
WordPress review
PHP CMS for blogs, marketing sites and online stores
Chandan Kumar is a founder of Geekflare. He is a technology enthusiast and entrepreneur who loves to help businesses and people around the world. Chandan has worked at BNP Paribas, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Motorola, and HP. He’s got an in-depth understanding of business software and IT infrastructure.
Verdict
The default choice for marketing sites, blogs and content-heavy websites. No other open source CMS matches its ecosystem or the number of people who can work with it. The trade-off is maintenance like every plugin is code you have to keep updated, and WordPress is built around pages and posts.
Best for
Marketing sites, blogs and content sites run by non-technical editors
Not for
Headless or multi-channel content for apps, where a typed content model matters
Pros
- Themes and plugins for almost any feature
- Editors pick up the block editor quickly
- Runs on almost any PHP host
- REST API in core for headless use
Cons
- Security depends on keeping plugins updated
- SSO, audit logs and workflows need third-party plugins
- Built around pages and posts, not structured content
“Solid, mature and everywhere”
Hacker News, Oct 2026“My go-to for building websites quickly”
G2, Sep 2026“The biggest drawback is the heavy maintenance burden”
G2, Jul 2026
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At a glance
- Type
- Traditional
- Stack
- PHP 8.3+ / MySQL or MariaDB
- Databases
- MySQL, MariaDB
- Licence terms
- Copyleft obligations apply only when you distribute modified code. Running WordPress for your own site carries none.
- SSO
- Via plugin
- Roles and permissions
- Free edition
- Audit logs
- Via plugin
Free vs paid editions
What you get when you self-host, and what needs a paid plan.
There is no paid edition. WordPress is free under the GPL. Costs come from hosting and from premium themes and plugins. SSO, audit logs and approval workflows all need plugins, so their quality and security depend on the plugin you choose. WordPress.com is a separate commercial service run by Automattic, from $4 a month billed annually; WordPress VIP is its enterprise tier, with no public price.
Self-hosting WordPress
WordPress recommends PHP 8.3+ and MySQL 8.0+ or MariaDB 10.11+, behind Apache or Nginx with HTTPS.
New cloud server to first screen
33 s
Memory in use at idle
495 MB of 4 GB
Version tested
7.1.3 · Oct 16, 2026
- Ready in 33 seconds on a cloud Ubuntu 24.04 server (2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM), with Docker's community WordPress image and MySQL 8.4, image downloads included.
- At idle, WordPress used about 70 MB of RAM and MySQL about 425 MB.
- The installer asks for a site title and an admin account. We completed it with WP-CLI and screenshotted the site with its default theme.
services:
db:
image: mysql:8.4
environment:
MYSQL_DATABASE: wordpress
MYSQL_USER: wordpress
MYSQL_PASSWORD: change-me
MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD: "1"
volumes: [db:/var/lib/mysql]
wordpress:
image: wordpress:latest
depends_on: [db]
ports: ["8080:80"]
environment:
WORDPRESS_DB_HOST: db
WORDPRESS_DB_USER: wordpress
WORDPRESS_DB_PASSWORD: change-me
WORDPRESS_DB_NAME: wordpress
volumes: [wp:/var/www/html]
volumes: { db: {}, wp: {} }What you can build with WordPress
Business blog
Publish articles with categories, tags and scheduled posts. SEO plugins such as Yoast and Rank Math add meta tags, sitemaps and schema.
Company website
Build pages with the block editor and a theme, so marketing can change copy and layouts without waiting for a developer.
News and magazine site
Built-in roles for contributors, authors and editors, post revisions and scheduled publishing fit how a newsroom works.
Online store
WooCommerce, a free plugin from Automattic, adds products, a cart, checkout and payments to the same site.
Press releases
Keep releases in their own category, with an archive page and an RSS feed journalists can follow.
Membership or course site
Paid plugins such as MemberPress and LearnDash add member-only content and online courses.