Why I’ll Keep Recommending WordPress (Even in the Age of AI)
This is just my opinion, and I reserve the right to change it in ten years’ time (haha). But after more than a decade of building websites and watching hundreds of people build businesses online, this is where I am.
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about ownership.
Not just in the legal sense, but in the broader sense of what it means to build something that is actually yours.
We live at a time when more and more of our work exists inside platforms we don’t control. Our audience lives on Instagram. Our newsletters live on Substack. Our courses sit on Kajabi. Our client relationships live inside a CRM. Increasingly, our businesses are spread across software owned by companies we’ve never met, operating under terms, pricing and policies that can change at any time.
I understand why we’ve ended up here. These platforms have transformed what’s possible for ordinary people. They make it possible for someone with very little technical knowledge to launch a business that, ten or fifteen years ago, would have required a developer, a designer, a mailing list service, a booking system and a shopping cart stitched together with determination and a fair amount of luck. They’ve lowered the barrier to entry for thousands of entrepreneurs, and I genuinely don’t think that’s a bad thing.
But I find myself asking…
At what point does convenience start costing us more than we realise?
More than a technical decision
People often ask me why I still recommend WordPress when there are now so many all-in-one platforms that promise to do everything from a single dashboard. It’s a reasonable question, and my answer has a little to do with technology, but, if I’m honest, it has much more to do with how I see the world.
I’ve always been slightly suspicious of centralised power. I value autonomy. I like understanding the systems I’m using, and I like knowing that if I ever need to leave, I can. That probably influences more areas of my life than I realise. It’s part of why I’ve chosen to homeschool my children. It’s part of how I approach business. And it’s certainly shaped the kinds of websites I build for clients.
I don’t enjoy the feeling of placing everything important into the hands of a single company and hoping they’ll continue making decisions that serve me. Maybe that’s the independent streak in me. Maybe it’s simply years of watching technology change. Either way, I’ve become convinced that where we choose to build our businesses is not just a technical decision. It’s a philosophical one.
“I’ve become convinced that where we choose to build our businesses is not just a technical decision. It’s a philosophical one.”
One of the things I find fascinating about the current wave of all-in-one platforms is how little we talk about what we’re giving up in exchange for convenience. We talk endlessly about how easy they are to use, how quickly you can launch, how many features they include and how seamlessly everything works together. We don’t spend nearly as much time talking about what happens if you want to leave, if the pricing changes dramatically, if the company closes its doors, or if your circumstances change and you can no longer afford to stay.
Those aren’t hypothetical questions to me.
The lesson I never forgot
A few years ago, one of my clients had built her memberships and online courses on a platform. Then, with no warning, the company shut down. The servers disappeared, the platform disappeared, and with it went years of work. Her courses, resources and member content were gone because she had trusted that the platform would always be there. She hadn’t kept independent copies because, like most of us, she assumed someone else was looking after that part.
Watching that unfold reinforced something I’d already been thinking for years.
If your entire business exists on infrastructure you don’t own or control, then a piece of your future is resting on decisions you’ll never get to make.
Ironically, that same client eventually moved onto another all-in-one platform. I completely understood why. These systems really are easier in many ways. They remove so much of the technical complexity that WordPress users often have to think about.
But I remember wondering whether we’d learnt the lesson.
A question I hadn’t considered
It’s not only platform closures that make me think this way.
More recently, an acquaintance passed away, leaving behind an online education business hosted on Kajabi. Suddenly her husband wasn’t simply grieving his wife. He was also responsible for keeping her business alive and making sure students who had paid for lifetime access could continue accessing the courses they’d purchased. That meant continuing to pay a significant monthly subscription while trying to work out the future of the business. It struck me how quickly software subscriptions can become obligations, and how little we think about those obligations while everything is going well.
That experience introduced another question I hadn’t considered deeply before.
What happens to our digital businesses after we’re gone?
Not only after death, either. What happens if we’re seriously ill, if we experience financial hardship, if we need to step away for six months, or if life simply doesn’t unfold according to plan?
We spend so much time talking about scaling businesses that we rarely think about making them resilient.
Why I keep coming back to WordPress
This is where I find myself returning to WordPress.
