WordPress · Small Business · Your Website

WordPress Sucks Ass. Don't Let it Destroy Your Business.

WordPress won't destroy your business in one afternoon. It'll do it in three slow pieces. And I was wrong about all three for years.

Pete Roesler holding up his own falling business sign outside his shop at night, WordPress sucks ass hero image

For years I told people the same thing. WordPress is fine. It's the plugins. Don't blame the house, blame what people bolt onto it.

I said it in print. It's on this blog with my name on it.

Then a hole showed up in WordPress itself. Not a plugin. WordPress. And the federal government put it on a list of things being actively used to break into sites.

I'd been telling you the roof was fine and the leak was in the add-on. The leak was in the roof.

I was wrong about this for years. That's why I'm not going to oversell it now.

TL;DR

WordPress isn't going to kill your business in one afternoon. It does it in pieces. A bill that grows every year, a front door held open by somebody else's code, and pages too slow to get read. I've built and managed more than 10,000 sites, and I ran my own business on WordPress until I moved 1,387 posts off it. You don't have to leave today. You do have to know which of the three is already happening to you.

3 Things to Remember

The cost isn't the hosting. It's the twenty small bills nobody adds up.

Most WordPress break-ins come through a plugin somebody else wrote and stopped updating.

You can stay. You just can't stay and ignore it.

I Told You It Was the Plugins. I Was Wrong.

I had one line about WordPress and I used it for years. It's not WordPress, it's the plugins.

It made sense. Most sites I cleaned up got hit through something bolted on. So I kept saying it.

Then the hole turned up in the core software. Not an add-on. The thing itself. And it got put on a federal list of flaws being used to break into real sites right now.

I'm not going to re-tell that story here. I already wrote the whole thing up, and it has the details.

Here's why I'm opening with it. You've read a scary WordPress article before. You did nothing. Nothing happened. So you stopped listening, and I don't blame you.

The reason to listen to me now is that I'm the guy who was wrong in public and said so.

It Doesn't Break All at Once. It Breaks in Three Pieces.

The three pieces a WordPress site breaks into: the bill, the break-in and the wait

WordPress doesn't take your business down in one bad night. It takes it in three pieces, and no single piece ever looks like an emergency.

The bill. The break-in. The wait.

That's the whole post. Three pieces, and every one of them is already proven somewhere else on this site.

The piece	What it feels like	Where I already proved it
The bill	Small charges that renew forever and never get added up	The WordPress bill nobody adds up
The break-in	Somebody else's code sitting between you and the people who want in	Hundreds of holes with no fix coming
The wait	Pages too slow to get read, by people or by AI	WordPress is dead, AI killed it

The next three sections are just those three. I'm not going to re-argue any of them. Skip to yours.

The Bill. It Costs More Than Anybody Told You.

The real cost of a WordPress site isn't the hosting. It's the twenty small things with a renewal date on them.

A form tool. A backup tool. A security tool. A booking tool. A theme license. A guy who charges you a couple hundred a month and you're not sure what for.

None of them is big. All of them renew. Nobody sends you one bill.

I already did this math and published it. Here's the whole breakdown, piece by piece, with the three year total. I'm not doing it again here.

Mistake: counting the hosting bill and calling that your website cost.

Fix: add up everything with a renewal date on it. All of it.

Payoff: you finally know your real number, and you can decide something with it.

The Break-In. Somebody Else's Code Holds Your Front Door.

Most WordPress break-ins don't come through WordPress. They come through a plugin somebody else wrote and then stopped updating.

You didn't pick those plugins. You picked a website. Somebody handed you fifteen strangers with keys.

That's the whole shape of it. A stranger wrote the code. The stranger walked away. The code is still on your site, and it's still holding a door open.

This is the most covered ground on my blog and I'm not going to cover it again. Start here if this one is yours. That post answers the question everybody asks, which is whether staying updated saves you.

Mistake: thinking updates are the whole job.

Fix: count how many of your plugins haven't been touched by their author in over a year.

Payoff: you find out which doors have nobody standing behind them.

Pete Roesler shoving his shop door shut against fifteen strangers holding keys, WordPress plugin security risk

The Wait. Nobody Reads a Site That Won't Load.

A buyer standing in a parking lot on his phone while a slow WordPress site fails to load

A slow site doesn't lose you a ranking. It loses you the person.

He tapped your link. He's standing in a parking lot on his phone. He's not waiting.

And it isn't just people now. AI tools pick a small number of pages to read and quote. A heavy page is an easy page to skip.

I've written this one to death. The full argument is here, speed, weight and why the problem is built in rather than a setting you missed.

The Trap Is Not Being Able to Change Anything.

Here's the piece nobody names for you, and it's the one you feel every week.

You can't change your own hours on your own website.

You want to move Saturday to 8am. So you text somebody. Then you wait. Maybe it's today, maybe it's Thursday.

That's not a cost. That's a leash.

This has nothing to do with owning versus renting. I lease sites and I think leasing is fine. It's about whether you can change your own business's information the day your business changes.

The post that owns this argument is here. Abandonment, updates that break things, and being one pull away from a bad afternoon.

Mistake: treating "I have to text somebody" as normal.

Fix: time it. How long from you wanting a change to the change being live?

