Don’t Fall Into the Trap: Why You Shouldn’t Build a Simple Website Without WordPress

The Emerging Trend: Websites Without a CMS

Lately I’ve seen some unusual advertisements in the market offering to build new websites without a content management system (CMS)—or even advising to completely abandon WordPress, the most popular CMS around. What would such a risky change mean for a business?

Why Risk It for No Good Reason?

Locked Into a Single Developer
Building a simple (non-ecommerce) website without a CMS primarily means you become tied to one developer. If that developer is not competent, or if the site was not built following good practices, updating or adding features will require rebuilding from scratch. You’ll essentially be wasting the money you’ve already invested.

Higher Costs for New Features

Without a ready system like WordPress, implementing new functionalities becomes expensive. Imagine wanting to install an AI translator plugin—on WordPress it’s done in two clicks and ready in five minutes. With a custom project from scratch, you’d first need to define what you want, then develop, test, and deploy it. That same task might cost thirty hours of work.Can WordPress Be Fine-Tuned?
I’ve noticed that those advocating building websites without WordPress often misunderstand the typical problems clients bring up: speed, natural search (SEO), and usability.

WordPress is probably Google’s favorite—and one of the best-rated—CMS platforms. When good practices are applied and a few popular free plugins are used, the resulting site performs well in search and feels smooth to users. You can achieve almost any desired result more cheaply, faster, and more efficiently with a well-built WordPress site than with a unique solution or one without any CMS. The real answer is: pick a good developer, not a project without a CMS.

How WordPress Surpassed Drupal and Joomla

Back in 2006–2008, a large blogging community emerged rapidly. That’s one reason why WordPress became the undisputed leader. On the other hand, older, more complex systems like Drupal and Joomla, which had been favored by government institutions for their perceived advantages in security, permissions, and so on, gradually became less appealing.

WordPress improved over time—addressing security concerns, simplifying permissions, making switching developers easier, and increasing speed. It responded to what clients actually wanted: affordability, simplicity, flexibility. Meanwhile, Joomla and Drupal, though once formidable, lost traction. WordPress’ dominance in open-source CMS is one more reason not to experiment needlessly with alternatives you may lack expertise in.

Frameworks, Headless CMS & Other Buzzwords

The idea of building simple websites from scratch without a CMS often brings to mind frameworks (like CakePHP, CodeIgniter, and later Symfony, Laravel). These “experiments” promised modern, fast solutions. Yet building a basic CMS on top of a bare framework often costs many hours—even when the functionality already exists as a free module in WordPress.

There’s also growing talk about “headless” CMSes and new technologies that supposedly will challenge WordPress. But after 20 years in this market, I’ve seen these same trends: new tools emerge, attract interest, but seldom replace what works, especially for small and medium-sized business owners who primarily want a presence on the web.

Are There Risks With WordPress?

Yes, there are some:

• In recent years, there has been debate in the developer community about the limitations of enterprise-level WordPress.com environments and issues with popular paid plugins.
• Yet, for a typical website owner in Lithuania, Italy, Spain, etc., these concerns are almost always irrelevant.

Technologies like headless CMS are increasingly integrated into WordPress—or their features are inspired by it. For instance, Elementor (a page builder plugin) has become something of a standard. Many new concepts are informed by what WordPress already does.

The biggest challenge with WordPress is finding a developer who actually follows best practices. If not, you risk having to rebuild, redo, or waste money.

The Market Speaks
Despite everything, WordPress continues to hold over 60% of the global CMS market. Ričardas Šmaižys

So while new trends and technologies will keep appearing, for many businesses, there is still no practical substitute when you need a simple, functional, maintainable website.