WordPress still runs a huge share of the web and remains a fine choice when a trained team needs to publish content daily. It is the wrong default when performance, security surface and AI-readability drive the decision, which is why statically rendered sites with a headless editor keep taking its ground.
The honest answer is that WordPress is neither dead nor default anymore. It is a content operations tool. If your organisation publishes constantly and your editors live in its admin, it still earns its keep, kept lean and updated.
The trouble is what a decade of plugin accumulation does: slow pages, a wide attack surface, markup that answer engines struggle to parse. Most small business sites are not content operations. They are twenty pages that change monthly and need to be fast, secure and machine-readable every single day.
A decision rule
Count your publishing events per week. Above five, WordPress or an equivalent CMS-first platform is defensible. Below that, a statically rendered site with a headless editor gives you speed and safety with an editing experience your team learns in an afternoon.
Whichever you choose, the deciding factors in 2026 are Core Web Vitals, structured data and update discipline. The logo on the admin screen matters far less than those three.