That's why the open-source solution is suitable for businesses

The significance of WordPress as a Content Management System has significantly increased over the last decade. Websites based on WordPress now make up almost 28 percent of the entire internet. Although WordPress is currently (still) predominantly used by smaller companies, especially start-ups, the open-source solution is increasingly being adopted by larger companies or even corporations. The reasons for this are varied.

WordPress is currently proving that it is also destined for "greater" things: Here are a few examples: The portal Smashing Magazine, with up to 5.5 million unique visitors per month, demonstrates that WordPress can handle large visitor numbers and does not need to hide behind licensed CMS systems.

In the IT sector, the well-known IT portal TechCrunch, with approximately 15 million visitors per month, showcases the capability of complex WordPress-based sites every day. Additionally, the information portals of SAP or the blog of Mozilla are WordPress-based and run reliably.

Even governments have occasionally opted for the open-source solution. The official website of Sweden runs on WordPress, as do the websites of celebrities like Sylvester Stallone, William Shatner, Justin Bieber, Tom Jones, or the Rolling Stones. All these examples support the thesis: Size is no longer an issue; WordPress installations are now infinitely scalable. Besides, there are several other reasons to choose WordPress in a corporate context.

We have gathered the most important ones here.

Argument 1: Flexibility through Open Source

Open-source projects are perceived as the "good guys" of the internet: More and more users are moving away from proprietary, closed systems towards open and networked solutions, driven by the desire for maximum freedom, flexibility, and adaptability. While proprietary solutions often complicate updates and integrations, open-source solutions eliminate the risk of vendor lock-in. This can pay off in the long term, especially when the costs for thousands of employee licenses can be saved.

Moreover, WordPress makes it easier for companies to make decisions about upgrades and innovations at their own pace. Quickly responding to market trends and agile problem-solving are quite simple: As soon as a company needs an adjustment to their web application, there is likely already a plugin that fits almost exactly for that use case. And if not, WordPress offers a large number of APIs (interfaces) with which the IT department can develop and integrate something of their own for almost any use case. The transparency of the (GPL-licensed) source code is invaluable for developers. Open means open.

Argument 2: Community is Key

The developer community around WordPress plays a crucial role: It has now grown significantly and exceeds the resources that a single software company can often muster. By relying on WordPress systems, companies can significantly shorten development times thanks to the developments of an active community, as developers can access a wide range of modular toolkits, frameworks, and plugins that are continuously developed and supported by a steadily growing community. New plugins, frameworks, or themes are always subject to mutual control and evaluation, which continually improves them.

The calculation is simple: Those who can immediately obtain ready-to-use but simultaneously shapeable and changeable software components within an open-source plugin marketplace, or purchase support for them, which can be used for almost any conceivable use case, save a lot of manual development time that can be more sensibly allocated elsewhere.

Argument 3: Easy for Employees to Use

While WordPress can wonderfully represent "static" content, it is particularly effective for dynamic websites. Its special strength is the so-called "WYSIWYG" (short for "What You See Is What You Get"): Documents, images, or videos are visible on the screen (i.e., in the frontend) in real-time even during editing in the background (i.e., in the backend). The relatively simple and seamless user interface for adding and editing content can thus be quickly taught to any employee – whether IT-savvy or not.

Various content layout editors – e.g., Visual Composer or Gutenberg – ensure that employees can work creatively intuitively: WordPress acts as a kind of "typesetting system" that also allows extensive copy-and-paste functions. What the "developer" builds once, the "editor" can later duplicate and edit with a few clicks. Employees can thus make deep changes to a company's website with WordPress – without programming – with little risk.

Argument 4: Security First

In fact, the WordPress core is very secure, and an updated version has never fallen victim to a major cyber attack. However, since the WordPress plugin directory only conducts a limited number of checks when new plugins are added, there are always some plugins in the directory that are not familiar with the usual security vulnerabilities. WordPress coding standards can automatically detect many of these issues.

Therefore, it remains essential for an experienced WordPress developer to audit each plugin to ensure it is secure, also because the aforementioned community control cannot fully replace security expertise. Essentially, a careful review, the use of an experienced professional, and automated testing procedures are sufficient to fix common vulnerabilities and attack risks.

Argument 5: Integrability into Existing Infrastructures

As an open-source project, WordPress offers full freedom to use the software and do whatever you want with it. When companies consider switching to WordPress, it often happens in conjunction with the desire not to simply replicate existing legacy applications but to consistently rethink them – especially with a view to future features and applications.

WordPress does not force anyone to develop something old anew; quite the opposite: The open source code can be easily integrated into existing employee databases like SAML or LDAP and used with already existing authentication systems like OAUTH. It is clear: Employees of a corporation can use applications without having to worry about administrative or compliance issues. This ultimately saves time and money.

Argument 6: Unrestricted Scalability

In a scalable infrastructure, it is always about eliminating variables and unknowns that disrupt smooth operation. If you operate large websites at the enterprise level, a stable website is essential. WordPress offers endless frameworks and plugins for this. Many are well-tested and have proven themselves in "baptism by fire" even under greater load. With the right infrastructure, WordPress can handle hundreds of millions of page views per month.

Thanks to existing integrations into the latest server & database technologies (e.g., Docker & MariaDB), the move between small and large infrastructures is seamless. Even on a Black Friday, when not only shopping malls but also customer servers are proverbially overrun, WordPress-based systems can withstand the "onslaught" through rapid scaling to new infrastructure. And especially when it comes to global markets: There, multiple servers continuously communicate across numerous databases and replicate the information to be processed. WordPress-based systems also provide suitable interfaces for this.

Argument 7: Last but not least: Future-Proof

WordPress is also an ideal choice for companies because they can rely on WordPress remaining a viable and modern framework in the coming years. The numbers from the last 15 years speak for themselves: Initially ignored, laughed at for years, and now? Yes, now the open-source project WordPress dominates – depending on the study – between 60-70% of the global CMS market.

Undoubtedly, WordPress is a state-of-the-art technology whose community has been growing for years. WordPress is the ideal choice for a future-proof publishing platform because it is designed to ensure backward compatibility and ensures that all processes can be traced with each update. JavaScript and API-driven interfaces are the future of WordPress development and will enable developers to better customize the CMS in the future.

The large and growing community of WordPress professionals is another sign that WordPress will continue to exist for a long time.

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Together with our cooperation partner, InterFace AG, we have been successfully developing web applications for special requirements and scaling sizes for large companies and corporations for years.

Through the continuous implementation of a viable and flexible solution, we are able to meet even the highest demands for security and scalability.

By combining our agency's know-how in web development and design with the experience of a 30-year-operating IT service provider in the fields of software development, cloud, data center, governance, and DevOps in the enterprise environment, we lay the foundation for developing web applications and many other digital solutions tailored to the needs of our customers.