Is WordPress Still the Right Choice for Business Websites in 2026?

If you have been paying attention to tech news, you have seen the headlines. “WordPress Market Share Drops for the First Time.” “Wix Surges as WordPress Declines.” “Is WordPress Dying?” And if you are a business owner who just invested in a WordPress website, or is about to, those headlines are concerning.

Let’s separate the signal from the noise. After 12 years of building websites and enterprise e-commerce platforms, I have watched platforms rise and fall. The WordPress situation in 2026 is more nuanced than the headlines suggest, and the answer to “should I use WordPress?” depends entirely on what you need.

WordPress’s market share dipped from about 43.5% to roughly 42.7% of all websites in 2025, a decline of roughly 0.8 percentage points. Meanwhile, Wix’s revenue grew approximately 13%, Squarespace remained stable, and Shopify continued its e-commerce expansion.

Here is what those numbers mean and do not mean.

What they mean: The era of WordPress being the automatic default for every website is over. Alternatives have gotten genuinely good. Business owners now have real choices, and some are choosing platforms that are simpler to manage.

What they do not mean: WordPress is not “dying.” A platform that powers 42%+ of all websites on the internet has more momentum than any competitor by an enormous margin. For context, Wix powers roughly 3.4% and Squarespace about 2%. WordPress’s market share would need to decline at the current rate for over a decade before it even approached those numbers.

The decline is real, but it is a growth rate decline, not a collapse. Think of it like a dominant car manufacturer losing 1-2% market share to a rising competitor. Worth watching. Not worth panicking about.

The Plugin Ecosystem

Over 60,000 free plugins in the WordPress.org repository, plus thousands of premium plugins. Whatever you need your website to do, someone has probably built a plugin for it. Contact forms, e-commerce, booking systems, learning management, membership sites, forums, social media integration, email marketing, CRM connections – the list is endless.

This ecosystem is self-reinforcing. Because WordPress has the most users, developers build for WordPress first. Because WordPress has the most plugins, users choose WordPress. No other platform comes close to this breadth of functionality.

SEO Capabilities

This is where WordPress genuinely dominates, and for many businesses, this alone justifies the platform choice.

WordPress’s SEO plugin ecosystem (AIOSEO, Yoast, Rank Math) provides granular control over every factor that affects search rankings. Meta tags, schema markup, XML sitemaps, breadcrumbs, canonical URLs, social media previews, redirect management, internal linking suggestions, content analysis, keyword tracking – all configurable at the page level.

Wix and Squarespace have improved their SEO tools, and for basic needs they are now adequate. But “adequate” and “powerful” are different things. If organic search traffic is a meaningful revenue channel for your business, WordPress’s SEO capabilities give you an edge that compounds over time.

Full Ownership and Portability

Your WordPress website is yours. The code, the content, the database, the media files – all of it. You can move to a different hosting provider, hire a different developer, or take the entire site in-house. Nobody can change your terms of service, raise your prices, or discontinue a feature you depend on.

This is not a theoretical concern. When Squarespace acquired Google Domains in 2023, millions of domain owners were suddenly customers of a company they did not choose. When Wix changes its pricing tiers, existing customers adapt or pay more. With WordPress, your platform decisions are your own.

Visual Builders Closed the Usability Gap

The traditional argument against WordPress was complexity. “It’s too hard for non-technical people.” In 2020, that was partially true. In 2026, it is not.

Visual builders like Divi (which we use) and Elementor provide drag-and-drop editing that rivals Wix in intuitiveness. Our clients edit their own pages, add blog posts, rearrange layouts, and update content without writing a single line of code. The visual builder handles the frontend experience, while WordPress’s full power remains available underneath for when you need it.

WooCommerce for E-Commerce

WooCommerce powers roughly 36% of all online stores. It handles physical products, digital downloads, subscriptions, bookings, memberships, and complex B2B ordering. It supports virtually every payment gateway, shipping method, and tax configuration. For European businesses, plugins handle EU VAT, multi-currency, and cross-border compliance.

No other platform provides this level of e-commerce flexibility at this price point. WooCommerce itself is free. You pay for hosting, your theme, and whatever premium extensions you need.

Mature Multi-Language Support

European businesses frequently need their website in two or more languages. WordPress handles this through proven plugins: TranslatePress provides in-page visual translation, WPML offers comprehensive translation management, and Polylang provides a free baseline option. Each creates proper URL structures for each language version and integrates with SEO plugins so each language version is independently optimized.

This matters because roughly 72% of consumers spend most or all of their time on websites in their own language. For a Latvian business targeting both domestic and international clients, solid multi-language support is not a luxury.

An honest assessment requires discussing weaknesses too. I build with WordPress every day, and there are genuine issues that business owners should understand.

The Maintenance Burden

WordPress is software that runs on a server you control (or rent). That software needs updates. WordPress core releases updates every few weeks. Your theme might update monthly. Each of your plugins updates on its own schedule. These updates need to be applied, tested, and occasionally troubleshot when they break something.

For a developer, this is routine. For a business owner who just wants their website to work, it is an ongoing responsibility. You either learn to do it yourself (doable but time-consuming), hire a maintenance service (EUR 30-100/month), or accept the risk of running outdated software (not recommended).

