WordPress powers about 43% of the web. That number gets cited a lot as evidence that it’s the obvious choice for business websites. It isn’t — 43% market share reflects accessibility and longevity, not that it’s the best tool for every use case. But for many business websites, it is genuinely the right choice, and for well-understood reasons.
Both answers are true, depending on what you’re building.
What WordPress Actually Does Well
Content management flexibility. WordPress was built as a publishing platform, and it’s still one of the best options for businesses that publish frequently — blog posts, case studies, news, event listings, product updates. The editorial workflow is familiar, the block editor handles most content types well, and non-technical users can manage content without touching code.
Ecosystem depth. The WordPress plugin ecosystem has roughly 60,000 plugins. For most common business needs — SEO, forms, e-commerce, CRM integration, membership, booking, events — there’s a well-supported plugin that handles it. This means a large category of functionality can be added without custom development.
SEO infrastructure. WordPress with a plugin like Yoast or Rank Math gives you solid SEO tooling out of the box — XML sitemaps, meta tag management, breadcrumbs, schema markup support, and page-level SEO controls. The architecture is crawlable and well-understood by search engines.
Developer availability. Because WordPress is so widely used, there’s a large pool of developers who know it. You’re not locked into a single vendor or a niche talent market. Finding someone to work on your site is easier than with most alternatives.
Ownership. Self-hosted WordPress means you own your site, your data, and your infrastructure. You’re not subject to pricing changes, policy changes, or platform shutdowns. Migrating away is possible (even if it’s work) because you have access to your own database.
Where It Gets Complicated
Security responsibility. WordPress’s popularity makes it a target. Outdated plugins, weak credentials, and unpatched core installs are the cause of the vast majority of WordPress compromises. If you’re not running regular updates and have real security measures in place, this is a meaningful risk.
Performance requires configuration. A freshly installed WordPress site is not fast. Caching, image optimization, database optimization, and CDN configuration are all required to get competitive page load times. Managed WordPress hosting handles much of this, but it’s not free and not automatic on standard hosting.
Plugin quality varies enormously. The 60,000-plugin ecosystem includes excellent plugins, abandoned plugins, malware-infected plugins, and everything in between. Relying on a plugin that hasn’t been updated in three years — or that has one developer and no business model — is a liability.
Complexity scales with customization. A simple WordPress site with a quality theme and a handful of plugins is maintainable. A heavily customized WordPress site with a page builder, 40 plugins, and years of accumulated customizations becomes brittle. Technical debt compounds faster in WordPress than in most modern frameworks because the plugin architecture creates hidden dependencies.
When WordPress Is the Right Tool
Content-heavy business sites. If your site is primarily marketing pages plus a blog, and you have non-technical staff who need to publish content regularly, WordPress is still one of the best choices.
E-commerce with standard requirements. WooCommerce handles the e-commerce use case well for most small to mid-size stores. If your products are relatively standard and your checkout flow doesn’t have unusual requirements, WooCommerce on WordPress is a mature, well-supported option.
Sites where budget is a primary constraint. The theme and plugin ecosystem means you can build a professional WordPress site faster and at lower initial cost than most alternatives. For businesses where time-to-launch and initial budget are the primary constraints, this matters.
Sites that will be managed by non-technical staff. WordPress’s content editing experience is familiar enough that most people can manage it without training. If your primary requirement is that a non-technical person can own the site after launch, WordPress makes this easy.
When WordPress Is the Wrong Tool
Complex web applications. WordPress is a content management system, not an application framework. If you’re building something with significant application logic — user accounts with meaningful permissions, real-time features, complex workflows, or high-volume data processing — you’ll fight WordPress to make it do things it wasn’t designed for.
Performance-critical applications. WordPress’s PHP architecture has a ceiling. For very high-traffic sites or applications where response time is critical, WordPress requires increasingly complex infrastructure to keep up with what modern JavaScript frameworks handle more naturally.
Teams with strong JavaScript expertise. If your developers work primarily in React, Vue, or similar frameworks, a headless CMS or a JavaScript-based platform (Next.js, Gatsby, Astro) will produce better results than WordPress, because the team is building in their native stack.
Sites with very simple requirements that won’t change. For a simple brochure site that nobody will update — a portfolio with five pages, a local business with hours and a contact form — a static site generator or a simple no-code tool is often a better fit than a WordPress installation that requires ongoing maintenance.
The Alternative Landscape
The main alternatives worth considering for business websites:
Webflow — Better design control, faster page performance, no plugin maintenance. The content editing experience is weaker, and it’s not self-hosted. Good for design-forward marketing sites.
HubSpot CMS — Built-in CRM integration, good if you’re already in the HubSpot ecosystem. Expensive at scale. Not a general-purpose choice.
Statamic, Craft CMS — More sophisticated content modeling than WordPress with better developer experience. Smaller ecosystems.
Next.js or Astro with a headless CMS — Best performance and developer flexibility, but higher initial build cost and requires more technical expertise to maintain.
The right platform depends on what you’re building, who will manage it, and what matters most in your specific situation.
At Webward, we don’t build on WordPress — not because it’s a bad platform, but because the work we do (custom web applications, SaaS products, and performance-first marketing sites) is better served by modern frameworks. If you’re evaluating whether you’ve outgrown WordPress, planning a migration, or starting something new and want an honest read on your options, get in touch.