Every few months a new article appears declaring WordPress dead. “Use Next.js,” they say. “Go headless.” “No one serious uses WordPress anymore.” And yet — it still powers 43% of the internet. That’s not inertia. That’s a product doing something right.
I’ve built things in WordPress, Next.js, SvelteKit, and plain PHP. Here’s my honest take after years in the field.
What WordPress genuinely gets right
WordPress has a solved content editing experience. The Gutenberg block editor — once you stop fighting it — is actually excellent for clients. They can update a page without calling you. That has real dollar value.
The plugin ecosystem is enormous. WooCommerce, ACF, Yoast, Gravity Forms — years of production-hardened code that you don’t have to write yourself. When a client needs a booking system, a membership wall, or a multi-step form, there’s almost always a plugin that handles 80% of the work.
Hosting is trivially cheap and available everywhere. Any developer your client hires next will know WordPress. That matters for long-term maintainability.
The real weaknesses
WordPress shows its age when you need real-time features, complex relational data, or heavy API consumption. A high-traffic SaaS product has different needs than a portfolio site. Object caching, full-page caching, and database tuning can get WordPress far, but there’s a ceiling.
My decision framework
I reach for WordPress when the client will manage content themselves, the project needs e-commerce or membership features, the budget is constrained, or SEO editorial control matters.
I reach for something else when the “site” is really an application with complex state and real-time data, or when the team is JavaScript-first and will struggle working in PHP.
The takeaway
WordPress is not the right tool for everything. No tool is. But for content-driven sites, small to medium e-commerce, and client projects where maintainability matters — it’s still the most practical choice I know of.
