"WordPress is dead." I have been hearing this for at least six years. Probably longer. Every time a new website builder launches, every time a JavaScript framework adds static site generation, every time someone builds a nice landing page in Framer and tweets about it, someone declares that WordPress is finally dead.
And yet. 43% of the web. Forty-three percent. That number has gone up, not down, every single year for over a decade. If WordPress is dead, it is the most productive corpse in the history of technology.
But -- and here is where I start arguing with myself -- market share is not the same as being good. Internet Explorer had massive market share too, right up until it did not. Popularity can coast on momentum long after the thing itself has stopped deserving it. So the question is not whether WordPress is popular. The question is whether it is still the right choice for someone starting a new website in 2025.
I genuinely do not have a clean answer. So instead of pretending I do, I am going to argue both sides of every major criticism, as honestly as I can, and let you decide.
The Gutenberg Debate
The case against: Gutenberg was forced on a community that did not want it. When it replaced the classic editor in WordPress 5.0 back in 2018, the Classic Editor plugin became one of the most-installed plugins overnight -- millions of people immediately opted out. The block editor was buggy, unintuitive, and slower than what it replaced. The Gutenberg project also introduced philosophical divisions in the community that persist to this day, with many long-time contributors and users feeling that WordPress was chasing Squarespace and Wix at the expense of what made it useful.
The case for: Gutenberg in 2025 is not Gutenberg in 2018. Seven years of development have turned it into a genuinely powerful editor. Full Site Editing means you can now design your entire website visually -- headers, footers, templates, archives -- without touching code. For the first time in WordPress history, a non-technical user can build a custom-looking website without buying a third-party page builder like Elementor or Divi. The blocks are now stable, the performance is acceptable, and the pattern library offers pre-designed content sections that you can drop into any page. Is it as smooth as Squarespace's editor? No. But it is a massive improvement over where it started, and the trajectory is upward.
My honest take: Gutenberg is better than its reputation suggests but worse than it should be after seven years of development. It works. It is good enough. But "good enough" for the CMS that 43% of the web depends on feels like a low bar.
The Security Problem
The case against: WordPress sites get hacked all the time. It is the most targeted CMS on the internet, which makes sense because it is the most popular, but the frequency of security incidents is still alarming. Most attacks exploit outdated plugins or themes, weak passwords, or unpatched installations. If you run a WordPress site, you are signing up for a never-ending security maintenance job: update core, update plugins, update themes, hope nothing breaks, monitor for suspicious activity, run security scans, maintain backups. One forgotten plugin update can open a door that a bot will find in hours.
The case for: The security problems are mostly self-inflicted. WordPress core has a strong security team and a good track record of patching vulnerabilities quickly. The vast majority of hacks happen because site owners do not update their software, install sketchy plugins from unknown developers, use "admin" as their username with "password123" as their password, or use cheap shared hosting with weak security. A well-maintained WordPress site with reputable plugins, strong passwords, two-factor authentication, and decent hosting is not meaningfully less secure than a Squarespace or Wix site. It just requires more effort to keep it that way.
My honest take: Both sides are right, and that is the problem. The security of a WordPress site depends entirely on the person managing it. For a developer or agency that follows best practices, security is manageable. For a small business owner who set up their site three years ago and has not logged in since, their WordPress site is probably already compromised and they do not know it. The platform puts the security burden on the user, and a lot of users are not equipped to carry it.
The Plugin Ecosystem: Superpower or Weakness?
The case against: Having 60,000 plugins sounds impressive until you realize that the average quality is low, many are abandoned, compatibility between plugins is not guaranteed, and every plugin you install is a potential security vulnerability and performance drain. WordPress without plugins is too basic to be useful for most purposes. WordPress with twenty plugins is a performance nightmare waiting to happen. Figuring out which plugins are trustworthy, well-maintained, and compatible with each other requires more expertise than most users have.
The case for: The plugin ecosystem is the reason WordPress can be anything. Want an online store? WooCommerce. Want a membership site? MemberPress. Want a learning management system? LearnDash. Want forums? bbPress. Want to turn your site into a directory, a job board, a real estate listing site, a booking platform? There is a plugin for each of those. No other CMS gives you this kind of flexibility. And while quality varies, the top plugins -- Yoast SEO, Advanced Custom Fields, Gravity Forms, WooCommerce, Elementor -- are world-class software maintained by dedicated teams. You just need to choose wisely.
My honest take: The plugin ecosystem is simultaneously WordPress's greatest strength and its Achilles heel. The key is restraint -- install only what you need, stick to reputable developers, and treat every new plugin as a decision that carries risk. The people who complain about WordPress being slow and buggy usually have thirty plugins installed. The people who love WordPress usually have ten.
The Learning Curve Question
The case against: WordPress is confusing for beginners. The difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com alone trips up newcomers before they even start. Then there is choosing a hosting provider, installing WordPress, understanding the dashboard, figuring out the difference between posts and pages, selecting a theme, installing plugins, and eventually confronting the block editor. For someone who just wants a website, this is a lot of work. Squarespace gives you a beautiful site in thirty minutes. Wix gives you one even faster. WordPress gives you a learning project.