Payoff: you find out if you own a tool or a waiting list.

Pete Roesler trying to pry his own welded-shut opening hours board off his shop door, held hostage by a website he cannot change

Find Out Which One Is Already Happening to You.

You don't need a tool or a tech guy for this. Three checks, ten minutes, tonight.

1. Open your last twelve months of card statements. Circle everything with the word "renew" on it. That's the bill.

2. Open your site's plugin list. Count how many say "last updated" more than a year ago. That's the break-in.

3. Load your own site on your phone, on data, not wifi. Count out loud until you can tap something. That's the wait.

I picked those three because each one maps to one of the three pieces. No vocabulary, no login, no charge.

Whichever number surprised you the most is the one that's already happening to you.

Find yours

Which One Is Getting You

Three questions, one for each piece. No score, and nothing to sign up for.

1. What do you pay for your website every month, all in?

2. Last time you changed something on the site yourself, how did it go?

3. Load your homepage on your phone, on data. How long until you can tap something?

Answer all three and I'll tell you which one is yours.

Do it yourself

Have AI add up your real website bill

Paste your charges and your plugin list. It gives you one number and a ranked list.

Try it · Have AI add up your real website bill

I run a [TYPE OF BUSINESS] in [YOUR CITY] and my website is on WordPress.

Here is every website charge I could find on my last 12 months of card
statements, one per line:
[PASTE YOUR CHARGES]

And here are the plugins running on my site, one per line:
[PASTE YOUR PLUGIN LIST]

Do four things.

1. Add up my real yearly website cost from those charges. Give me one
   number. Then show me the list, biggest to smallest.
2. Tell me which charges renew on their own, so I know what keeps
   happening whether I use it or not.
3. Go through my plugin list. Tell me which ones look abandoned or
   risky, and which ones a custom built site would not need at all.
4. Tell me the one thing on this list I should deal with first, and why.

Rules: write at a 5th grade reading level. Short sentences. No hype.
If you are not sure about something, say you are not sure.

Fill the [brackets] in the chat box before you send.

You get: your real yearly website number and a ranked list of what to deal with first.

I Moved 1,387 of My Own Posts Off a Stack I Didn't Control.

I didn't write this from the outside. I ran my own business on WordPress and I got tired of it.

So I moved 1,387 of my own posts off it. Mine. Not a client's.

I did it because I was sick of not being able to change my own site the day I wanted it changed. Here's how that move went, including what happened to my rankings.

That's the only credential in this post. I'm not stacking more on it.

Pete Roesler carrying the last crate out of his own loading dock, moving 1,387 posts off WordPress

I Still Tell Some People to Stay on WordPress.

I do. Regularly. And I'd be lying if I pretended otherwise.

WordPress runs a huge share of the web, and it got there for real reasons. It's cheap to start. You can find somebody who knows it in any town in America. It publishes text well, and it has for twenty years.

If you've got a small site you barely touch, a handful of pages, no forms, no bookings, and it loads fine on your phone, then moving it is a solution looking for a problem. Leave it alone. Go run your business.

I mean that. I'm not setting up a trap in the next paragraph.

Here's who that isn't.

It stops being fine the day the site starts doing a job. Taking bookings. Collecting names. Being the thing that answers when somebody asks about you and you're not in the room.

That's the line. Not the size of the site. The job it does.

You Don't Have to Hate WordPress. You Just Can't Ignore the Bill.

I'm not asking you to hate a piece of software. I don't.

I'm asking you to know which of the three is already happening to you, because one of them probably is.

What you actually want isn't a new website. It's not thinking about any of this on a Sunday.

If you want to see what your site looks like on something that loads fast and that you can change yourself, take a test drive. I'll put your site on my code and you can look at it before you spend anything.

And if you'd rather just read how I think about all of it first, that's what Balls Out Marketing is for.

Take a Test Drive →

Want the whole playbook first? Plan your attack. Balls Out Marketing.

FAQ

Is WordPress bad for a small business website?

No, but it costs more than most owners realize and it needs somebody watching it. The trouble usually shows up in three places: what you pay every year, the add-on code holding your site's doors open, and how slowly your pages load. If nobody is watching all three, it gets worse quietly.

How much does a WordPress website really cost per year?

More than your hosting bill, because hosting is usually the smallest line on it. The real number is every small charge with a renewal date attached, plus whatever you pay someone monthly. I broke the whole thing down here.

Can my WordPress site still get hacked if I keep everything updated?

Yes. Updating helps a lot and you should do it. But some flaws sit in plugins whose authors have walked away, so there is no update coming for them at all. That's the part nobody says out loud, and I wrote it up here.

Should I move my business off WordPress?

Only if your site does a job. If it takes bookings, collects names, or answers for you when you're not there, then speed and control matter and it's worth moving. If it's a few pages you barely touch, leave it.

Will I lose my Google rankings if I move off WordPress?

Not if the move is done right. I moved 1,387 of my own posts and I care about my own rankings more than anybody's. Here's exactly how that move is handled.

Is WordPress still good for anything?

Yes. It's cheap to start, almost anyone can find help with it, and it publishes writing well. It's a fine place to begin. It's a rough place to run a business that depends on the site working.