Is WordPress still a good choice for a website builder in 2024?

I know that when it comes to building websites, the first technology that comes to everyone’s mind is WordPress. When you think about recognizability, WordPress is like Adidas; everyone knows it. Anyone who has ever wanted to build a website has considered WordPress at some point. However, being popular does not mean being the best fit for all, especially nowadays, where every business and its clients have different needs.

I dedicate this blog post to Marketers who are fighting each day for their company's online visibility, their website’s performance, SEO, security, and the core vitals, and to all of you who want to scale and futureproof your business's online presence. In this article, I will show you why modern websites and composable architecture have gained so much attention and why you should be aware of it.

Monolithic vs. Composable Infrastructure: What does WordPress offer, and what are the reasons why you should or should not use it?

Let's start with a short review of Monolithic vs Composable infrastructure.

Monolithic is the original approach to software architecture and development. In this model, all the application components are tightly coupled into a single unit and even use the same database. It means that all the functionalities, i.e., business logic, payments, search, or user interface, are packed together in a single place. This was the only model available for years, so it’s still the most widespread and popular. This is why so many agencies, freelance designers, and developers working with Monoliths are on the market. It has been their standard for years; they are skilled within selected platforms and unwilling to learn new skills and tools.

The best example of this architecture model in website development is WordPress itself. WordPress is the most popular open-source platform on the market, and based on statistics from W3Techs from 2023, over 43% of all websites are powered by WordPress. WordPress has been around for the past two decades. It has evolved from a blogging platform to the market's most popular, monolithic Content Management System (CMS). It is the best website builder for some WordPress users, but it is not ideal for everyone.

On the other hand, Composable Infrastructure in website development is fresh and getting loads of attention. It is a NextGen approach to building apps and websites that is slowly becoming a new industry standard. According to GlobeNewswire, “The Composable Infrastructure Market size is expected to grow from USD 4.79 billion in 2023 to USD 11.33 billion by 2028, at a CAGR of 18.79% during the forecast period (2023-2028).” This happens purely because Composable Solutions creates value for businesses like no other! Regarding web development, we can talk about fantastic Customer Experience, great flexibility, customizations, and SEO support; it is considered super safe. If that’s not enough, try to imagine that it can also be easily integrated with a broader ecosystem of apps in your company without the need to spend thousands of dollars and hours on writing custom integrations.

The main idea behind the Composable Infrastructure is that the software is built from components, where each element is quickly broken down into modules. Composable Architecture supports building complex applications rapidly and efficiently, as the developer can reuse and reassemble existing modules. With a pinch of creativity and solid engineering skills, developers can build, test, and deploy new solutions quickly, allowing the Marketing Team to test and experiment with lightning speed. This is possible thanks to API-based connections between the modules, offering security, flexibility, customization, and the opportunity to build an ecosystem that will be your engine to drive growth within the company.

Let’s use an analogy to make it a bit easier to understand, and since we all know a bit about cooking, I will use a cooking metaphor here. The monolith is a pre-packed meal where all the ingredients are combined and cooked in one dish. You get everything you need in one container, but you cannot customize or modify the dish to suit your taste, balance flavors, or match it to your dietary requirements. If you want to change any part of the meal, you must redo the entire dish from scratch. On the other hand, composable architecture is like a DIY meal kit. You receive all the individual ingredients packed separately and instructions on assembling them into a meal. This allows you to mix and match ingredients, adjust portions, and easily accommodate dietary preferences. If you want to change part of the meal, you can swap out ingredients or adjust the recipe accordingly without starting from scratch. To transfer this analogy into website building - while monolithic can be convenient and liked thanks to its simplicity, the composable architecture provides more flexibility and scalability, crucial in current unstable times, evolving trends and technologies, and changing needs of developing and growing businesses.

Check the diagram below, which compares a monolith with a composite architecture and microservices.

Review of Pros and Cons of WordPress in 2024

Pros of using WordPress:

• The simplicity of development: This benefit is purely development-focused. It does not provide business value for marketers, users, or clients. The app and its architectural setting are simple, so it's convenient for even an unskilled WordPress developer to deliver value. Therefore, WordPress offers simplicity in development, debugging, testing, deployment, and further application evolution.
• The simplicity of customization: You need to take care of it once, so it’s simple, right? Only once in the lifespan of your website will you have to deal with issues related to security, logging, exception handling, monitoring, etc. But it’s good and bad at the same time. Once you decide, you cannot change it in the future, and the capabilities of the architecture and functionalities of WordPress limit your customization.
• Low cost in the early days: All the code is in one place, one deployment unit. There is no hidden overhead or additional development costs. The problem starts to appear when the companies become successful, and the growth of the application becomes very expensive. At the start, many believe that WordPress is free.

