One of the first questions we get from new clients is some version of: “Why WordPress? My cousin built a site on Wix in an afternoon.”
It’s a fair question. There are more website platforms available today than at any point in history. Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Webflow, and dozens of others all promise a beautiful website with minimal effort. And for some situations, those tools do what they’re supposed to do.
But when a business owner comes to us and says they want a website that ranks in search, performs well on mobile, and belongs to them for the long haul, we build it on WordPress. Every time. Here’s why that matters, explained without the tech jargon.
WordPress by the Numbers
WordPress powers more than 43% of all websites on the internet. That’s nearly half of every site you’ve ever visited. It runs everything from local plumbing companies to The New York Times, the White House website, and major universities.
That kind of market share matters for a practical reason: the ecosystem around WordPress is enormous. Thousands of developers build tools for it. Hosting companies optimize their servers specifically for it. When something needs to be done on the web, there’s almost always a WordPress solution that’s been tested by millions of users.
Compare that to a platform like Wix, which powers roughly 3% of the web, or Squarespace at about 2%. Those platforms work fine within their walls. But the walls are real, and we’ll get to that.
The Ownership Question
This is the most important point in this entire post, and it’s the one most business owners don’t think about until it’s too late.
When you build a site on Wix or Squarespace, you don’t own your website. You’re renting space on their platform. If they raise their prices, you pay more or start over. If they discontinue a feature you depend on, you lose it. If you decide to leave, you can’t take your site with you. You start from scratch.
WordPress is open-source software. That means the code is free, it’s yours, and nobody can take it away. Your site lives on a server you choose, hosted by a company you choose, and you can move it anywhere at any time. If you decide tomorrow that you want a different web designer to take over, they can. Your site, your content, your data. All of it stays with you.
For a business that’s investing real money into a website, this is the difference between building a house on land you own and decorating an apartment you’re renting. Both can look great. Only one is actually yours.
Why WordPress Wins on SEO
Search engine optimization is where the gap between WordPress and the drag-and-drop platforms gets wide. Here’s what WordPress gives you that the others don’t, or don’t do as well.
Full Control Over Your Technical SEO
WordPress lets you control every element that search engines care about. Title tags, meta descriptions, header structure, URL slugs, canonical tags, robots directives, XML sitemaps. All of it. With a plugin like Yoast SEO (which we use on every build), managing these elements is straightforward and visual.
On Wix and Squarespace, you get some of these controls. But they’re limited. You can edit a meta description, sure. But try implementing custom schema markup, configuring hreflang tags for multi-language content, or fine-tuning your sitemap to exclude specific pages. On WordPress, these are standard capabilities. On closed platforms, you’re either working around limitations or hitting dead ends.
Schema.org Structured Data
Schema markup is the code that tells Google exactly what your business is, where you’re located, what services you offer, and how to display your content in search results. Those rich results you see in Google with star ratings, FAQ dropdowns, business hours, and service lists? Schema makes that happen. This is a core part of how we approach E-E-A-T for every site we build.
WordPress handles schema beautifully. Yoast generates it automatically for basic elements, and we layer in custom schema for local business data, services, FAQ sections, and author information. This is a significant ranking advantage, especially for local businesses trying to show up in map results and featured snippets.
Squarespace has basic schema built in, but it’s limited and you can’t customize it. Wix has improved over the years, but you’re still working within the confines of what their system allows. WordPress gives you full control to implement exactly the schema your business needs.
Server-Level Performance Control
Your site’s speed directly affects your search rankings. Google has been clear about this since Core Web Vitals became a ranking factor in 2021.
With WordPress, you choose your hosting. That means you can put your site on a server optimized for speed: managed WordPress hosting with server-level caching, CDN integration, PHP optimization, and SSD storage. We can fine-tune how the server delivers your pages to visitors.
On Wix and Squarespace, your site runs on their servers. Period. If their infrastructure has a slow day, your site has a slow day. You can’t install a caching plugin. You can’t choose a hosting provider with servers closer to your customers. You get what you get.
The Plugin Ecosystem
WordPress has over 60,000 plugins. That sounds overwhelming, and honestly, most of them aren’t worth installing. But the ones that matter are incredible tools that give your site capabilities the closed platforms can’t match.
For SEO alone, we use Yoast SEO for on-page optimization and schema. We use specific plugins for image compression, lazy loading, caching, and security. Each one does its job well because thousands of developers have refined it over years.
When Google releases a new best practice or search feature, the WordPress community typically has a solution within weeks. On closed platforms, you wait for the company to decide if and when they’ll implement it.
What About Wix and Squarespace?
