Insight
Is WordPress dead?
Every few months someone declares WordPress finished, and this year they have had numbers to point at: its share of the web is falling. So should you move your site off it? For most businesses, no. Here is what is actually going on, and when leaving does make sense.
4 min read
The short answer
No. WordPress runs 39.5% of all websites, and 58.3% of every site whose content management system can be detected, according to W3Techs on 28 October 2026. That is more than every other content management system put together. WordPress 7.0 came out in May, with regular releases since. A platform that runs two in five websites and is still shipping major versions is not dead.
But it is shrinking
That part is true. W3Techs had WordPress on just over 43% of all websites at the end of 2025, and the fall has sped up this year, as Shopifreaks reported. Some of that share has gone to hosted builders such as Shopify, Wix and Squarespace, and a growing number of sites use no detectable content management system at all, which usually means custom code or a static site built with a tool like Astro.
For a lot of those sites, that is the right call. A five-page brochure that rarely changes does not need WordPress, and a hosted builder is a perfectly good home for it.
Why it still suits most business sites
The sites that stay on WordPress tend to be the ones doing real work for a business, and that is no accident.
- Your team can edit it. Marketing can change a page or publish a post without a developer, and a developer can extend the site without starting again.
- It can do almost anything. Online shops, bookings, members areas, trade portals and links to your CRM or stock system all run inside WordPress, so the site grows with the business instead of being replaced.
- You own it. WordPress is open source. Your site can move to any host and any developer, rather than living on one platform’s terms and prices.
- Help is easy to find. It is the most widely used platform on the web, so there is no shortage of people who know it, and you are never stuck with the one person who built it.
It is getting ready for AI, not being replaced by it
One of the louder arguments is that AI will make WordPress pointless. So far the opposite is happening. WordPress 6.9 added the Abilities API, a standard way for a site to describe what it can do, and the WordPress project’s MCP adapter lets AI assistants such as ChatGPT and Claude connect to a site through it. WordPress 7.0 then added an AI Client, so plugins can call AI providers from inside WordPress, as WebDevStudios explains.
In practice, it means you can ask your own AI assistant how your site is doing or what a page says, and get the answer from the site itself rather than a guess. Wrev clients already work this way: they connect ChatGPT, Claude or Grok to their site, ask it questions, and send requests to our developers from the same conversation.
Where the critics have a point
WordPress’s weak spot is everything that gets added to it. Patchstack counted 11,334 new security vulnerabilities in the WordPress world in 2025, 42% more than the year before, and 91% of them were in plugins. Almost half had no fix from the plugin’s developer by the time they were made public, and the most targeted ones were being exploited within hours. WordPress itself has needed several security releases this year too.
That is a reason not to leave a WordPress site alone, rather than a reason to leave WordPress. A site with fewer, well-chosen plugins, updates applied quickly, daily backups and someone watching it is a very different risk from one nobody has logged in to for a year.
When moving off it makes sense
There are good reasons to leave. If your site is a handful of pages that hardly ever change, a simpler platform may cost you less. If it has been neglected for years, with plugins stacked on an old theme, starting again can be quicker and safer than repairing it, whether that is in WordPress or something else.
A headline saying WordPress is dead is not one of them.
Where we stand
We are not neutral: Wrev takes on WordPress sites, hosts them and looks after them, with our developers making the changes. We chose WordPress because it is what most business sites that need regular work already run on, and because it can be looked after properly.
If your WordPress site is the one nobody dares log in to, see how we take it on, or book a demo and ask us anything.
Speak to a developer, not a salesperson.
Pick a time that suits you and bring whatever you want to ask.