When the threshold is reached, the monolithic web application based on WordPress starts generating higher and higher bills. At the same time, other issues begin to show up, causing even more trouble to the marketing department and the company.

Cons of WordPress and its Monolithic Architecture:

• Poor performance of the website: WordPress websites, which have achieved success, often need more Page Speed and Core Web Vitals. This affects the website by decreasing its visibility in popular search engines, reducing its SERP ranking, and poor WordPress SEO. Additionally, too many plugins, outdated features, poorly coded themes, or unoptimized images are the reason for the poor performance, which puts your company at risk of losing possible visitors and customers. Unfortunately, little can be done here, even when you decide to invest in detailed optimization. This is where you start paying the price of one big app based on a single server and a database.
• Trouble with maintenance: WordPress plugins are used extensively, as they are a way to personalize a feature. A plugin is a small piece of code that performs a specific function on your website, giving you some personalization. Each plugin must be installed and updated regularly, resulting in endless support and dependence on a WordPress development agency. Every plugin makes the website heavier and, therefore, slower. Too many or poorly coded plugins can lead to conflicts, security vulnerabilities, or performance issues. If one plugin has a bug or stops working, it could prevent your entire website from working. As a result, you provide your users with the worst possible customer experience, and some of them decide to leave you. So, you must remember that having many plugins available can be tricky at the end of the day.
• Security issues: We have already mentioned that the whole codebase is located on a single server within the monolithic architecture. It means all your files, data, and customer information are kept in a single place. So, breaking into a single database creates a significant opportunity for hackers. It's important to understand that WordPress security is OK, but using the extensive amount of free plugins and free WordPress themes creates vulnerabilities. The same applies to keeping the WordPress versions up to date. Bloomberg reported that “ransomware attacks against industrial organizations increased 87% in 2022.” So, more and more bots are sniffing around the website and trying to automatize the attacks. Even one of our early days clients, the CTO of Veronym, has mentioned it in our case study:

We felt like we don't know this platform inside-out, we experienced some
performance issues and last, but not least we were aware of the fact that
WordPress is probably most vulnerable web platform and therefore most targeted
by exploits.

• Lack of flexibility: WordPress gives you some degree of freedom and choice regarding design. There are many available themes and plugins to help you make your website more personalized and customizable. However, working with templates has rough boundaries, and you are locked within the chosen template. Tweaking the templates takes time and work that requires developers' help. So bear in mind that it will be challenging to personalize the design occasionally, while it will only be possible on others. WordPress is okay when starting your business when you don’t have specific requirements or business logic. It is a great fit when shipping the first website. But the more mature your company is, the more you know your industry, your ICP, and their needs. This is when WordPress becomes insufficient because you cannot offer customizations to your client, and you are locked within the WordPress stack.
• Poor scalability: As your business grows, you experience more traffic and more interest. Your job is to optimize your website for the best Customer Experience, which should help you achieve the goals and KPIs, introducing solid ROI and some applause within the company. The more you grow, the more the website is changing along. However, while dependent on WordPress, you most likely will reach the wall, and you won't be able to break it and move forward. Even with professional help, which will be expensive, you most likely won’t be able to add new functionalities or content structures. The limited capabilities of the tech stack used for your website will limit the marketing team's possibilities. And sooner or later, you will be out on the market, looking for new technologies and alternatives to support your further growth. You will ask questions on how to keep flexibility and scalability and future-proof the website.

Reasons why you should use Modern Website Development instead of WordPress website builder:

Overall, the decision to leave WordPress is often influenced by a combination of factors, including ease of use, performance, security, cost, business requirements, implemented strategies, and the continuously evolving clients' needs. So what is a Composable Architecture, and what are its main pros?

