The platform that refuses to become irrelevant
WordPress powers somewhere around 43% of all websites on the internet. That number has been growing, not shrinking, for the better part of a decade. And yet the conversation around whether businesses should still use it keeps resurfacing, usually led by people selling alternatives.
The honest answer is that WordPress for business is still, in most cases, the right call. Not because it's the newest thing or the most talked-about platform, but because it does the things a growing business actually needs a website to do, reliably, at a cost that makes commercial sense, without locking you into decisions you can't undo later.
That's not an exciting pitch. But it's the kind of assessment that tends to hold up after the initial enthusiasm for a newer platform has worn off.
Why so many businesses question it in the first place
The criticism of WordPress usually comes from one of two places. Either someone has had a bad experience with a poorly built WordPress site, or they're comparing it to hosted platforms like Squarespace or Wix, where the setup is simpler and the maintenance overhead feels lower.
Both are legitimate observations. A badly built WordPress site is a real thing. Slow, hard to manage, full of plugins that conflict with each other and a theme that hasn't been updated in three years. That experience exists, and it puts people off.
But a badly built site is a consequence of how it was built, not a consequence of the platform. The same business on Squarespace with a poorly structured sitemap, no attention paid to page speed, and content that hasn't been updated in two years will underperform in exactly the same ways. The platform isn't the problem. The thinking behind how it was set up is.
What WordPress actually gives a growing business
The case for WordPress as a business website platform comes down to a few things that genuinely matter when a business is trying to grow.
Ownership. With WordPress, you own the platform. The code, the content, the database, the hosting relationship. You are not renting space on someone else's infrastructure and subject to their pricing decisions, feature limitations, or the possibility that the platform pivots in a direction that doesn't suit you. For a business that's investing seriously in its website as a commercial asset, that ownership matters more than most people consider upfront.
Flexibility. WordPress can be built to do almost anything a business marketing website needs to do. Content-heavy publications, lead generation sites, ecommerce, membership platforms, directory listings, multilingual sites for businesses operating across multiple markets. The flexibility comes from the combination of a mature core platform, a vast ecosystem of plugins and integrations, and the fact that the underlying code can be modified to meet specific requirements. This is what makes WordPress scalable in a way that simpler website platforms are not. You don't outgrow it. You build on it.
SEO. WordPress has a well-deserved reputation as one of the most capable platforms for SEO. It gives you full control over the technical elements that matter for search performance, page titles, meta descriptions, URL structure, schema markup, canonical tags, sitemap configuration, and more. With the right setup and plugins, a WordPress site can be optimised to a level that most hosted platforms simply don't allow. For businesses that are using content marketing and organic search as part of their growth strategy, this is a meaningful advantage.
Content management. The Gutenberg block editor has come a long way. For marketing teams that need to publish regularly, update pages, and manage content without going back to a developer every time, WordPress is now genuinely easy to work with. The barrier to managing a WordPress site day to day is much lower than it was, and the flexibility of what you can do with the editor without touching code is considerably higher.
Cost. WordPress itself is free and open source. The cost of a WordPress business website is the hosting, the theme or custom build, the plugins you choose to use, and the development and maintenance work. That model gives businesses more control over what they spend and where. It's also why WordPress is consistently one of the most cost-effective CMS options for businesses that want a serious website without a serious enterprise price tag.
Is WordPress good for business SEO specifically?
This is one of the most common questions businesses have when evaluating platforms, and the answer is yes, with the right setup.
WordPress doesn't automatically produce well-optimised websites. A site with no attention paid to page speed, no thought given to URL structure, and no content strategy behind it won't rank well on WordPress any more than it would anywhere else. The platform is a tool. What you do with it determines the outcome.
What WordPress gives you is control. You can configure every on-page SEO element without restrictions. You can structure content at scale without the platform getting in the way. You can implement technical SEO requirements that most hosted platforms won't support. Plugins like Yoast or Rank Math give non-technical teams the ability to manage SEO fundamentals without needing a developer on hand for every update.
For businesses using their website as a primary channel for lead generation and content marketing, that level of control over how the site behaves in search is genuinely valuable.
