Is wordpress free?

WordPress is an open source software. It's free in the sense of freedom, not free beer. What's the difference between the two, you might ask?

Open source software gives you the freedom to use, modify, build and redistribute the software in any way you like. However, there may be a fee involved somewhere. We will discuss the costs of using open source WordPress software later in this article.

Why don’t they sell WordPress as software?

We are often asked why WordPress and the companies behind it don’t sell it? If WordPress was as good as everyone says it is, they would obviously make more money selling it. This statement would make sense if a single company or individual owned WordPress.

WordPress is an open source community project, and thousands of great minds have contributed to making it the great software it is today. There is a core development team that leads the development of the project, but anyone can contribute patches, report bugs, suggest features, etc. Additionally, project leaders may change from one version to another. If you get involved in the community, you can easily become a core contributor in WordPress.

The idea behind the open source software movement is that software is not like other tangible products. Once a piece of software is created, it can be copied many times at little cost. Let's take a toy factory as an example. Every toy made has different parts, and each part has a cost. The manufacturing costs of these components can be calculated by the factory to determine a reasonable profit margin for the product. On the other hand, the cost of creating software and copying it are different. Some groups argue that profit margins on software become more unfair with each copy sold.

To learn more about open source software, check out the GNU Philosophy.

How People Make Money with WordPress

The two main ways to make money with any open source software is through products or services based on the open source software.

People often confuse WordPress with WordPress.com. WordPress (often called self-hosted WordPress or WordPress.org) is a free blogging platform.

Matt Mullenweg, co-founding developer of WordPress, has launched a company called Automattic, which offers "restricted" free blog hosting on WordPress.com that you can pay/upgrade to unlock things like CSS Modification and other functions. However, to get the full power of WordPress.org from the WordPress.com service, you’ll need to spend over $3,250 per month for hosting.

In May 2014, Automattic raised US$160 million in Series C investment at a valuation of US$1.16 billion.

Other developers have also started building successful multi-million dollar businesses on top of WordPress by creating business plugins, business themes, and even providing WordPress hosting.

Some examples of successful multi-million dollar WordPress companies are:

WPEngine is a managed WordPress hosting company that has raised over $40 million in funding .

Awesome Motive, led by Syed Balkhi, is another multi-million dollar WordPress-based company. The company manages WPBeginner, OptinMonster, WPForms, MonsterInsights, and other popular WordPress plugins.

Sucuri - Popular WordPress security solution on the market.

iThemes is one of the oldest and most established WordPress companies behind popular plugins like BackBuddy.

ElegantThemes - The multi-million dollar theme company behind the popular drag-and-drop page builder: Divi.

Gravity Forms - The most famous premium WordPress form plugin.

Good WordPress developers and consultants can also make a satisfying full-time income by building WordPress custom websites, apps, and plugins for clients. Some of them earn more than six figures a year.

For more wordpress related technical articles, please visit the wordpress tutorial column to learn!

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