Do I need to pay to create a WordPress website?

Are you new to WordPress? Have you been wondering whether or not you will need to buy WordPress before launching your website? The good news is that WordPress is open source software, which means that it is largely free of charge. You can download and use it without having to pay anything to anyone. That is probably one of the reasons why WordPress has grown to become the world’s largest Content Management System.

The Catch

Not surprisingly, though, there is a catch. WordPress may be free, but that does not mean you are going to get your website up and running using the software free of charge. Let’s take the example of our own website. This website runs on the WordPress software.

However despite the fact that WordPress is free, we still need to fork out Web Hosting frees in order to keep our site running. Network Bees is hosted by InterServer, and we pay around $110 per year as web hosting and domain registration fees. For those who are wondering, there are actually cheaper web hosting packages at InterServer, as well as others that are way more expensive.

We chose to go with the Managed WordPress hosting option, which costs around $8 per month, because it offers us security in that we get full site backups and will have our site repaired free of charge should it ever be attacked by malware. We also get a dedicated WordPress environment and do not have to worry of making the WordPress installation ourselves.

What is Open Source Software?

We have already mentioned that WordPress comes free of charge and is open source software. But what is open source software?

Open source software is software that is available for download, modification and distribution by the public free of charge.

What this means is that, if you are a developer, you can play around as much as you like with the WordPress CMS without having to worry about licencing.