Starting a WordPress website is free. However, premium themes and plugins are the key to a highly functional, versatile, and secure WordPress site. These premium themes and plugins may seem high in price, but the last thing you want to do is give into the temptation of using a nulled version of highly rated plugins and themes, known as "nulled" assets in the WordPress market.

As web security experts, we'd like to shine a spotlight on the risks inherent to nulled themes and plugins, no matter how tempting they might be.

A nulled theme or plugin is an off-license, low-cost version of a premium WordPress package like a theme or plugin. WordPress themes provide programmed website structures with specific layouts, functionality, and features. Plugins focus even more on adding functionality, both to the front-end and back-end of your WordPress website. That is why premium packages are so valuable.

However, like any software, it is possible to copy or "crack" them and sell the off-license version for a lower cost — or free. If you want great features at a lower price, the nulled themes and plugins can be hard to resist. However, it's important to ask yourself two things:

1. Why would someone put in all the work to crack good software and sell it for cheap?
2. What are the real differences between the legitimate and nulled versions?

Five types of risk come from using nulled themes and plugins instead of investing in the real thing.

First, nulled themes and plugins are stolen property. The software and designs have copyrights belonging to the creators. That's why using nulled versions is considered an open use of stolen software. You wouldn't buy a stolen car and drive it around town — much less with the company logo on the side.

Using nulled software puts you at risk of legal consequences for copyright infringement. This can include fines and even lawsuits from the original creators for using stolen versions of their work.

Nulled products can introduce major security risks. This is done on purpose by the individuals or teams that steal and crack the software. Why? Hackers create nulled themes and plugins as a popular form of bait to introduce vulnerabilities to user websites.

While they are removing the proprietary limitations, they often insert their own malware and security vulnerabilities to infect websites or leave a back door open for future hacking. Installing nulled products can immediately infect your website with unseen malware such as data theft, password theft, account vulnerabilities, and even a direct line to read data encrypted on your server.

When asking yourself why someone would go through the trouble of cracking popular plugins, it is usually not out of some "Robin Hood" desire to sell good software cheaply. The benefit to the source lies in hacking websites that use the products. You are putting your website at a high risk of malware and data breaches when using nulled themes or plugins.

Even if the nulled products are "clean" of malware alterations, there are other downsides to using nulled products: No updates. High-quality and premium products are often more than just a single download. A skilled team maintains and constantly updates them to keep up with evolving technology, trends, and new security threats. The publishers also typically provide active customer support for difficult configurations or performance issues.

Nulled products get none of these benefits. You will not receive the latest features and updates and cannot request support if the products don't work as expected or if your implementation is complex. You will also not gain access to security patches when new threats appear in the digital landscape. This poses the biggest risk because your website will become more vulnerable over time.

Nulled products often lack optimization for performance and may not interact well with other plugins and features. When using cracked and stolen software, it should come as no surprise when they negatively impact your website's performance. This is true for three reasons.

• First, cracking software can damage core functions, and performance optimization is one of the most delicate aspects of website software. By changing the code, hackers can cause bugs and compatibility issues that lead to crashes, malfunctions, and conflicts with your other software.
• Second, the hacker has no motivation (and possibly no ability) to ensure the software performs well.
• Third, cracked software equipped with malware may crash because the malware is causing conflicts and performance issues.

Using nulled themes and plugins can lead to crashes, slow performance, feature incompatibility, and costly downtime for your company website.

Lastly, using nulled themes and plugins is bad for your website and company reputation. Should it be revealed that you are using stolen and cracked software, your website will lose legitimacy, resulting in a loss of trust from visitors, customers, and business partners. A legitimate company should use legitimate software, respect the copyrights of publishing teams, and accept the costs that every other brand must accept to build a high-quality website.

Not only is using stolen software disreputable, but it also blatantly disregards the safety of your website visitors and customers whose data is put at risk by using software that is more likely to be riddled with malware and vulnerabilities.

In a diverse marketplace of WordPress products, it's important to know how to identify nulled products and how to avoid them. Deals that are too good to be true and cheap clones of pricey premium packages are often the tip-off, but sometimes it is not so obvious. In other cases, you may have tried a nulled package only to realize the risks after you install them.

Quttera can help. Our website security software can help you remove malware that has already infiltrated your website from nulled products and other sources. Our security experts can also help you identify risks and avoid them to keep your website, data, and customers safe. Contact us today to learn more.