This is in reference to a post I saw earlier where an individual was asking about the total cost of Plugins they had in 2023. I think their cost came out to around $4500.
One of the comments stated that the person does not need any plugins since he codes them themselves.
I have noticed, individuals that have a CS Degrees and or people trained as developers, they dont like to use plugins. ( A very high number of them)
But honestly, in my experience, there is no way as a Business Owner, I would be able to survive if I had to develop some of the sites that I am paid to develop.
Some good examples in that post and also plugins that I have used are both BuddyBoss and MemberPress.
There is no way in the world, I would be able to code those 2 solutions and charge for my time and still make money.
You have to understand, solutions such as those, are much more than just the initial plugin, but they also work seamlessly with 30-40 other Plugins. It would be a herculean task to do that as a 1.5 members team.
It does not make sense at all. There is so much more than the code base itself which is the functionality, but there are:
Scaling considerations.
QA considerations
Optimization considerations
SECURITY considerations.
`So, I think my take away is that the people who say they code it all themselves, have never developed any advanced websites that go beyond your basic 5 page brochure type of website`**.**
To do the stuff that some of these plugins mentioned, such as WPDataTables and all of its add-ons, or even Formidable Forms. There is no way, they are coding such solutions and still in business.
NO WAY.
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I just tell them, it’s going to do the job that they want, and they don’t have to think about it except for the price I quote them. Security and performance are up to me, and if you ever catch those metrics slipping, let me know. On high-paying customers I run GTmetrix monitoring or similar.
Those are the same people that shit all over page builders because they tried Divi 8 years ago.
They don’t understand business and that the customer doesn’t care how it’s done as long as it meets their requirements.
Speaking only from my own experience, I try to use a minimal amount of plugins to achieve the clients requirements. If the client wants a BuddyPress type website, I’ll install BuddyPress and try to extend it as far as I can to meet their more specific requirements. I don’t think many people are actually programming the things that BP or WC do, but rather extending their abilities. Most programmers follow the “don’t reinvent the wheel” mantra in terms of not building from scratch when there’s a “tried & true” solution readily available that checks most of the boxes.
Currently, I’m developing a site that requires custom functionality for sorting CPT entries on an Elementor page. Rather than burdening my client with an expensive and bloated plugin from Crocoblock, I’m coding this myself—a lighter, more cost-effective approach.
However, for something complex like a forum, I would steer clients towards WordPress and BuddyPress (or an alternative). It’s all about choosing efficiency and practicality. As an extra example, for multilingual sites, WPML is my go-to and I wouldn’t dare re-creating such a monster myself and saddling the client up with all risks and costs involved. That would be the opposite of what I’m doing with my own filter/sorting plugin.
I’ve seen websites that have 20+ plugins and load faster then one with 5 plugins. It’s all about what plugins you use and how you optimize them.
It’s better to do a mix and match, and extend plugins and themes.
As a business owner, it’s better to have a developer extend existing plugins. Once you’ve extended a plugin enough over time, and have all sorts of new features. You sometimes have enough work done to have a custom one in place (or at least an add-on type plugin)