We built our agency on WordPress because it made sense at the time. When we started, ACF was the productivity engine—clean fields, sane content structures, fast to ship—and WordPress was the most approachable CMS compared to what else was on the table. Headless CMS platforms didn’t exist yet, and the “JAMstack” wasn’t a thing. If you wanted a site that marketers could actually update and developers could bend to fit real business needs, a custom WordPress theme with ACF was the practical path.

We took pride in building from scratch—custom post types, thoughtful templates, lean code—while many competitors resold pre-built marketplace themes with a few tweaks. Clients could feel the difference: better performance, fewer surprises, and a system tailored to their content instead of the other way around.

That era changed. Today, the question isn’t whether WordPress can power a site—it can. The question is why so few developers are excited to work inside Gutenberg or Kadence, why full-stack “WordPress generalists” are hard to hire, and why new talent rarely chooses WordPress as their craft. Here’s what’s actually going on—and why we’ve shifted our new builds to Astro + Storyblok.

Most generalist web developers I talk to don’t light up when WordPress comes up. They’ll take a ticket, fix a bug, maybe push a quick template, but they’re not excited to build inside Gutenberg or Kadence. The all-rounder who can juggle block theming, PHP, JS/React, messy plugin conflicts, and also crop/optimize images and tidy copy changes? That unicorn is rare—and expensive.

So if WordPress powers such a huge share of the web, why is enthusiasm from developers so low?

WordPress is popular—and polarizing

Let’s acknowledge reality first: WordPress is still installed on ~43% of all websites (active and inactive) and ~61% of CMS-driven sites, according to W3Techs. That’s massive reach.

But popularity isn’t the same as developer happiness. In Stack Overflow’s historical surveys, WordPress frequently ranked among the “most dreaded” platforms (2015, 2018, 2020), meaning a large share of devs who used it didn’t want to keep using it. That’s not a one-off headline; it’s a years-long pattern.

WordPress’s own 2023 annual survey also shows friction. Net Promoter Score (NPS) fell from 45 (2021) to 32 (2022) to 30 (2023). And when asked if the Site Editor (Gutenberg/FSE) meets their needs, responses were split—plenty of “agree,” but a meaningful block of “disagree,” especially among devs. That’s not a vote of confidence in the primary editing experience.

Meanwhile, millions still install Classic Editor to bypass Gutenberg—its active installs are shown as 9+ million on WordPress.org. If the flagship editor thrilled the market, this number would be far smaller.

Why developers avoid Gutenberg (and Kadence-by-extension) for complex builds

1) Cognitive load without clear payoff. Building robust block themes requires deep knowledge of block APIs, React, theme.json, patterns, editor quirks, and plugin compatibility. The mental overhead is high; the guardrails are soft. That’s a hard sell when you can reach a more stable outcome with modern frameworks and a clean content API.

2) Plugin roulette. Much of WordPress’s power is third-party plugins. It’s also the source of most security noise. Patchstack’s annual report shows the overwhelming majority of disclosed WordPress vulnerabilities originate in plugins and themes, not WordPress core. That means more patching and more risk surface for teams.

3) Breakage risk and regression anxiety. WordPress promises backward compatibility, but real life means stacking builders (Kadence/Elementor/etc.), SEO plugins, performance layers, and a theme. Updates are roulette: one change can ripple across CSS/JS, block markup, or site editor configs. Teams learn to fear change.

4) The block editor still divides the room. WordPress’s own survey shows the Site Editor isn’t universally meeting needs. If your primary tool isn’t broadly loved by the folks building with it every day, recruiting gets harder.

The “WordPress generalist” is a narrowing lane

We find that with WordPress and all of it's quirks, you need a developer / marketer unicorn just to manage websites. When it comes to hiring talent, it’s a hard fought challenge to find someone who will happily do both true development and ongoing content updates inside WordPress. That’s because:

Specialization is normal. Modern teams separate roles: content ops, design, front-end engineering, platform/devops, QA. Asking a senior developer to also be your image-production assistant, copy-polisher, accessibility checker, and SEO tinkerer isn’t realistic at scale.
Production tasks live better with marketing. Cropping/optimizing images, swapping sections, updating collections—these are content operations. They belong with marketers and content editors, not senior engineers.
New talent doesn’t pick WordPress first. The energy in the JavaScript ecosystem is elsewhere. Surveys and commentary around the State of JS show rising interest and retention in modern meta-frameworks—Astro regularly appears near the top in satisfaction and growth discussions. That’s where developers want to work and learn.

