the most recognized open-source platforms for developing websites. If you are looking to set up a new website, you might be wondering why anyone would develop a website, including WhiteHouse.gov, using these open-source platforms as opposed to paying for a professional service. If something were to go wrong, who would you call to help reduce the risk of web downtime and inconvenience to your site visitors? To help ease your fears, here are the top five reasons to pick an open-source platform for your website over an alternative service.
1. The Price is Right
The glaring difference right off the starting blocks is that open-source platforms don’t cost you money. You never have to shell out revenue for upgrades or for monthly subscriptions to use the service. The great benefit of using a no-cost platform is that you will never suffer buyer’s remorse because the price is always right.
If you want to get a website online, you will have to pay for web hosting and servers that will get your website running. These can cost a few dollars a month depending on the size of the website you plan to develop and your average visitors per month. For the tech-savvy individual, you could hypothetically host your website from a server at home, but this could cause serious security concerns permitting hackers to breach any other computers on your home network and would increase your monthly Internet fees due to the jump in data usage.
2. The Open-Source Framework Provides Creative Freedom
Open-source platforms set the framework for how your website will operate, but other than that, they give you free reign to develop however your heart desires. That gives you so much more freedom to maneuver and alter plans for design and functionality based on how you’d like the website to appear. A paid service or website builder only provides whatever limited capabilities the service offers. These limitations are great for simple website structures but when it comes to developing a strong online presence, these cookie-cutter capabilities just aren’t going to cut it.
3. Passionate Users Take Ownership
Using an open-source platform is a situation that contradicts the saying, you get what you pay for. The reason is that open-source platforms give users a sense of ownership in the development and achievement of the project. If you are renting a house from someone else, how likely are you to invest your time and energy in working on the landscaping and keeping up the property when it starts to fall apart? On the other hand, if you own the house, you may be far more inclined to put in the work to retain the value and more likely to develop pride in the place where you live.
This sense of ownership leads users and developers as a team to seek out problems in the design of the platform and the coding. Developers aren’t expected to solve all the problems and people are willing to help out in appreciation for the developers’ work and for being able to use this great product. Together, they work to improve the experience for all involved. This means that by using an open-source platform to develop your website, you are going to reap the benefits from these passionate users and receive a much greater service than you might otherwise receive from a team of developers of a revenue-generating product.
4. No Legal Mess to Clean Up
Copyright infringement or certain violations of a product’s terms and conditions can result in a lawsuit against you or your company. Whenever you pay for a product or use anything off the Internet, it is very important that you are aware of the stipulations that come along with use. Using an open-source platform for your website design eliminates this concern because everything is fair game. As long as you aren’t trying to market it as your own or profit from the work of others by claiming that you designed the entire platform yourself, you are in the clear to flex your resources at will. This cuts down on research time and costs in defending yourself or your company against lawsuits. Download, post, and share with peace of mind using open-source platforms.
5. You Aren’t Trapped
Last but not least, what can possibly go wrong if you choose to go with an open-source platform for your website? By going out on a limb and taking the opportunity to explore all the wonderful resources these services have to offer, you aren’t losing money, you get to test out the service with no strings attached before committing yourself, and you have the option of abandoning the platform at any time if you don’t like it. You don’t have to go through customer service and won’t have any agents trying to convince you to stay with their service. Nor will you have to worry about how long it will take for your refund to finally show up in your account.
Open-source platforms for developing websites aren’t geared toward profit.They are designed more toward the quality of individualized service as opposed to the number of new customers each month.