WordPress is a beautiful story of growth. Starting as a blogging platform, it has now become the most popular Content Management System (CMS). It supports 37% of all websites in the entirety of cyberspace as we know it.
In the world of Content Management Systems (CMS), WordPress supports a big piece of the industry pie, with around 63% of all CMS Market. WordPress is undoubtedly also the most popular blogging platform.
Why WordPress is the Best in CMS and Blogging
One of the reasons why it is at the top of CMS and blogging platforms is because WordPress is user-friendly. The readily available rich resource of available free and premium plugins is a reason for its popularity.
Pluginsamazingly extend the functionality of your website. It also adds value and further features that your website needs to be able to serve the consumers better. The more plugins, both free and premium, are valuable, the more a website becomes valuable.
There is a healthy ecosystem of diversity, variety, and complementary plugins in the WP arsenal. As of the writing, there are a total of around 56,900 WordPress plugins. These are free WordPress plugins. With a rich selection of free resources of plugins, would you still need to buy premium WordPress plugins?
The Benefits of WordPress Premium Plugins
That is a good and insightful question to ask. For a practical person, seeing only the side of the vast number of free WordPress plugins, you would probably think it not.
But that is just a facet of the whole WordPress plugin conundrum. Amid thousands of readily available free WordPress plugins, upgrading to premium WordPress plugins has an obvious benefit for your website.
WordPress has a thriving community filled with developers and programmers, designers, and newbies. This community shares to contributes with, and helps each other to build a better platform for everyone.
Some make plugins to give back to the community and make it better. Other third-party service providers want brand awareness and gain exposure within the community by providing plugins for free.
Some independent developers provide free plugins to open opportunities for further partnership with others and possibly open income streams for them.
The plugins made by these creators and programmers usually work as they are programmed to do. Most of the time, the functionality of the plugins themselves get expanded when used with other plugins in the environment of WordPress.
But there are times when another person’s work with a plugin’s code may conflict, interfere, or get in the way of another person’s code in a separate plugin. It may cause compatibility issues within the structure of your website.
In this case, the support from the community would be crucial in resolving the situation should you not be able to find out the cause of the issue. But people have schedules and may not be available at the time you need help.
Premium WordPress plugins are not available in the official WordPress website. These plugins can be found on their respective websites. These premium WordPress plugins may be scattered, but many articles provide help in finding them.
Premium WordPress plugins typically provide real-time or on-demand support composed of staff and developers that work in delivering help for their clients. They also assist in preserving both plugin security and compatibility with each other, and with the updated version of WordPress.
It is encouraging to know that there is a reliable support staff that can help you in times when an issue happens, and you cannot figure out what happened and how to resolve it.
As mentioned earlier, there is a vast number of plugins available for WordPress. There is also diversity in the use and purpose of each plugin. There was once a time that people were amazed by the number of applications being published that it was a common thing to think that “if you need something, there must be an app for it.”
Developers and designers also have that mindset. If you can imagine it, there must be a plugin out there that will meet that need. That is a great thing to know but creating and building a plugin is one thing. To maintain, update, and debug a plugin takes a whole new level of time, effort, and commitment on the side of the creator and developer.
Developers would invest a lot of their personal time to make proper adjustments to the work that they have done. Most developers do this to build their brand and open work opportunities, as well as give back to the community.
A developer is not required to provide support for a free plugin that they have made. But some developers go above and beyond to provide excellent service and add more features if they see that it is needed.
Conclusion: WordPress Premium Plugins Are Worth Paying For
I believe it is worth paying for Premium plugins. Some premium plugins started as free plugins that have grown and now have a significant user base.
The development of plugins takes a lot of time and resources. And to maintain the provision of a free product for an extended period will be difficult. With premium plugins, it would be beneficial on both sides.
For a small licensing fee, you will get dedicated support, consistent and guaranteed updates, and of course, premium features. The payment would provide developers and designers with a steady flow of income.
This financial flow is an encouragement further to improve their product and their plugin service business. On the other hand, users and clients will get reliable support and consistent updates that will eventually lead to a better and proper plugin.
But you must realize that not all premium plugins are good. That is the truth—exercise caution when choosing the proper premium WordPress plugins to use.
It is not wise to only use premium WordPress plugins as there are available free WordPress Plugins that can do the job. A great website use both premium and free WordPress plugins.
One last reminder, when choosing premium WordPress plugins, purchase from their official websites for your security and protection.