If you've ever felt the frustration of a simple content update turning into a tech support ticket, you know that "free" is never truly free. For many university marketing specialists, the open-source promise of WordPress quickly becomes a daily struggle. We'll tell you about the hidden costs of maintaining a WordPress website and how a modern platform can provide you with the speed and autonomy you need.
The Real Cost of WordPress: Continuous Suffering for Digital Marketing
For a digital marketing specialist, the goal is to launch campaigns and generate qualified leads. However, dependence on IT for web changes is a constant obstacle. For a content specialist, it's essential to ensure that news and events are published quickly and consistently, but relying on others to do so is a major frustration.
Behind the "free" label, many hidden costs lurk that drive up the cost of maintaining a website in time and resources:
- IT Dependence: Need to add a new program page or a tracking script? You have to wait for Lucio, the helpful IT colleague who, as usual, is overloaded with tickets from all other departments.
- "Plugin Hell": Yes, this problem has its own name, and it doesn't sound good. Your website depends on dozens of plugins that can conflict, slow down your pages (hurting SEO), or create security holes. When one fails, it can disrupt a critical user experience without warning.
- Security Issues: The university's reputation is a critical asset, very attractive to hackers. That's why IT teams constantly fight security threats. This means that "urgent" ticket often gets set aside in favor of a critical security patch, leaving your campaigns in limbo.
These hidden costs vary depending on the number of plugins and the traffic capacity to absorb. It's worth remembering that many quality plugins are paid, and they also have a monthly cost that can be variable or fixed. Additionally, some plugins are imposed by the hosting provider, as is the case with GoDaddy or WPEngine, so many of these costs are hidden within the hosting service cost itself. Making a precise calculation is very complicated since the providers themselves have a strong motivation to obfuscate the cost breakdown.
The cost associated with maintaining updated versions, both of the WordPress core and plugins, ranges between EUR400 and EUR600 annually per site. But there's an added problem: when WordPress is updated, many plugins update in cascade, but at different speeds. Therefore, the update frequency quickly escalates, and with it the total costs incurred.
When Update Costs Exceed License Costs:
Some universities have enormous WordPress web ecosystems, such as:
- UC Berkeley has 243 websites
- University of South California has 138 websites
- Northeastern University has 131 websites
Therefore, version maintenance alone represents a base cost of between EUR55,000 and EUR150,000 annually. These hidden costs vary depending on the number of plugins and the traffic capacity to absorb.
Other large American universities have only part of their ecosystem in WordPress, with other components in Drupal, Joomla, or Liferay.
- Harvard University-Law School with 62 WP websites
- Stanford with 57 WP websites
In these cases, hidden costs are even higher, as disparate systems must be maintained on very different versions and infrastructures. Not to mention the other costs associated with having an atomized web ecosystem.
Griddo's Superpowers:
Griddo is a DXP for universities designed to solve precisely these problems. Its cloud infrastructure and system architecture allow marketing and content teams to have direct control over the digital experience, without needing to write a single line of code.
- Publish Instantly: No computer knowledge needed: Griddo's intuitive interface lets you create, update, and publish content yourself. You can launch new academic program pages or update event details in minutes instead of days.
- End Plugin Conflicts: The platform includes robust built-in features for everything from SEO to content organization. You'll have all the features you need in a stable and secure environment. And you can configure any plugin directly from the interface, discriminating between the sites you choose.
- Collaborate with Ease: Griddo provides a nerve center for all your content, making it easy to collaborate with other teams and ensuring every content element is brand-aligned and up-to-date. Check out the specific features for content writers and editors or for digital marketing specialists
A Real Case: From Frustration to Agility
A digital marketing specialist from a partner university recently told us that she now does the work that three people used to do. After migrating from WordPress, her team reduced campaign launch time by 75%, as they no longer had to wait for technical support for every change.
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