I'm going to say something that might sound crazy coming from a web developer: I think WordPress is holding most small businesses back.
WordPress was my go-to — and every other developer I know felt the same way. It's what every tutorial taught. It's what every client expected. And it made sense — it was the fastest way to get a business online with a decent-looking site.
Then I started paying attention to what happened after launch.
The WordPress Tax
Here's what nobody tells you when you sign up for WordPress:
The Plugin Treadmill
The average WordPress site runs 20-30 plugins. Each one is a dependency you don't control. Each one needs updates. Each update can break something else. I've watched a single plugin update take down an entire site at 2 AM on a Saturday — and the business owner had no idea until Monday morning when a customer told them.
You're not building a website. You're assembling a Jenga tower of other people's code and hoping nobody pulls the wrong block.
The Security Nightmare
WordPress powers 43% of the web. That also makes it the #1 target for hackers. Outdated plugins, weak admin passwords, exposed login pages — the attack surface is massive. I've cleaned up hacked WordPress sites where the owner didn't even know they were compromised. Their site was quietly serving malware to visitors for weeks.
And the fix? More plugins. Security plugins. Firewall plugins. Backup plugins. Plugins to monitor your other plugins. It's absurd.
The Monthly Bleed
Let's talk about what WordPress actually costs a small business:
- Hosting: $15-50/month (and the cheap hosting is slow)
- Premium theme: $50-100/year
- Premium plugins: $100-300/year (forms, SEO, security, backups, caching)
- SSL certificate: sometimes extra
- Domain email: extra
- Maintenance: $50-150/month if you're smart enough to pay someone
You're looking at $500-2,000/year just to keep a basic small business website alive. And that's before you hire someone to actually fix things when they break.
What I Switched To
I made the switch to building everything with hand-coded HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, deployed on Netlify.
No WordPress. No database. No PHP. No plugins. No login page for hackers to target.
Here's what that looks like in practice:
Speed
A custom static site loads in under 1 second. There's no database query, no PHP processing, no plugin chain to execute. The server just hands the browser a file. Done. My clients consistently score 95+ on Google PageSpeed. Try getting that with WordPress and 25 plugins.
Security
No database means no SQL injection. No admin panel means no brute force attacks. No plugins means no vulnerabilities to exploit. The attack surface is essentially zero. The site is just files sitting on a CDN. There's nothing to hack.
Cost
Netlify hosting: free. SSL certificate: free. GitHub repository: free. Domain: $10-15/year (the client buys this themselves). That's it. No monthly hosting bills. No annual plugin renewals. No surprise charges.
I wrote about this in detail in my zero-dollar stack post — the entire infrastructure costs literally $0/month.
Ownership
This is the one nobody talks about. When I build a custom site for a client, they own every line of code. It's in their GitHub repository. If they want to hire a different developer tomorrow, they can. No proprietary themes. No locked-in page builders. No "export" that gives you a broken mess.
With WordPress, you own a pile of dependencies. With custom code, you own a website.
"But What About Content Editing?"
This is the first question I get. And it's fair — not every client wants to call their developer to change a phone number.
For clients who need to manage their own content, I set up Sanity CMS — a headless content management system that gives them a clean editing dashboard without any of the WordPress baggage. They can update text, swap images, add blog posts, all through a simple interface.
The difference? Sanity is just the content layer. It doesn't touch the frontend. It doesn't add 30 plugins. It doesn't slow anything down. The site is still static, still fast, still secure. The CMS just feeds it data.
"But WordPress Is Easier to Build"
For who? For the developer, maybe — if they're using a page builder and pre-made theme. But easier to build doesn't mean easier to maintain. And it definitely doesn't mean better for the client.
I'd rather spend an extra week building something clean that runs perfectly for years than spend three days assembling a WordPress site I know I'll be patching every month.
When WordPress Still Makes Sense
I'm not saying WordPress should never be used. If you need a massive e-commerce store with 10,000 products, WooCommerce is a legitimate option. If you have a team of content editors publishing 20 articles a day, WordPress's built-in workflow makes sense.
But for the average small business — a local service company, a restaurant, a consultant, a nonprofit — that needs a clean, fast, professional web presence? WordPress is overkill at best and a liability at worst.
The Results Speak
Since making this switch, here's what I've seen across my client projects:
- PageSpeed scores: Average 95+ (vs. 60-75 on WordPress)
- Monthly hosting cost: $0 (vs. $15-50)
- Security incidents: Zero. Ever.
- Plugin updates needed: Zero. There are no plugins.
- Client satisfaction: Higher — because the site just works
My clients don't call me at midnight because their site went down. They don't get emails from their hosting company about "suspicious activity." They don't pay $30/month for the privilege of owning a website that loads in 4 seconds.
My Take
WordPress was revolutionary in 2005. It democratized the web and gave millions of people a voice online. I respect what it did for the industry.
But it's 2026. The web has evolved. The tools have gotten better. And for most small businesses, there's a faster, cheaper, more secure way to be online.
I stopped using WordPress because my clients deserve better. They deserve sites that load instantly, cost nothing to host, and don't need babysitting. They deserve to actually own their website — not rent a fragile ecosystem of plugins and prayers.
If you're a small business owner paying $50/month to keep a WordPress site alive that scores a 62 on PageSpeed — we should talk.
Want to see what a custom-built site looks like? Check out my recent work or get in touch for a free consultation.