The case for: WordPress.com has simplified the hosted experience significantly. The onboarding wizard walks you through setup. The theme previewer shows you exactly what your site will look like. And the block editor, once you spend an hour with it, is intuitive enough for basic content creation. For the self-hosted route, managed WordPress hosting providers like SiteGround, Kinsta, and WP Engine handle installation, updates, and security automatically, removing most of the technical complexity. The learning curve is real, but the payoff is a platform you can grow with indefinitely, rather than one you will outgrow in a year.
My honest take: If I am being really honest, I think the learning curve is acceptable for anyone who expects to spend more than six months maintaining their website. The upfront investment pays dividends because you learn skills that transfer and you end up with a site you fully control. But for someone who needs a website up by Friday and does not plan to think about it again? Use Squarespace. Genuinely. WordPress is for people who want to invest in their website over time, and there is no shame in not wanting that.
Performance: Slow by Default, Fast by Effort
The case against: A default WordPress installation is not fast. Add a theme with too many features, throw in a dozen plugins, skip any performance optimization, and your site will load in 4-5 seconds, which is unacceptable in 2025. WordPress sites are regularly the worst performers in speed comparisons, and the amount of optimization required to make a WordPress site fast -- caching plugins, image optimization, CDN configuration, database cleanup, code minification -- is work that platforms like Webflow, Squarespace, and static site generators handle automatically.
The case for: A properly optimized WordPress site can be extremely fast. With good hosting, a lightweight theme, smart caching, and sensible plugin choices, WordPress sites can achieve sub-second load times. Many of the highest-traffic websites in the world run on WordPress -- TechCrunch, The New Yorker, BBC America -- and they do not have performance problems. The performance issue is not with WordPress itself; it is with how most people set up WordPress. Bad hosting, bloated themes, and too many plugins make any platform slow.
My honest take: WordPress is slow unless you make it fast. Other platforms are fast unless you make them slow. The direction of the default matters. For developers and agencies who know what they are doing, WordPress performance is a solved problem. For everyone else, it is a burden that should not be necessary.
The Money Side
WordPress pricing is not simple to discuss because it depends so much on which path you take. Here is my attempt at an honest breakdown.
Self-hosted WordPress.org: The software is free. Hosting costs 3 to 30 dollars per month depending on provider quality. A domain is 10 to 15 dollars per year. A premium theme might cost 50 to 80 dollars once. A few premium plugins might add 50 to 200 dollars per year. Total for a year: anywhere from 50 dollars to 500 dollars, with the average small business site landing around 150 to 250 dollars per year. This is extremely competitive.
WordPress.com: The free tier is too limited to be useful for anything but experimentation. The Personal plan at 4 dollars per month is basically a blog. The Premium plan at 8 dollars per month adds design customization. The Business plan at 25 dollars per month finally lets you install plugins and custom themes -- and at that price, you might as well self-host for more flexibility at a similar or lower cost. The eCommerce plan at 45 dollars per month competes with Shopify but with more complexity.
The hidden cost that nobody mentions is time. Managing a self-hosted WordPress site takes ongoing effort: updates, backups, security monitoring, troubleshooting plugin conflicts. If your time is worth 50 dollars an hour and you spend 2 hours per month on maintenance, that is 1,200 dollars per year in labor costs that do not show up on any invoice. Factor that in and the "WordPress is cheaper" argument weakens.
WordPress vs. the Newer Competition
WordPress vs. Webflow: Webflow is better at visual design, outputs cleaner code, and requires no maintenance. WordPress is more flexible, has a larger ecosystem, costs less, and gives you full data ownership. If I were building a marketing site for a design-savvy client, I would consider Webflow. For everything else, WordPress still wins on capability.
WordPress vs. Wix: Wix is easier. WordPress is better. Wix locks you in. WordPress lets you leave. If the site needs to be up in a week and never change, Wix is fine. If the site is a business asset that will evolve over years, WordPress is the right investment.
WordPress vs. Ghost: Ghost is a beautiful, focused publishing platform. If all you need is a blog and newsletter, Ghost is arguably better at that specific task. But Ghost cannot be a store, a forum, a directory, or a learning platform. WordPress can be all of those things. Ghost is a scalpel; WordPress is a Swiss Army knife.
So Is It Dead or Immortal?
4.3 / 5
Here is where I have landed after going back and forth with myself for far too long: WordPress is neither dead nor immortal. It is something more interesting than either of those dramatic claims. It is a mature, imperfect, absurdly flexible tool that has earned its dominance through adaptability and will lose it only if it stops adapting.
The arguments against WordPress are real. The security burden is real. The performance optimization requirement is real. The learning curve is real. The Gutenberg growing pains were real and some of them linger. Anyone who tells you WordPress is perfect is selling you something.
The arguments for WordPress are also real. 43% market share is real. 60,000 plugins is real. Complete data ownership is real. The ability to build literally anything is real. The community of millions of developers, designers, and content creators is real. Anyone who tells you WordPress is dead is ignoring the evidence right in front of them.
In the end, I give it 4.3 out of 5 and refuse to declare a winner in the debate. WordPress is excellent for the people it is excellent for, and wrong for the people it is wrong for, and the only way to know which group you belong to is to honestly assess how much you are willing to invest in your website. If the answer is "I want to learn and tinker and have full control," WordPress is your platform. If the answer is "I just want it to work," look elsewhere.
Both answers are valid. That is the only thing I am sure about.
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