So why do so many sites still run on WordPress?

Momentum and switching cost. WordPress’s footprint is enormous; inertia is powerful. But market share doesn’t measure developer enthusiasm or total cost of ownership. Security patching, plugin sprawl, and the “please don’t update anything before the campaign launches” culture is a tax on speed and focus.

What teams say when they move beyond a monolith

Independent industry reports keep pointing in the same direction: when companies adopt headless architectures, they report meaningful gains in productivity and ROI. Storyblok’s State of CMS 2024 found 99% of teams that switched to a headless CMS saw improvements; the common wins were increased ROI (61%) and productivity (58%). Yes, that’s a vendor-commissioned study, but the signal matches what we experience on real projects.

And from the broader platform angle, headless adoption and satisfaction trends show up across other industry surveys as well. (Our dev candidates constantly bring up Astro/Vue/Next—rarely “I can’t wait to build another block theme.”)

How we build now: Astro + Storyblok (and why it’s better for everyone)

Here’s the model that works for growth-minded teams:

Designer first. Build the system visually—clean components, states, and content patterns—without fighting a page builder’s quirks.
Content modeling expert (often a technical PM). Model your content in Storyblok so marketers can work independently: localized content, workflows, roles, scheduled releases, component-level fields that mirror the design system.
Developer. Ship an Astro front end that’s fast by default, with zero client-side JS where you don’t need it, and modern tooling the devs actually want to work in.
Front-end/design QA. A finisher who polishes details, accessibility, and performance, and keeps the design system tight.

The result: marketers can publish without pinging devs; developers work in a modern stack; QA is tractable; releases are safer. And we don’t need a single “WordPress guru” hire to do five jobs at once.

"we’re thrilled to share that our friends at Astro are this year’s leader in highest framework growth and satisfaction according to the results from the 2023 State of Web Development report!"
-Netlify, Unveiling the state of web development and predictions for 2024 and beyond

Where WordPress still makes sense

We still support WordPress where it fits: existing orgs with entrenched workflows, certain plugin-driven use cases, or teams that truly can’t re-platform yet. But for new builds and serious redesigns, the path is clear: composable, headless architecture wins on speed, reliability, and hiring.

Sources & further reading

W3Techs CMS share and WordPress usage (updated daily). W3Techs+1
WordPress Annual Survey 2023: NPS trend and Site Editor sentiment. WordPress.org
Classic Editor plugin active installs (shows persistent Gutenberg avoidance). WordPress.org
Stack Overflow historical surveys where WordPress ranked “most dreaded.” WP Tavern , Stack Overflow
State of JavaScript 2023 (meta-framework interest/retention; Astro momentum) + industry commentary. 2023.stateofjs.com, InfoWorld
Storyblok State of CMS 2024 (headless outcomes). Storyblok

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WordPress FAQs

Are we saying WordPress is “bad”?

No. We’re saying it’s misaligned with what modern teams and developers value: lean front ends, clean content APIs, safer deploys, and role clarity.

Why not just lock down Gutenberg and use Kadence carefully?

You can, but you’re still living with WordPress’s plugin surface area, editor fragmentation, and higher regression risk during updates. That adds more operational costs.

Can marketers really edit Storyblok without help?

Yes—when the content model mirrors the design system. That’s the critical step most teams skip.

Will we lose SEO if we move off WordPress?

No. SEO fundamentals are platform-agnostic: clean HTML, structured data, speed, and content strategy. Astro makes speed easier; Storyblok makes content governance easier.

How does security improve?

Less plugin exposure, fewer moving parts on the public app, and updates controlled by your front-end build pipeline. WordPress core is solid; the plugin ecosystem is the risk.

What about cost?

Headless shifts cost from firefighting to building. You trade plugin bloat and update roulette for a stable codebase and a CMS your team can trust.

Can we keep WordPress and go headless with it?

You can, but it often inherits the operational complexity you’re trying to escape. A purpose-built headless CMS keeps content clean and future-proof.

How fast is Astro in the real world?

Astro ships “islands” of interactivity with minimal JS by default. That makes Web Vitals easier to hit and reduces the maintenance drift we see on plugin-heavy sites. (See broader JS survey commentary on where teams are heading.)