Is WordPress Still Worth It for a Business Website?

Yes, WordPress is still worth it for some businesses. It runs about 40% of all websites, the software is free, you own a self hosted site outright, and it remains a sound choice for content heavy sites with someone to maintain them. It is a poor fit when nobody will keep plugins updated, because plugins are where 91% of newly reported WordPress vulnerabilities are found, and that upkeep is a real monthly cost.

A disclosure before anything else: none of the work in my studio's portfolio is built on WordPress. Our published projects are built in Next.js, Shopify and Framer. So I have no reason to sell it to you, though you should know I do sell the alternatives. I will try to be fair to it, because it is the right answer more often than its critics admit.

Is WordPress outdated?

No. According to W3Techs, "WordPress is used by 58.6% of all the websites whose content management system we know. This is 40.1% of all websites." Nothing else comes close. It is actively developed, and its ecosystem of themes, plugins, hosts and developers is enormous.

What people usually mean by "outdated" is that its architecture is older than newer tools, and that many WordPress sites lean on third party plugins for things newer platforms include out of the box. That is fair, and it cuts both ways: plugins are why WordPress can do almost anything, and also why it needs looking after.

When is WordPress the right choice?

WordPress earns its place when most of these are true:

• Content is the job. You publish articles, guides, resources or news often, and you need categories, authors and search to handle it.
• Someone owns maintenance. You have a developer, an agency or a capable person in house who keeps it updated every month.
• You need a specific plugin. A booking system, membership tool or industry integration exists for WordPress and nowhere else.
• Ownership matters to you. You want to host the site yourself, move it between hosts, and never depend on one company's platform.
• Budget is tight up front. Good themes and a capable freelancer can produce a solid site for less than a custom build.

When is WordPress the wrong choice?

It tends to disappoint when:

• Nobody maintains it. Plugins go out of date, something breaks after an update, or worse, a known vulnerability sits open.
• The brand needs a precise design and you have no developer. WordPress can hold a tightly art directed design, but it takes custom theme work to set up, and in my view that is where cheaper builds cut corners.
• Your team wants to edit freely without risk. Editing in WordPress is easy. Whether an editor can also break the layout depends on how the site was built, so ask what is locked (question 4 below).
• You sell products online. WooCommerce works, but in my view most small brands are better served by Shopify, which handles checkout, payments and security with less upkeep.

What does WordPress really cost to run?

One thing to settle first: WordPress.org is the free software you host yourself, and this article is about that. WordPress.com is a hosted service built on it, with a free plan and paid plans, and plugins only on the paid ones.

The software is free. The site is not. A Canadian web host, Ambrite, lists:

Ambrite's standard plan, which adds content updates and a staging site, runs $100 to $250.

Add the cost of changes you cannot make yourself. I break down the full picture, across WordPress and other platforms, in what website maintenance costs each month.

Is WordPress secure?

Patchstack, a WordPress security company, found only six vulnerabilities in WordPress core in 2025, all low priority. The risk lives in the ecosystem around it. It counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, a 42% increase on 2024. 91% were in plugins and 9% in themes.

The practical lesson: a WordPress site with a small number of well maintained plugins, automatic updates where safe, backups and someone watching it is a reasonable risk. A site with dozens of plugins that nobody has updated in a year is not.

What are the alternatives?

Briefly, and without pretending any of them is right for everyone:

• Shopify for online stores, with checkout and payments built in for a monthly fee.
• Webflow and Framer for marketing sites where a team wants visual editing and hosting in one place. Both are subscriptions, and your site lives on their platform.
• Squarespace and Wix for simple sites the owner wants to build and update themselves for a monthly fee.
• A custom build (for example in Next.js) when the site needs custom functionality, integrations or a level of performance and design control the platforms cannot give you.

We have built in Next.js, Shopify and Framer, and choose the architecture for a Custom Website System after discovery, based on what the site has to do and who will run it.

What should you ask before choosing WordPress?

If you are leaning towards WordPress for a new site, put these questions to whoever will build it:

1. Who updates the core software, theme and plugins each month, and what does that cost?
2. How many plugins will the site depend on, and are they actively maintained?
3. Where will it be hosted, and who is responsible for backups and restoring them?
4. How will my team edit pages without breaking the design?
5. If we part ways, can another developer pick it up easily?

Clear answers to all five mean WordPress is probably a safe choice for you. Vague answers to the first two are the warning sign.

Should you move off WordPress?

Only if it is costing you something real: time, money, security worries or a site your team cannot update. A working WordPress site that someone maintains well is not a problem to solve.

If you do move, protect your search traffic. URLs, content and redirects matter far more than the platform you land on, and I walk through the checklist in does a website redesign affect SEO.

How we approach it at Embark

A Signature Website is built on Oryn and hosted there after launch, where your team updates copy, images and pages by asking in plain English. The first month of Oryn is included; after that the Oryn plan is from $199 USD a month billed yearly, or $250 monthly, at the founding rate for 25 founding seats (regular $299 a month, or $2,990 a year), so like WordPress upkeep it is a monthly cost, and your site runs on our platform rather than a host you pick. Oryn also works with compatible existing websites; ask us whether yours is one. A Signature Website starts at $9,500 USD and a Custom Website System at $15,000 USD; the full breakdown is in what a small business website costs in Canada.

If you are on WordPress now and unsure whether to stay, our free website audit reviews any live site, WordPress included, for SEO, performance and technical health, and gives you an honest view either way.

Sources

• W3Techs, Usage statistics and market share of WordPress (9 October 2026)
• Patchstack, State of WordPress Security in 2026
• Ambrite Web Services, How Much Does WordPress Maintenance Really Cost? (26 May 2026)
• WordPress.com, Pricing (accessed 9 October 2026)