Not because I think it’s perfect. It isn’t. Anyone who has used WordPress for long enough knows it requires maintenance, backups and occasional troubleshooting. There is more responsibility involved. But responsibility and ownership have always travelled together. I’ve never really believed you can have one without the other.
What I love about WordPress is that it was built on a fundamentally different philosophy. It’s open source. No single company owns it. Thousands of developers contribute to it. Millions of websites run on it, from tiny personal blogs to some of the largest publications, universities and organisations in the world. It belongs to everyone and no one. That means no single company can decide to sell it, shut it down or fundamentally change the rules overnight.
If one hosting company disappears tomorrow, your website doesn’t disappear with it. You simply move it somewhere else. If one developer stops maintaining a plugin, there are usually alternatives. You’re participating in an ecosystem rather than renting space inside someone else’s product.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve grown to admire WordPress so much over the years. It doesn’t try to lock you in. It gives you options.
Want to add a booking system? You can. Sell products? There’s WooCommerce. Build an online course? There are multiple mature solutions. Need multilingual support, advanced SEO, memberships, community forums or custom functionality? Someone has probably already solved that problem. WordPress doesn’t try to be everything itself. Instead, it gives you the freedom to build the website your business actually needs, rather than forcing your business to fit someone else’s vision of what a website should be.
Over the last two decades, WordPress has outlived dozens of companies that once promised to replace it. While platforms have come and gone, WordPress has continued evolving because it isn’t dependent on the success of a single business. That’s one of the hidden strengths of open-source software. Its future doesn’t rest in one boardroom.
I’ve built my own business on WordPress. I’ve watched clients build businesses that have supported their families. I’ve seen ideas grow into full-time incomes, authors publish books, coaches reach thousands of students and small businesses become sustainable. After all these years, I’ve developed an enormous respect for the platform.
Owning your own land
Owning your website is a bit like owning your own piece of land.
There is more work involved than renting a beautifully managed apartment. The grass still needs cutting. Things need fixing. You have to take responsibility for maintenance. But you also have the freedom to renovate, expand, change direction or even move house entirely without asking someone else’s permission.
The land is yours.
Many of today’s all-in-one platforms feel more like living in a luxury estate. Everything is beautifully maintained, the gardens are immaculate and someone else worries about the plumbing. It’s comfortable. But there are rules, there are fees, and you’re always aware that you’re living on someone else’s property. If the owner changes the terms, there’s very little you can do about it.
AI has only strengthened my conviction
Perhaps that’s why the rise of AI has strengthened my conviction rather than weakened it.
AI is making it easier than ever to create websites, write copy, build funnels and automate parts of our businesses. Those are extraordinary tools, and I use many of them myself. But they also encourage us to place even more of our businesses inside a handful of increasingly powerful platforms.
Ironically, as creating websites becomes easier, deciding where those websites live becomes even more important.
As more people build in the same places, I find myself thinking that owning a genuine home on the internet becomes more valuable, not less.
For me, a website has never just been somewhere to display information. It’s where your ideas live. It’s where years of writing accumulate. It’s where search engines index your thinking. It’s where articles continue helping people long after social posts have disappeared into the feed. It’s where your work develops a history. It’s where people come to understand who you are, away from algorithms, trending audio and constantly changing social platforms.
I don’t want that part of my business to exist only because another company allows it to.
More than websites
Maybe this all sounds a little philosophical for an article about websites.
That’s okay.
The older I get, the more I realise that the tools we choose are rarely just tools. They reflect our values. They shape the way we work, the risks we’re willing to accept, and the kinds of businesses we’re building.
“The older I get, the more I realise that the tools we choose are rarely just tools. They reflect our values.”
For some people, an all-in-one platform will be exactly the right choice. I’m not arguing that everyone should make the same decision I have. But I do think it’s worth making that decision with your eyes open. Understand what you’re paying for. Understand what you don’t own. Think about your exit strategy before you need one. Keep copies of your work. Remember that your business is one of the most valuable things you’ll ever build.
As for me, I’ll keep recommending WordPress.
Technology has always changed, and it will continue changing. New platforms will emerge. AI will reshape how we work. None of that worries me very much.
What I hope never changes is the importance of owning the place where your work lives.
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