Key Takeaways:

  • WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix all produce slow, clunky websites that score poorly on PageSpeed Insights and cost you ad spend.
  • WordPress needs dozens of plugins just to function, and updating any of them can break your site.
  • Most website developers still use WordPress because it's all they know. They haven't adapted.
  • Custom-built static sites are faster, cheaper, and more secure.
  • AI tools now let you build and update a static site in minutes, with full SEO baked in from day one.

The Problem with WordPress in 2026

For website owners, builders, and site visitors alike: it's clunky, slow, and janky as hell.

You need 53 plugins installed just to get basic functions of a website. Half of them will need to be updated within a month, and going through with any of the updates has a high chance of breaking your website. Oh and you need to pay a monthly subscription to most of these plugins to get any actual use out of them.

Then your 54th plugin needs to be a WordPress performance booster or else your whole setup is literally unusable.

Plus all the notifications splattered around the admin dashboard for each plugin? It's an absolute mess.

Not to mention THEMES. Updating your theme has a 50-50 chance to break your website completely in my experience.

Unfortunately WordPress powers about 40% of the web. That means 40% of the internet is built on a pile of shit. Pardon my french.

Meme: you reaching for running a business online, but WordPress grabs you first

WordPress vs. Squarespace vs. Wix

They all suck.

Throughout my entire career building or maintaining websites I have never seen a WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace website achieve high scores via PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix — platforms that evaluate website loading speeds and overall experience. Lower grades means users are more likely to click off your website. Bad grades also cost you more when running cost-per-click ads. Like Google Search Ads for example.

Google PageSpeed Insights showing a WordPress site scoring 52 out of 100 on performance
wordpress site — pagespeed score 52. anything below 90 is bad.
GTmetrix grading a WordPress site with a C grade, 73% performance and 84% structure
same site on GTmetrix — C grade.

The Far Better Alternative

Custom built static websites. That's what you need for your business.

I recently moved from my Squarespace site (still live at ohms.live) to a self-hosted custom built static HTML website (this site you're on now). Which means the entire website is built with code. No themes to be loaded. No plugins. Just an ultra-lightweight and highly functional website. All thanks to AI.

Check out the performance score improvement:

PageSpeed Insights showing ohms.live on Squarespace scoring 39 on performance with 7.6 second load time
squarespace — score 39. 7.6s load time.
PageSpeed Insights showing ohms.marketing static site scoring 95 on performance with 0.8 second load time
static HTML — score 95. 0.8s load time.

With my AI workflow I can even do full on-page SEO (meta tags, page titles & descriptions, image optimization etc.) fully automatically. Work that used to cost thousands of dollars over several months via WordPress and Yoast, can now be done in minutes.

Plus slight copy changes or image swaps? Done in seconds.

Why Are Website Builders Still Using WordPress?

Because they're old and have been building with WordPress for 15 years by now. They haven't adapted to the new tech landscape.

I worked at an agency once where we sold a $10,000 WordPress website rebuild. At the time, that was the standard. But that kind of spend is completely unnecessary. AI has changed the game. And the result is faster, cheaper, and more secure.

How Much Does WordPress Actually Cost vs. a Static Site?

More than you think. Between hosting, premium plugins, theme licenses, and a developer on retainer for maintenance, most small businesses are spending $50 to $200+ a month just to keep a WordPress site running. And that's before anything breaks.

Total monthly cost for a static site: $0 to $20 depending on whether you need a custom domain and email. Compare that to your current WordPress bill.

The Bottom Line

WordPress and other website builders have had their time. They democratized web publishing and that was huge in the 2010s. But in 2026, keeping your business on one of these platforms is like keeping your files on floppy disks because "they still work." Except in the case of WordPress, it still doesn't work.

What you really need is a fast site that converts visitors into customers. And you need your website to perform better than your competitor's. That's what really matters.

FAQs

Is WordPress really that slow?
Yeah. By the time you add the 15 to 25 plugins that you absolutely need, you're looking at load times of 3 to 5 seconds or more. That's enough to lose half your visitors before they even see your products or services.
Can I just speed up my existing WordPress site?
You can try. Caching plugins, CDN integrations, image optimization plugins and so on. But there's a fundamental performance ceiling with WordPress that static sites simply don't have.
Is a static site harder to update?
No. I can make updates to my website in seconds. Though it depends on your workflow of course.
How much does it cost to switch from WordPress to a static site?
It costs a fraction of what a WordPress rebuild costs. Because the time needed to build websites with modern tools is 10x less than the time needed using a manual website builder. And your ongoing costs drop exponentially as well because there's no plugins to update. If you can host and build the site yourself, your ongoing costs are 0.

If you want to see what a fast, modern site looks like for your business, or you just want an honest assessment of where your current site stands, reach out through the contact form below.

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