43% of ALL websites are using this 'dead' platform

Every week somebody tells me WordPress is dead. Use Squarespace, Webflow or Wix, they’re easier. Meanwhile WordPress runs 43% of all websites on the internet. Not 43% of blogs. 43% of everything.

Who’s using the dead platform

NASA. The White House. Sony Music. Time magazine. The Walt Disney Company’s corporate website. Even TechCrunch, which writes about WordPress being dead more than anyone, runs on it. Pretty much every website we’ve built over the last 15 years has been WordPress too.

Compare the numbers. Squarespace powers about 4 million websites. Wix, about 9 million. WordPress is somewhere between 600 and 800 million. It’s like comparing a corner shop to Amazon.

Why everyone thinks it’s dead

Marketing. Squarespace, Wix and Webflow sponsor a huge number of podcasts and YouTubers, and they need you to believe WordPress is too hard, too old and only for bloggers. Because if you realise it does what they do, for less, they’ve got a problem.

To be fair, old WordPress was clunky, and moving a button meant paying a developer. The code underneath still isn’t great. But the block editor, Gutenberg, changed things. Drag and drop, visual editing, no code. WordPress has had the easy features they all bang on about for years now, and kept the powerful ones. More on that in is WordPress dead?

Making money, saving money, not getting screwed

Every business owner cares about three things, and WordPress does well on all three.

Making money. You can change everything: custom checkouts, proper analytics with whatever platform you like, A/B testing, email integrations that don’t break. I’ve seen businesses increase conversions by 40% just by moving from something like Squarespace to WordPress. Not because it’s prettier. Because you can optimise it.

Saving money. Hosting your own WordPress site might cost you a hundred quid a year. Not the best hosting in the world, but cheap. A comparable Squarespace site runs to £300 to £400 a year or more, before you pay anyone to customise it or buy their apps. And if they double their prices, which they have done before, you pay or you leave.

Not getting screwed. On a hosted builder you’re renting. If they go bust, change their terms or decide they don’t like your business, your website’s gone. With WordPress you own your content, your data and the website itself.

There are also over 60,000 plugins. Squarespace has maybe a hundred extensions and Wix a few hundred apps. When you need something specific, and you will, WordPress almost certainly has it.

Open source keeps it moving

WordPress isn’t one company squeezing you for every penny. It’s open source. Download it, put it on any server you like, and nobody else is involved. Thousands of developers improve it, and occasionally make it worse, because they want to.

Squarespace in 2026 looks much like Squarespace in 2020. WordPress is a different platform from five or six years ago, and it keeps getting easier while the “easy” builders get pricier and more restrictive.

It isn’t right for everyone. A one-page site you’ll never update might be fine on Squarespace or Wix. Maybe. But if your website needs to make money, integrate with your CRM and email, or rank, use WordPress. There’s a straight comparison in Wix vs WordPress.