Pros of decoupled architecture and Modern Website Development:

• Flexibility and Customization: Composable architecture allows for greater flexibility and scalability than monolithic systems like WordPress. Developers can mix and match different services, APIs, and components to create tailored solutions for specific use cases. You are deciding on how the website should look and feel, how the business logic should work, how the data should be modeled within the CMS, what the best search or payment provider is, or what authentication you want to include on your platform. You are in complete charge of what your customers are experiencing and how they flow through your website.
• Microservices & Scalability: Composable architecture often involves microservices, where individual components handle specific functions or tasks. Breaking down applications into small, modular services allows developers to deploy updates quickly and easily without affecting the entire application. This modular approach enables more manageable maintenance and updates, directly impacting the scaling of the application and your operations.
• Reduced Costs: Composable software architecture can lead to significant cost savings for businesses. Developers can reuse code across different applications by building applications from small, modular services, reducing development time and costs. This also allows you to remove the functionalities you are not using, therefore not paying for them. And extra savings are always something desired, right? One of our clients, the Website Manager at Avenues, has confirmed it in a published case study:

For us, the benefits (of Jamstack) are straightforward. Cost is an obvious win
as well as the ease of implementing enhancements and inherent security improvements.

Why do ambitious and innovative companies want to build the website of their dreams?

We live in a digital era where AI, automation, and optimization are our daily lives. At the same time, we are at a sharp turn, midway through an economic crisis, where everything we experience is also undergoing digital transformation. Successful and ambitious companies drive business change, expressing high digital maturity and a desire for innovation. Industry leaders are more aware than ever that understanding and using data and technology are their leverage to stay in the game and to be able to change it. To do so, they must immerse data, which is simple since we are all generating data and facing multiple data points in large volumes daily. Those innovative companies are testing and learning how to use those data and how to make the most of it. All that is to offer better customer experience daily, build stronger relationships with their clients, promote loyalty, increase user engagement, automate and optimize processes, and strive for operational excellence.

That is precisely why they turn their backs away from the slow, single-source, monolithic monsters like WordPress or Magento. Building a modern website is just a piece of the whole composable puzzle. Still, all the pieces must fit into the same framework to work together seamlessly and support your company’s day-to-day operations. Therefore, to make a difference, Companies start building fully composable ecosystems of modules and microservices that speak to each other via API. These ecosystems are usually hosted in the Cloud, can connect multilanguage websites with eCommerce apps, and are further integrated with ERPs, PIMs, DAMs, CRMs, or Loyalty Platforms. This is a critical element of building Sales and Marketing of the future in modern and successful companies that care about their Clients.

Why is there still so much interest in WordPress? Is it good to use WordPress in 2024?

WordPress is still relevant in 2024 and will stay relevant for years ahead, but only for some website owners and companies. It is a good, low-cost solution for beginners and small businesses at first. At the very start, WordPress offers you free hosting services, free themes, and free plugins. It is a good choice for young business owners to create a website. It can cover all the needs of a young company, it provides you with an all-in-one solution, it has a big community of freelancers, it’s inexpensive (at first), it has hundreds of themes available, making WordPress design easy (at first), and it does not ask too many questions - you don’t need to have specifics about your business logic, your CMS data model, etc. In the early days of your business, you should consider WordPress or a low-code alternative like Webflow and focus on your business and market fit. Once you have solid traffic and proven that your business is profitable, further optimizations will help you scale the sales and operations. This will be the moment to start analyzing alternatives and modern website development.

Is the Modern Website Development and headless Content Management System (CMS) the right choice for my company?

At this point, I hope you can answer this question yourself. But if you are still unsure, review the questions below. If you answer “Yes” to more than three of them, then it’s a sign that we should talk about WordPress alternatives for your business :)

In case you don’t want to talk to anyone, you can dive deeper into our work and see that the Composable Architecture is the only approach that will lead your company’s online presence to stable growth, offering endless possibilities to improve and grow your services while guaranteeing top Customer Experience to your users!

At Bejamas, since day one, we have been loyal fans and preachers of JAMstack, Composable Architecture, and Headless CMS. Because our business has emerged around the JAM Stack, which has now evolved into Modern Website Development, a part of the Composable Architecture movement, we are the true experts in the field. We have proven our skills over the years, and working for brands like Alpro, Costa Coffee, Dr Smile, and SumUp makes it easy to call ourselves the Top Geeks of Modern Website Development on the market!

That’s all, folks!

T.