The scalability question
One of the most persistent misconceptions about WordPress is that it's a starting-point platform. Something you use early on and then outgrow.
That's not how it works in practice.
Some of the highest-traffic websites in the world run on WordPress. The platform handles content at enterprise scale, supports complex integrations with third-party systems, and can be extended to meet requirements that go well beyond what a typical business website needs. The architecture supports growth. What determines whether a WordPress site scales well is how it was built and how it's maintained, not the platform itself.
For a growing business, this matters because it means you're not making a decision that expires. You don't get to a certain size and find out that WordPress can't keep up with you. You build on it, extend it, and adapt it as the business evolves.
WordPress security for businesses
Security is the area where WordPress gets the most unfair criticism.
The reality is that WordPress is a target for attacks precisely because it's so widely used. That's a function of its scale, not a reflection of its security. And because the platform is open source with a large, active community of developers, security vulnerabilities are typically identified and patched faster than they would be on a smaller platform with a less engaged development community.
Most WordPress security problems come from outdated core software, outdated plugins, and hosting environments that aren't properly configured. These are maintenance failures, not platform failures. A WordPress site that's kept up to date, hosted on a reputable infrastructure, and protected with appropriate security plugins and configurations is a secure website.
For businesses that are serious about their website as an asset, that maintenance discipline is non-negotiable regardless of the platform. The difference with WordPress is that you have the tools to implement it properly, rather than being dependent on a hosted platform's own security decisions.
WordPress vs a custom website
For some businesses, a fully custom-built website makes sense. Complex web applications, bespoke functionality that no existing solution covers, or very specific performance requirements that the WordPress architecture can't accommodate.
But for the majority of growing businesses with marketing websites, the comparison between WordPress and a fully custom build usually lands in the same place. WordPress gives you 90 to 95% of the capability at a fraction of the cost and timeline, with a content management interface that a non-technical team can actually use after launch.
A custom website built without a CMS typically results in a business that can't update its own content without a developer. A custom website built with a custom CMS adds significant cost and leaves the business dependent on whoever built it for any future changes. WordPress sidesteps both of those problems while still allowing for custom design and custom functionality where it's genuinely needed.
What about WordPress website maintenance?
This is the part of the conversation that some agencies conveniently skip when selling WordPress projects, so it's worth being direct about it.
WordPress does require ongoing maintenance. Core updates, plugin updates, security monitoring, performance checks, and regular backups are all part of running a WordPress business website responsibly. This isn't optional. An unmaintained WordPress site is a slow, vulnerable, and increasingly unreliable one.
For most businesses, this means either having someone in-house who takes responsibility for it, or working with an agency or developer on a maintenance arrangement. The cost of that ongoing support is real and should be factored in from the start.
When it is factored in, WordPress still makes commercial sense. The control, flexibility, and ownership you get in return for that maintenance overhead is a trade most growing businesses should be happy to make.
When WordPress is the right decision
WordPress is the right platform for a growing business when the website needs to do serious work, when content marketing and organic search are part of the growth strategy, when the team needs to manage content without a developer on hand for every update, and when the business wants to own its digital infrastructure rather than rent it.
That covers a lot of businesses. Not every business, but most of the ones at the stage where the website starts to matter commercially rather than just functioning as a digital brochure.
The businesses that regret choosing WordPress almost always made one of two mistakes. They chose a cheap or underqualified build that left them with a site that was technically poor from the start. Or they didn't put a maintenance plan in place and left it to deteriorate over time. Neither of those is a WordPress problem. Both are avoidable.
The smarter question
Instead of asking whether WordPress is still relevant, the more useful question is whether it's the right fit for where your business is and what you need your website to do.
For most growing businesses, the answer is yes. It's a mature, well-supported, commercially flexible platform with a track record that newer alternatives are still working to match.
At CreativePixels we build in WordPress when it's the right tool for the job, which is most of the time for marketing and lead generation websites. If you're trying to work out which platform makes sense for what you're building, we're happy to give you a straight answer based on what you actually need rather than what's easiest to sell.
Published by CreativePixels — a Manchester-based digital agency specialising in design, build, and growth for ambitious UK businesses.
