[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":25},["ShallowReactive",2],{"S6uLA5HhmM":3},{"id":4,"slug":5,"title":6,"excerpt":7,"meta_title":8,"meta_description":8,"page_content":9,"featured_image":17,"fields":18,"tags":19,"published":21,"published_at":22,"created_at":23,"updated_at":24},"3eb8f867-4051-42df-85a6-7316a9c82d60","notes/is-wordpress-still-the-right-choice-2026","Is WordPress Still the Right Choice in 2026? An Honest Look","A senior developer's honest take on when WordPress is still the right call in 2026, when it isn't, and how to decide without being sold to by someone who only builds one thing.",null,{"blocks":10},[11],{"id":12,"data":13,"type":16},"6af1ad02-ee4a-4b6a-8939-c1305c7c4be6",{"content":14,"maxWidth":15},"\u003Cp>WordPress runs a huge chunk of the web, and every few months someone declares it dead. It isn't. But \"is it still any good\" is the wrong question. The right one is \"is it the right tool for what I'm trying to do,\" and the honest answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no. Here's how I'd think it through if it were your business and I had no reason to push you one way or the other.\u003C/p>\u003Ch2>When WordPress is still the right call\u003C/h2>\u003Cp>If you publish a lot, WordPress is hard to beat. The editing experience is familiar, your team already knows it or can learn it in an afternoon, and there's a plugin for almost anything you'll realistically need. A content-heavy site, a blog with real cadence, a small brochure site that someone non-technical needs to update weekly, WordPress does all of that well and cheaply.\u003C/p>\u003Cp>It's also a sensible choice when you need something specific that the ecosystem already solves. Membership sites, certain booking setups, particular integrations, there's often a mature plugin that would take real money to rebuild from scratch elsewhere. If a well-supported plugin does exactly what you need and it's actively maintained, that's a genuine point in WordPress's favour, not against it.\u003C/p>\u003Ch2>When it starts to work against you\u003C/h2>\u003Cp>The trouble usually isn't WordPress itself, it's what happens to a WordPress site over a few years. You add a plugin, then another, then a page builder, then three more plugins to fix what the page builder broke. Each one is an update that can fail, a security hole someone has to watch, and a little more weight on every page. I've been called into sites where keeping the thing alive had quietly become a part-time job, and nobody had decided that on purpose, it just accreted.\u003C/p>\u003Cp>So WordPress tends to be the wrong fit when: speed and reliability genuinely matter to your revenue and the plugin stack is fighting you on both; you've been hacked or you're nervous about it because you can't keep on top of updates; or you're paying a developer every month to hold together something fragile. At that point the convenience that made WordPress attractive has flipped into a running cost.\u003C/p>\u003Ch2>The honest test\u003C/h2>\u003Cp>Strip away the platform names and ask three questions. How often does the content actually change, and who changes it? How much does a slow or broken site cost you in real money? And how much are you currently spending, in time or fees, just keeping it standing? If the content changes constantly and the maintenance burden is low, stay on WordPress. If the site barely changes but absolutely has to be fast and secure, and you're forever patching it, that's when moving to something simpler and faster earns its keep.\u003C/p>\u003Cp>Notice none of that is about fashion. Plenty of people will tell you to move to whatever they happen to sell. I build modern sites that don't rely on a pile of plugins, so you might reasonably assume I'd tell everyone to leave WordPress. I don't, because it isn't true. For a lot of businesses WordPress is the right, cheap, sensible answer, and I'll say so.\u003C/p>\u003Ch2>If you're genuinely not sure\u003C/h2>\u003Cp>The mistake I see most often is making this decision emotionally, either clinging to a WordPress site that's costing a fortune to maintain, or ripping out a perfectly good one because someone said the word \"headless\" at a networking event. It's a numbers decision, not a loyalty one.\u003C/p>\u003Cp>If you want a straight answer about your own site, that's the kind of thing I help with. You can \u003Ca href=\"/wordpress\">see how I work with WordPress\u003C/a>, or book a free half-hour surgery and I'll tell you honestly whether I'd keep it, tidy it up, or move it. If WordPress is right for you, I'll say that too, even though it isn't what I build.\u003C/p>","lg","wysiwyg","",{},[20],"wordpress",true,"2026-06-23T08:00:00+00:00","2026-06-20T05:36:07+00:00","2026-06-23T08:00:02.536072+00:00",1782201649445]