WordPress is brilliant. But, and this is a big but, it’s not always the right tool for the job. And as someone who’s spent years building in WordPress, that’s not something I say lightly.
For a long time, it was my default answer to everything. Client needs a website? WordPress. Client needs a blog? WordPress. Client needs a complex multi-step pricing engine with role-based access and real-time data? …WordPress.
The thing is, WordPress is so good at what it does that it’s easy to convince yourself it can do everything. And technically, with enough plugins and enough optimism, you can get it to do almost anything. The question is whether you should.
Why WordPress gets a bad reputation it doesn’t deserve
Developers love to dunk on WordPress. It’s bloated, it’s legacy, it’s built on PHP, heaven forbid. But for a huge chunk of projects, it’s genuinely the right call. It’s mature, widely supported, and once it’s set up, your client can actually manage it themselves without ringing you every time they need to update a paragraph.
That last bit matters more than most developers give it credit for.
If a business needs a clean website, a CMS they can use without a manual, and something that a future developer can pick up without needing a tour of your bespoke architecture – WordPress is hard to beat.
So when does it stop making sense?
When the logic gets complex.
I’m talking dynamic pricing, multi-step workflows, highly interactive dashboards, serious third-party integrations. When you’re at that point, you’ve got two choices: bolt a load of plugins together and hope for the best, or build something that’s actually designed to do the job.
I’ve done the plugin approach. It works, right up until it doesn’t – and when it doesn’t, it tends to go wrong in spectacular fashion at the worst possible time. (Nothing like a support call that ends up with you working into the early hours!)
There’s also a fundamental difference between a business that needs a website and a business whose product is the software. WordPress is a CMS with app-like features bolted on. Sometimes you need it the other way around – a proper application with a content layer, not a content layer with application features duct-taped to it.
The bit clients don’t always want to hear
A lot of clients ask for WordPress by name. Not because they’ve weighed up their options, but because it’s the only thing they know to ask for. “We want a WordPress site” is often shorthand for “we want a website” – and those aren’t always the same thing.
Part of my job is asking the right questions early enough to figure out which one they actually need. Sometimes that conversation is straightforward. Sometimes it takes a bit of gentle pushing back. Either way, getting it right at the start saves everyone a lot of pain later.
Being a good developer isn’t about having a favourite technology. It’s about picking the one that actually fits the job, and being honest when that’s not the one the client walked in asking for.
Sometimes that’s WordPress. Sometimes it isn’t.
Josh Cox
I'm Josh — I build, host and look after WordPress sites (and increasingly fast Astro / Next.js builds) for Oxfordshire businesses, from Didcot, since 2016. I also tinker with a few products of my own on the side.