Wix and Squarespace handle all of this automatically. You never think about updates because the platform manages everything. This is a genuine advantage for people who do not want to manage technology.

The Gutenberg/Block Editor Controversy

WordPress has been pushing its block editor (Gutenberg) as the future of content editing and, eventually, full site design. The community is deeply divided on this. Many developers and users prefer visual builders like Divi or the classic editor. The result is fragmentation: WordPress now has multiple competing editing paradigms, and choosing between them adds complexity.

For business owners, the practical impact is minimal if you are using a visual builder – you simply use the builder and largely ignore Gutenberg. But it does mean the WordPress world feels more fragmented and confusing than it used to be.

The Automattic/WP Engine Drama

In late 2024, a public dispute erupted between Matt Mullenweg (who leads both the WordPress open-source project and the commercial company Automattic) and WP Engine (one of the largest WordPress hosting providers). The details are complex, but the outcome was a period of genuine uncertainty about WordPress governance, plugin repository control, and the relationship between the open-source project and commercial interests.

The dispute remains unresolved, with litigation still ongoing as of early 2026, though its practical impact on most WordPress users has been limited. Still, the episode revealed uncomfortable truths about how much influence one person has over the WordPress ecosystem. For long-term strategic planning, governance matters.

DIY WordPress Can Be Problematic

WordPress is a tool, and like any tool, the result depends on who uses it. A WordPress site built by someone who knows what they are doing is fast, secure, and reliable. A WordPress site cobbled together from free themes and random plugins can be slow, vulnerable, and frustrating.

This is not a flaw in WordPress itself – it is a characteristic of flexible, open platforms. But it means the quality of your WordPress developer matters far more than the quality of your Wix template selection.

You plan to grow your web presence. If you are starting with a 3-page site today but know you will need a blog, an online store, a client portal, or multi-language support within the next 2-3 years, WordPress gives you room to grow without rebuilding.

SEO is a business priority. If organic search traffic is important to your revenue, WordPress’s SEO ecosystem gives you tools and control that other platforms cannot match.

You need e-commerce. WooCommerce provides SMB-appropriate e-commerce with enterprise-level flexibility. For European businesses with EU VAT requirements, multi-currency needs, and regional payment preferences, WooCommerce’s plugin ecosystem covers it.

You want to own your platform. If vendor lock-in concerns you, or if you want the freedom to switch service providers without rebuilding, WordPress is the obvious choice.

You are building a content-driven business. Blogs, publications, resource libraries, knowledge bases – WordPress was born for content and still handles it better than anything else.

I am not going to pretend WordPress is the right answer for everyone. There are situations where other platforms make more sense.

You need something simple, fast, and maintenance-free. If your business needs a clean 3-5 page website and you do not want to think about updates, security, or hosting, Wix or Squarespace will serve you well. The trade-off is less flexibility and vendor lock-in, but if you genuinely do not need WordPress’s power, why pay for the complexity?

You are in a visual/creative field. Squarespace’s templates are, on average, more visually polished than standard WordPress themes. If your website is primarily a visual portfolio (photography, architecture, interior design), Squarespace’s design quality might matter more than WordPress’s flexibility.

Enterprise e-commerce with massive catalogs. If you are running 100,000+ SKUs with complex B2B pricing, multi-warehouse inventory, and deep ERP integration, WooCommerce is likely not the right tool. That is Shopify Plus or SAP Commerce Cloud territory. Having spent years implementing SAP Commerce for enterprise clients, I can say with confidence that enterprise e-commerce has requirements that SMB platforms were not designed to handle.

App-like experiences. If what you need is really a web application (a SaaS product, a complex booking/scheduling system, a data-heavy dashboard), custom development with modern frameworks might serve you better than trying to bend WordPress into something it was not designed to be.

A brief note on why we specifically build with Divi, since it addresses several common WordPress concerns.

Divi is a visual builder that lets non-technical users edit their WordPress site visually – clicking on elements, dragging components, changing text and images inline. For our clients, the day-to-day experience of updating their Divi-built WordPress site feels very similar to editing a Wix or Squarespace site. They do not need to understand WordPress’s admin panel, navigate complex settings, or learn a new editor.

But underneath that accessible interface, they have a full WordPress installation. If they later need WooCommerce, a booking plugin, multi-language support, or a custom integration, it is available. They get the simplicity of a website builder today with the growth potential of WordPress for tomorrow.

This is exactly why all our WordPress packages are built on Divi. From the EUR 350 Essential Presence to the Premium Brand Experience, our clients get a website they can manage themselves while retaining the full power of WordPress.

Is WordPress still the right choice for business websites in 2026? For the majority of small and medium businesses, yes. Not because it is perfect, but because no other platform offers the same combination of ownership, flexibility, SEO power, and growth potential.

The key is not choosing WordPress by default – it is choosing WordPress deliberately, understanding both its strengths and its maintenance requirements, and investing in professional development so you get a properly built site rather than a fragile collection of random plugins.

WordPress’s market share declining from 43.5% to 42.7% is worth monitoring. But a platform that still powers over four out of every ten websites on the internet is not going anywhere. The real question is whether its strengths align with your business needs. For most SMBs looking to grow their online presence, they do.

If you are evaluating WordPress for your business, check our FAQ for answers to common questions, or browse our portfolio to see what WordPress looks like when it is done right.