WordPress is free to download, and Google Sites is already available on the web for you if you’ve signed up for a free Gmail account. There is an embarrassment of riches out there for anyone interested in creating a web presence for little to no money. But there are always hidden costs to anything “free,” and if you want to get an organization or business online on a budget, it’s good to know about them now. These are some of the most common criteria. I’m discounting sites hosted on WordPress.com because they can’t take advantage of the nicer features of WordPress, like plugins.

easy to start

We all have a lot to do and very little time, so it’s important to start easy. Google Sites wins this hands down because it doesn’t require any installation or download steps. WordPress, on the other hand, must be obtained from the WordPress site and you must already have a web hosting account in order to use it. Winner: Google Sites

easy to maintain

At first, Google Sites seems easier to maintain. For a very small site, it may be. But the internal architecture of WordPress allows you to create a dramatically different look and feel simply by changing or manipulating a theme. WordPress themes are infinitely richer than those offered by Google Sites. Thousands of great WordPress themes are available for free all over the web. Winner: WordPress

Ability to add features that the product does not yet have (extensibility)

No software product, ever, has satisfied all the needs of its users. The best ones have an extensible architecture: Photoshop, Microsoft Word, Excel… and WordPress. Want to add Amazon affiliate sales to your site but don’t have technical knowledge? No problem, there is a WordPress plugin. Do you want to sell your crafts, artwork or services on your site? Lots of ecommerce WordPress plugins. Want to do any of those things from a Google site? Sorry, it can’t be done. They do not have an extensible architecture. Winner: WordPress

Third Party Support and Training

All successful software products have many consultants, books, and training programs available to them. That means if you end up not having the time or technical knowledge to add a particular feature to your site, you can rely on a web ecosystem to find the help you need. WordPress has over a million installations, tens of thousands of expert developers, and many books available both online (for example, http://www.OnTheWebInAnHour.com) and offline (your local bookstore). Google sites? Not that much. Winner: WordPress

Easy to move to another host

Do you like being tied to a single company for something? Most people who have responsibilities in any business or organization understand that this is not an acceptable risk. A policy change, a simple decision to move into your previously untouched market segment, a rep who just doesn’t like you, and boom! Your comfortable niche is gone. Or what if you just have reliability issues or find a better deal elsewhere? Moving a website can be traumatic enough. Make sure you can do it easily. Moving WordPress sites is child’s play; HostGator, for example, will move it for free. What makes Google Sites so wonderfully easy to get started under the hood results in a site full of all sorts of additional copyrighted Google code that you can’t carry around with you. Also, they just don’t have a good mechanism that allows you to push all your work to another host. Its a big problem. Winner: WordPress

Building a website is easy now. The ability to update articles yourself, keep them running, get help from third parties, and have a choice of web hosts make the decision much more different than you might have considered.