After Trying Modern Stacks For Years, I Still Choose WordPress

If you spend enough time on the internet, you’ll eventually come to the same conclusion:

Everybody hates WordPress.

Or at least, that’s what it feels like.

Open YouTube.

Open X.

Open Reddit.

Watch developers talk about modern web development.

You’ll hear the same things over and over again.

WordPress is old.

WordPress is slow.

WordPress is messy.

WordPress is dead.

And every time I hear those conversations, I have the same reaction.

I understand why they think that.

But after more than fifteen years building websites, platforms, and digital products, I still keep coming back to WordPress.

Not because I don’t know the alternatives.

Because I do.

I’ve spent years trying almost everything

During my career, I’ve worked with many different technologies and CMS platforms.

WordPress.

Drupal.

TYPO3.

Strapi.

Payload.

Headless architectures.

Custom frameworks.

Modern frontend stacks.

And honestly, I enjoy trying new technology.

I enjoy understanding how systems work.

I enjoy experimenting.

The problem is that developers and business owners often optimize for completely different things.

Developers optimize for themselves.

Businesses optimize for outcomes.

And after years of building projects for clients, agencies, and companies, I started noticing something uncomfortable.

The technically best solution was rarely the best business solution.

Developers and business owners speak different languages

Developers often ask questions like:

• Is the architecture clean?
• Is the framework modern?
• Is the stack scalable?
• Is the code elegant?
• Is this the latest technology?

Business owners ask different questions:

• How fast can we launch?
• How much does it cost?
• Can we maintain it?
• Can we hire people for it?
• Can we change it in five years?
• Will it help us make more money?

These are completely different conversations.

And over time, I realized that I had spent too much time thinking like a developer and not enough time thinking like a business owner.

I used to chase modern technology too

There was a period where I genuinely believed that newer technology automatically meant better technology.

Headless.

JAMstack.

Static site generators.

Modern CMS platforms.

API-first architectures.

Composable systems.

I built projects using many of these approaches.

And to be clear, I still think many of them are excellent technologies.

The problem is that excellent technology doesn’t automatically create excellent businesses.

In fact, many times I saw the opposite happen.

Projects became more complex.

Maintenance costs increased.

Development slowed down.

Clients became dependent on developers for every small change.

And the business itself didn’t improve.

The website was more modern.

The company wasn’t.

The biggest lesson I learned

One of the biggest lessons of my career is this:

Technology is not the product.

Technology is infrastructure.

Customers don’t buy React.

Customers don’t buy headless CMS architectures.

Customers don’t buy composable systems.

They buy outcomes.

They buy growth.

They buy simplicity.

They buy speed.

And once I started looking at technology through that lens, many of my previous assumptions started falling apart.

Why I keep choosing WordPress

Every time I explore new technologies, I eventually end up asking myself the same question:

If this was my own business, what would I choose?

And surprisingly often, my answer is still WordPress.

Not because WordPress is perfect.

It isn’t.

Not because WordPress is modern.

It isn’t always.

Not because WordPress has the best developer experience.

Sometimes it absolutely doesn’t.

I choose WordPress because it solves business problems better than almost anything else I’ve used.

WordPress optimizes for something developers often ignore

WordPress optimizes for leverage.

Think about what you get immediately:

• a content management system;
• user management;
• permissions;
• media management;
• SEO tools;
• plugins;
• themes;
• ecommerce;
• forms;
• APIs;
• publishing workflows;
• integrations;
• hosting options;
• millions of developers.

All of this exists before writing a single line of custom code.

As developers, we often underestimate how valuable that is.

Because we enjoy building things.

Businesses enjoy shipping things.

The real advantage is ownership

There is another reason why I keep choosing WordPress.

Ownership.

After spending years working with businesses, I developed a strong dislike for lock-in.

I don’t like platforms that force businesses into ecosystems they cannot leave.

I don’t like systems that require specialized teams to maintain.

I don’t like products that become impossible to migrate after a few years.

WordPress has many problems.

But ownership isn’t one of them.

You own your code.

You own your content.

You own your database.

You own your business.

And after watching many companies become trapped inside proprietary systems, I value that freedom much more than I used to.

This is why I’m building products around WordPress

Ironically, the more technologies I explored, the more convinced I became that WordPress still solves a very important problem.

Not because WordPress itself is perfect.

Because the process around WordPress is often terrible.

Every agency has its own process.

Every freelancer has their own stack.

Every project starts from scratch.

Everyone reinvents the wheel.

I’ve spent years living that reality.

I’ve experienced the stress.

The chaos.

The mental overhead.

The repeated decisions.

That’s why products like Themerson exist.

Not because I wanted to build another WordPress tool.

Because I wanted to remove the friction that I experienced myself.

The goal isn’t to replace WordPress.

The goal is to make building with WordPress feel easier, faster, and less exhausting.

Will WordPress survive?

People have been predicting the death of WordPress for as long as I can remember.

And maybe one day they’ll be right.

But I’ve learned to stop betting on what developers find exciting and start betting on what businesses actually need.

Businesses need:

• ownership;
• flexibility;
• speed;
• affordability;
• ecosystems;
• stability.

WordPress still delivers those things remarkably well.

Final thoughts

I understand why developers criticize WordPress.

Sometimes I criticize it too.

But after spending more than fifteen years building websites, platforms, and digital products, I’ve learned that there are two very different ways to evaluate technology.

You can evaluate it as a developer.

Or you can evaluate it as a business owner.

For most of my career, I thought like a developer.

Today, I mostly think like a business owner.

And that’s exactly why I still choose WordPress.