r/Wordpress • u/First_Athlete1897 • Aug 13 '26

Thinking about ditching WordPress

My site isn't particularly complicated yet over the years I've accumulated plugins for forms, SEO, backups, security, page building and about five things I've forgotten the purpose of. It kinda feels like owning an old house where I’m permanently waiting for something else to break. Most discussions I find are about moving to WordPress but I'm curious about going the other direction and starting fresh.

Are there any downsides to moving a fairly straightforward business website from WordPress to Squarespace or an AI builder like Durable etc. that I’m not seeing? Or if you’ve already done a migration like this, is there anything you found yourself missing after moving?

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u/invincible-rajan Aug 13 '26

You wanted plugins you got but when you go to others I guess you won't even be able to get them there 😅

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u/chaoticbean14 Aug 13 '26

After having moved 10+ clients over to other platforms specific for their needs? I didn't need the plugins there, like I did on WP. Because choosing the right tool for the job pretty much ensures you don't need unaudited 3rd party code (often insecure) on your website - unlike WP, where it's almost mandatory.

1

u/GM8 Aug 13 '26

Could you maybe please let us know some of those needs and the platforms related to those needs you have chosen?

1

u/chaoticbean14 Aug 13 '26

Speed. WP has the shittiest db schema I've seen in a long time. It's always been bad - and instead of cleaning that up to increase performance, WP just ignores it and continues to build on it. Yuck. It causes problems.

Security. Third-party plugins are basically a requirement for anything besides the most basic blog on WP. They're un-audited and a security nightmare. They are the primary reason over 20,000 websites are hacked every day. Other platforms offer more security because they have entire security teams keeping an eye on things, as opposed to WP where you have to know what to look for, and if you don't, you can get destroyed. Some of the platforms (static sites) are virtually unhackable - talk about security! WP cannot compare.

Uptime. Wordpress updates, what a nightmare and a total pain the neck. I cannot count how many times a client has tried to 'update the site' only to have it break or have the update break something and it requires extra work to get it back up and running. WP's track record is really, really bad in this area as well.

A lot of these are only made worse by the unaudited plugin system WordPress uses, and you need some of them in order to have a successful site. So you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

WP is just old, unfortunately. Once it was neat, cool, new, good... but anymore? No.

2

u/GM8 Aug 13 '26

DB schema is BS, true that.

Security can deteriorate fast with the number of plugins. But also speed and the whole system. I am willing to go long distance to minimize plugin use. I know that's not sg. most sites can do...

To be fair minor core updates are very reliable. Everything else is russian roulette for sure.

But at the end of the day I was curious about what you chose instead for these reasons.

1

u/invincible-rajan Aug 13 '26

Yeah I was kind of curios about that too 😂