TL;DR
- People leave WordPress mainly over plugin security upkeep, uneven mobile performance, and legal uncertainty around WordPress.org governance.
- WordPress still powers 40.2% of all websites (W3Techs, 29 September 2026). Growth has flattened; it has not collapsed.
- Patchstack counted 11,334 new ecosystem vulnerabilities in 2025, and heavily targeted flaws are attacked within about five hours.
- Only 45% of WordPress mobile sites pass Core Web Vitals, but configuration, not WordPress core, drives the gap.
- For most sites, fixing maintenance beats migrating. A white-label WordPress team takes that load off agencies.
People leave WordPress mainly because running it safely and quickly has become costly, not because the software stopped working. Plugin vulnerabilities keep rising, mobile performance trails hosted builders, and the WP Engine dispute added governance doubt. Even so, WordPress still runs 40.2% of all websites, so the real pattern is selective migration, not an exodus.
Is WordPress actually losing users?
Only slowly, and mostly at the margin. W3Techs reports WordPress on 40.2% of all websites and 58.7% of sites with a known CMS as of 29 September 2026. The 2025 Web Almanac by HTTP Archive found WordPress's share slipped by less than one percentage point from its 2024 peak. It reads that as market saturation, not a single rival taking share. Small gains are spread across Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace instead.
Is security the main reason people leave WordPress?
For many site owners it is a leading driver, because the risk sits mostly in third-party plugins and themes, not WordPress core. Patchstack recorded 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, a 42% increase over 2024. Worse, 46% had no developer fix at the time of public disclosure.
Speed compounds the problem. Patchstack measured a weighted median of five hours to first mass exploitation for the most heavily targeted vulnerabilities. Its own conclusion is that routine plugin updates, applied on a weekly schedule, are no longer a sufficient defence.
Do hosting companies protect WordPress sites from these attacks?
Not reliably. In a 2025 pentest of popular hosts, Patchstack found only 26% of vulnerability attacks were blocked by the hosts' standard defences. Generic firewalls miss WordPress-specific flaws such as broken access control, which looks like normal authenticated traffic. Owners who assumed hosting covered security are exposed, and that is a fair reason to weigh a hosted builder.
Is WordPress slower than Wix and Squarespace?
On average, yes. On a well-built site, no. The 2025 Web Almanac shows 45% of WordPress mobile sites passing Core Web Vitals, against 74% for Wix. The same chapter states that WordPress performance variance is driven more by configuration than by core limitations. Heavy page builders, unoptimized images, and stacked plugins create the gap. The fix is engineering discipline, not automatically a new CMS.
Did the WP Engine dispute push people away?
It added uncertainty, but the effect cannot be isolated. Automattic and WP Engine remain in federal litigation over WordPress.org access and trademarks. A mixed September 2026 ruling kept WP Engine's antitrust claims and Automattic's trademark counterclaims alive. For agencies, the concern is building client sites on a platform whose plugin repository access can become a legal dispute. No dataset separates this factor from security and performance, so treat it as a risk, not a proven cause.
Should you leave WordPress or fix it?
Fix it first in most cases. Leaving makes sense when a site needs almost no plugins or custom functionality. Staying makes sense when it depends on WooCommerce, memberships, or custom integrations. Here are the four realistic paths.
- Stay and maintain properly. Best for content-heavy, plugin-dependent, or WooCommerce sites. Requires staged updates, monitoring, and a performance audit cycle. Lowest migration risk.
- Move to a hosted builder (Wix, Squarespace, Shopify). Best for small brochure sites and simple catalogs. Gains a managed environment and, on average, better Core Web Vitals. Trades away extensibility and accepts vendor lock-in and recurring platform fees.
- Move to a headless or custom stack. Best for high-traffic sites and web applications. Removes the plugin attack surface but raises build cost and permanent developer dependence.
- Keep WordPress and outsource it to a white-label team. Best for agencies and businesses without in-house capacity. Keeps the ecosystem, moves patching and performance work to specialists. Requires a vetted partner and clear scope.
How does white-label WordPress development reduce the reasons people leave?
It moves patching, performance tuning, and plugin audits to a dedicated team, so an agency stops carrying that load itself. Optiwebopz manages 120+ client sites, with 11+ years of WordPress and WooCommerce experience, including a network of roughly 124 dental clinic websites for Teraleads.
When flaws are exploited within hours, a white-label partner should cover four things:
- Continuous vulnerability monitoring
- Staged plugin updates
- Application-level protection
- A per-site performance budget
Ask for these in writing before signing.
FAQ
Is WordPress dying in 2026?
No. W3Techs shows WordPress on 40.2% of all websites and 58.7% of CMS-driven sites as of 29 September 2026. Growth has slowed and some owners move to hosted builders, but WordPress is still the largest CMS by a wide margin. The trend is saturation and selective migration, not decline toward irrelevance.
Why are agencies moving clients off WordPress?
The main pressures are plugin security upkeep, inconsistent mobile performance, and the unbilled time spent on updates and emergency fixes. Agencies that lack a maintenance process feel these costs most. Agencies that hand maintenance to a white-label team can keep WordPress while removing the operational drag that drives migrations.
Is WordPress still safe to use?
Yes, if it is maintained. Patchstack reported only a handful of low-priority core vulnerabilities in 2025, while plugins carried most of the risk. Safety depends on limiting plugins, patching within hours, and using application-level protection, because only 26% of attacks were blocked by hosts' standard defences.
What is the best alternative to WordPress?
It depends on the site. Wix or Squarespace suit small brochure sites, Shopify suits simple stores, and a headless stack suits high-traffic applications. None replaces WordPress's plugin ecosystem, so complex sites with WooCommerce, memberships, or custom integrations usually stay on WordPress and improve their maintenance instead.
Is it expensive to migrate off WordPress?
It can be. Cost depends on content volume, plugin functionality, redirect mapping, and SEO risk. A brochure site can move in days. A WooCommerce or membership site needs its functionality rebuilt and every URL redirected. Weigh that against the cost of fixing the security and performance problems that triggered the move.
Can I outsource WordPress maintenance to a white-label team?
Yes. A white-label team handles updates, monitoring, performance tuning, and fixes under your agency's brand, so your clients never see a third party. Confirm the scope in writing: response time for critical vulnerabilities, staging process, backup and rollback policy, and reporting.