Should I get a WordPress website?

OK, I'm going to ruffle a few feathers with this one.

First, let me lay out a few truths. I'm not a WordPress developer. I write software that is used to create websites and web applications, what's known in the industry as a full stack developer. So I'm not here to sell you WordPress, but I'm not here to trash it either.

You may be interested to know that around 40% of all websites on the internet run on WordPress. That's quite staggering considering the other options out there, and there is good reason for it. It's free to get started, it's been around since 2003, and almost every web agency and hosting company knows how to work with it.

So what is WordPress? Think of it as an engine. Technically, it's built on a wonderful scripting language called PHP, with a database underneath that holds all your text and images. On top of that you choose a theme, which is how your site looks, and plugins, which bolt on extra features like a contact form or a booking calendar. Complicated? Yes it is. It's a long way from the simple pages the web was built on, and it's not how web development fundamentals are taught either.

It's also worth knowing that a lot of people who call themselves WordPress developers are really designers. That's not a criticism. Good design matters, and they can make a site look lovely by picking a theme and arranging it in a page builder. But putting a site together isn't the same as understanding what's going on underneath it, and the difference tends to show when something breaks or when you want to move. I wrote more about the difference between a designer and a developer here.

The internet is a very different beast from what it was 20 years ago. Back then it was mostly a source of information, and WordPress leant into this well, as it started out as a blogging platform to inform people. Nowadays the internet is a responsive and interactive place. Not only does it inform us, we can enter data into it and receive results based on that data. What I mean by that is we can now shop, bank, game and use social media all from behind our devices. WordPress was never designed for the latter, but nonetheless, with several workarounds (you may be familiar with the term WordPress plugins), you can achieve some results.

Free gets you in the door, but here's the catch: the work lands on you. A lot of people sign up for free WordPress, pick a template, fill in half of it, leave the stock photos in and never touch it again. On the free plan you also get an address like yourbusiness.wordpress.com and WordPress's own adverts on your site. It ends up looking like exactly what it is. And your customers judge your business by your website, so a tired DIY site can do you more harm than no site at all.

Then there's the upkeep. WordPress itself, your theme and every plugin you've added all release updates, and they all need applying. Skip them and you leave security holes open. Most WordPress security problems come from plugins rather than WordPress itself, and every plugin is someone else's code running on your site. Apply the updates and every so often one clashes with another and something on your site breaks. Someone has to keep on top of it, and if that someone is you, that's time you're not spending on your business.

Here's the question nobody asks when they set up a WordPress site: what happens if I want to leave?

Say a few years down the line WordPress isn't working for you. It's slow, the updates keep breaking things, or you've simply outgrown it. But you like how your site looks and you want to keep it. This is where it gets awkward. WordPress will let you export your words, but your design is built to work inside WordPress and nowhere else. It can't be picked up and moved. It has to be rebuilt from scratch.

If your site was made with a page builder like Elementor or Divi, it gets messier still, because your text is tangled up with the builder's own code. Switch the builder off and your pages fill up with gibberish. The extras stay behind too: your contact form, your booking calendar, the descriptions you wrote for Google. All of those live inside plugins. And if your page addresses change during the move and nobody sets up redirects, Google keeps sending people to pages that no longer exist, and the rankings you've built up start to slip.

For what it's worth, Wix and Squarespace are even worse on this front. There you can't take your design with you at all.

So should you get a WordPress website? There are cases where it's the right choice. If your business is built around publishing lots of content, articles, news, recipes, a blog that several people write for, WordPress is still very good at that. And if you already have someone who looks after your WordPress site properly, keeping it updated, backed up and secure, there's no reason to rip it out.

But if you're a small business that needs a professional site that looks good on a phone, loads quickly, tells people what you do and lets them get in touch, WordPress is often more machinery than you need.

And if you've got bigger plans, it can end up being the wrong machinery. Say down the line you want to sell online, take bookings, or let customers log in, fill in forms and save their details. On WordPress each of those is another plugin, from another developer, bolted onto a system that started life as a blog, and they all have to get along with each other. It can be done, and plenty of shops run on WooCommerce, but every new feature adds to the pile you have to keep updated. Once customer details are involved, keeping that pile secure is your responsibility too. Built properly from the start, a site can grow with your business, with each new feature designed to fit with the rest rather than bolted on.

That's my honest take. Whatever you go with, ask whoever is building your site three things. What is it built on? Who is going to look after it? And can I take it with me if I leave? The answer to that last one tells you more than anything else.

Andrew Watts, web developer based in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France.