WordPress Isn’t Dead. The Website Market Has Just Matured.

There is a lot of noise online about the decline of WordPress.

Some of it is exaggerated. Some of it is fair. In this article, we’re going to unpick the facts.

WordPress is not growing in the same way it once was. Its share of the CMS market has edged down, and other platforms have gained ground. AI-assisted website builders, hosted e-commerce tools, and no-code platforms are rapidly changing the lower end of the website market.

But here is the important point: declining market share is not the same as declining suitability.

For simple brochure sites, campaign landing pages and small businesses that need something live quickly, there are now more options than ever. Some of those options are good enough for that job.

For business-critical websites that need to perform commercially, integrate properly, scale sensibly, stay secure, meet accessibility standards and support complex user journeys, WordPress remains one of the strongest choices available.

The issue is not whether WordPress is popular enough. It clearly is. The issue is whether it is the right platform for the job.

Let us start with the data.

As of 07/07/2026, W3Techs reports that WordPress is used by 41.5% of all websites and holds 59.2% of the CMS market. Shopify is next at 5.2% of all websites and 7.5% CMS share, followed by Wix at 4.3% and 6.1%, and Squarespace at 2.5% and 3.5%. In other words, WordPress is still roughly eight times larger than its nearest CMS competitor by detected CMS share.

That does not mean nothing is changing. W3Techs’ CMS trend data shows WordPress slipping from 61.0% CMS share on 01/07/2025 to 59.2% on 07/07/2026, while Shopify moved from 6.7% to 7.5% and Wix from 5.4% to 6.1% over the same period.

So yes, WordPress has lost share. But the decline is measured, not catastrophic.

It is also important to look at where WordPress is being used. W3Techs shows WordPress is still used by 49.1% of the top one million websites whose CMS is known, 51.5% of the top 100,000, 50.7% of the top 10,000 and 46.3% of the top 1,000. That matters because business-critical websites are rarely just small static pages with five menu items.

HTTP Archive’s 2025 Web Almanac makes a similar point: CMS-driven sites now account for more than 54% of observed websites, and WordPress remains the dominant CMS. Its growth has slowed, but HTTP Archive describes that more as market saturation than a major competitive threat from a single rival.

WordPress is not collapsing. The market is fragmenting.

The pressure is real, and it is easy to understand.

The simplest websites are being absorbed by faster, cheaper tools. AI-assisted builders can create first drafts, generate layouts, write copy and launch basic pages quickly.

The AI-powered website builder market is forecast to grow rapidly, with one research report projecting 19.7% growth from 2025 to 2026 and continued strong growth to 2030.

For some businesses, that is enough. A sole trader, early-stage startup or temporary campaign may not need a fully planned, custom-built CMS. A lightweight hosted platform can be perfectly adequate.

Hosted e-commerce platforms have also improved. Shopify, Wix and Squarespace have removed a lot of friction for businesses that want a standardised setup and do not need deep customisation.

That is the part of the market WordPress is losing. And frankly, that is not necessarily a bad thing.

WordPress should not be the default answer for every website. It is too powerful, too flexible and too dependent on implementation quality to be treated as a cheap page generator. When WordPress is used badly – too many plugins, bloated themes, poor hosting, weak security and no governance – it deserves criticism.

But that is not a WordPress problem. That is an implementation problem.

A business-critical website is not just a website.

It is a marketing platform, a publishing system, a sales support tool, a data capture mechanism, a customer service layer, a recruitment asset, a compliance risk, a brand experience and often a gateway into other business systems.

That changes the requirements.

A serious business website usually needs more than attractive pages. It needs clear information architecture, properly designed user journeys, structured content, flexible landing pages, accessible templates, fast performance, search visibility, CRM integration, analytics, tracking governance, hosting resilience, role-based permissions, security controls and a maintenance process that does not fall apart six months after launch.

That is where WordPress still earns its place.

Not because it is old. Not because it is familiar. Because it gives skilled teams the right balance of flexibility, ownership and control.

The “WordPress is only for blogs” line should have died years ago.

NASA and NASA Science both run on enterprise-level WordPress builds, supporting large archives of information, media content and complex navigation needs. WordPress.org’s enterprise section lists use cases across media, e-commerce, content marketing and higher education, and describes WordPress being used at enterprise scale wherever organisations need flexible, cost-effective and secure content distribution.

Large publishers have also moved towards WordPress rather than away from it. Vox Media, for example, moved its own sites from its proprietary Chorus CMS to WordPress VIP, with Axios noting that WordPress’ continued dominance made it harder for proprietary publishing platforms to compete.

These are not hobby websites. They are high-volume, content-heavy, operationally important platforms.

That does not mean WordPress is right for every enterprise project. It does mean dismissing it as a legacy option is lazy thinking.

WordPress wins when a website needs to adapt.

A business may start with a marketing site, then add gated content, multilingual content, lead scoring, e-commerce, events, resource libraries, member areas, recruitment content, investor information, integrations with HubSpot or Salesforce, custom search, booking tools, dashboards or API connections.