Let’s be honest about what these platforms do well. Wix and Squarespace are excellent at one thing: letting someone with no technical knowledge build a presentable website quickly. If you’re a freelance photographer who needs a simple portfolio online this weekend, Squarespace is a reasonable choice.
But here’s what we see happen with business clients who started on these platforms.
They hit the ceiling. The site looked great at first. Then they needed a specific form integration, or a booking system, or a members-only section, or a custom layout that the template didn’t support. Suddenly they’re fighting the platform instead of building on it.
Their SEO plateaus. The site ranks for their business name (which any site should do) but can’t compete for actual search terms because they lack the technical controls to optimize properly. They can’t add custom schema. They can’t control their server performance. They can’t implement the structured data that makes Google understand their business.
They realize they’re locked in. When they come to us and ask to move to WordPress, we have to tell them: your content can come with you, but the site itself stays behind. The design, the layout, the structure. All of that gets rebuilt from zero. They’re paying twice for a site they could have built right the first time.
What About Custom-Built Sites?
On the other end of the spectrum, some agencies pitch fully custom-coded websites. No CMS, no WordPress, no templates. Everything built from scratch in raw HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, or a framework like React or Next.js.
Custom builds can be blazing fast and completely unique. For large enterprises with dedicated development teams and six-figure budgets, they make sense.
For a small business, they usually don’t. Here’s why.
You can’t update it yourself. Need to change your phone number? Add a blog post? Update your hours? You’re calling a developer every time. With WordPress, you log in and make the change yourself.
You’re dependent on whoever built it. If that developer moves on, gets busy, or raises their rates, you need to find someone else who can work with their specific codebase. WordPress developers are everywhere. Custom codebase experts who understand someone else’s architecture are not.
The cost is dramatically higher. A custom-built site that does what a well-configured WordPress site does will cost three to five times as much, sometimes more. For most small businesses, that money is better spent on marketing the site once it’s built.
How We Build with WordPress
We pair WordPress with Elementor Pro as our page builder. Elementor gives us the design flexibility to create custom layouts without writing code for every element, while keeping the site easy for clients to update on their own. You can see what a full Scout build includes on our services page.
Here’s what a typical Scout build looks like under the hood.
WordPress core handles content management, user roles, and the fundamental site architecture. It’s the engine.
Elementor Pro gives us pixel-level design control with a visual builder. Every section, every layout, every responsive breakpoint is intentional. No generic templates.
Yoast SEO manages on-page optimization, schema generation, XML sitemaps, and content analysis. It’s the SEO backbone.
Gravity Forms handles contact forms, quote requests, and any data collection. It’s reliable, accessible, and integrates with everything.
Quality managed hosting provides the server performance that makes everything fast. We recommend hosting that includes server-level caching, daily backups, and SSL certificates.
Every site gets handed over with documentation. You know how to log in. You know how to update content. You know how to add a blog post. The site is yours, and you can actually use it.
The Honest Truth About WordPress
We’re not going to pretend WordPress is perfect. It’s not, and you should know the trade-offs.
It has a learning curve. WordPress is more complex than Wix or Squarespace. There’s a dashboard with menus, settings, and options that can feel overwhelming at first. That’s why we provide training and documentation with every build. Most clients are comfortable making basic updates within a week.
It needs maintenance. WordPress core, your theme, and your plugins all release updates. These updates need to be applied regularly for security and performance. Ignoring them is like never changing the oil in your car. We offer ongoing maintenance for clients who want us to handle this. For clients who prefer to manage it themselves, we set up automatic updates and monitoring.
Plugin quality varies. Not all 60,000 plugins are created equal. Installing the wrong plugin can slow your site down or create security vulnerabilities. This is why we’re selective about what goes on every site we build. We test everything before it goes live and only use plugins with strong track records.
These are real considerations. But they’re manageable ones, especially when your site is built by someone who knows the platform well. The benefits of ownership, control, and SEO capability far outweigh the maintenance requirements.
The Takeaway
The platform your website runs on is a business decision, not a technical one. WordPress gives you ownership of your site, full control over your SEO, and the flexibility to grow without hitting a ceiling. Wix and Squarespace are convenient, but convenience comes at the cost of control. When your website is the foundation of your online presence, control matters.
We build on WordPress because it’s the right tool for businesses that want their website to actually work for them over the long term. It’s the professional choice. And when it’s built right, it performs.
Thinking about a new website or stuck on a platform that’s holding you back? Let’s talk about it. We’ll walk you through what a WordPress build looks like and help you figure out the right path forward.
Resources
- WordPress.org (link from “open-source software” mention)
- W3Techs CMS Usage Statistics (link from market share statistics)
- Yoast SEO Plugin (link from Yoast discussion)
- Elementor Pro (link from page builder discussion)
- Google Core Web Vitals (link from performance discussion)