On a closed platform, every new requirement must fit within the platform’s rules. That can be fine until the business grows beyond those rules.

WordPress gives you more room. It can be built traditionally, headlessly, as part of a composable stack, or as a hybrid. It can support custom post types, reusable blocks, editorial workflows, permissions, integrations and design systems. It can be hosted in different ways. It can be extended. It can be audited. It can be moved.

That does not happen automatically. It requires proper planning and development discipline. But for organisations that expect their website to evolve, that flexibility matters.

We should not pretend WordPress has no security concerns.

Patchstack reported 11,334 new vulnerabilities across the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, a 42% increase from 2024. But the detail matters: 91% of new vulnerabilities were found in plugins, 9% in themes, and only six were reported in WordPress core, all low priority.

That tells us something important.

WordPress core is not the main security problem. Poor plugin choices, weak maintenance, old themes, cheap hosting, missing updates and lack of monitoring are the real risks.

A professionally managed WordPress site should not be a pile of random plugins held together by hope. It should have a controlled plugin policy, vetted suppliers, least-privilege access, two-factor authentication, secure hosting, backups, staging environments, update testing, uptime monitoring, vulnerability monitoring and a clear maintenance process.

For business-critical websites, security is not a one-off launch task. It is an operating model.

That is why agency expertise matters.

Performance is another area where WordPress gets criticised, often fairly.

HTTP Archive found that WordPress sat among the lower-ranked CMS platforms for mobile Core Web Vitals pass rates in 2025, at around 45%. But the same report also makes the more useful point: WordPress performance varies widely because of themes, plugins, page builders, third-party scripts, hosting and configuration. Implementation choices often matter more than the CMS name on its own.

That is exactly what we see in practice.

A bloated theme, too many tracking scripts, unoptimised images, heavy page builders and poor hosting will produce a slow WordPress site. But a well-architected WordPress build, using lean templates, sensible caching, image optimisation, disciplined JavaScript, good hosting and proper frontend engineering, can perform extremely well.

The CMS does not remove the need for performance expertise. It gives you the tools to apply it.

Another sign of platform health is whether people are still building for it.

They are.

The WordPress Plugins Team reviewed 12,713 plugins in 2025, a 40.6% increase compared with 2024. Plugin approvals also rose by 66.2%, and the review process became more intensive.

That does not mean every plugin is good. Many are not. But it does show the ecosystem is still alive, active and evolving.

For serious sites, the answer is not “use lots of plugins”. The answer is to use the right ones sparingly, write custom functionality where needed, and avoid outsourcing critical business logic to poorly maintained third-party code.

AI is already changing how websites are planned, written, built and maintained.

That is not a threat to WordPress. It is a change in workflow.

AI can help generate content drafts, structure research, create prototype layouts, assist developers, speed up testing and support content operations. It can reduce repetitive work. It can help teams move faster.

But AI does not replace strategy. It does not magically understand your business model. It does not define your customer journeys, validate your positioning, design your information architecture, check accessibility, secure your integrations, govern your data or make commercial trade-offs.

Even in the website-builder market, vendors are acknowledging the limits of prompt-only generation. TechRadar’s coverage of Wix Harmony noted that purely generated websites can end up as demos or lightweight minimum viable sites, with potential bugs, security gaps and scalability issues.

AI is useful. It is not a substitute for professional judgement.

WordPress remains a strong choice when a website needs to do more than exist.

It is particularly well suited when:

• content is central to marketing, sales or customer support
• editors need control without relying on developers for every change
• the site needs custom content types, reusable components or structured data
• SEO/GEO and long-term organic visibility matter
• accessibility and performance need to be actively managed
• the website needs to integrate with CRM, email, e-commerce, booking, membership or internal systems
• the business wants ownership of its platform, code and data
• the site needs to evolve over years, not just launch quickly

That is a very different brief from “we need a basic website by next week”.

There are also times when WordPress is not the best answer.

If the requirement is a very small, short-life website with no complex functionality, no serious content strategy, no integrations and no long-term roadmap, a hosted builder may be cheaper and faster.

If the business wants a standard e-commerce shop and is comfortable working within a tightly managed platform, Shopify may be the better fit.

If an organisation has a mature composable architecture and wants a fully headless content platform across many channels, a specialist headless CMS may be more appropriate.

The point is not that WordPress should win every comparison. It should not.

The point is that for many business-critical websites, WordPress still gives the best balance of editorial control, technical flexibility, cost efficiency and long-term ownership.

WordPress is declining at the edges of the market. That is true.

But those edges are mostly where websites are becoming more commoditised: simple pages, fast launches, template-driven sites and AI-assisted builds. For that work, lighter tools may be enough.

Business-critical websites are different. They need thinking before tooling. They need UX, user journeys, information architecture, accessibility, technical planning, security, performance and integration expertise. They need a platform that can support real business requirements, not just generate pages.

That is why WordPress remains one of the best choices for serious organisations. Not because it is the biggest CMS. Because, when it is planned properly, built properly and maintained properly, it gives businesses something they still need: control.