Why you need to stop hating on WordPress (especially if you run a winery)

Most wineries never ask what their website is built on. Every so often, though, someone objects to WordPress. Isn’t that a blogging tool? Isn’t it ancient? Didn’t someone’s cousin’s site get hacked? Our favorite version of the objection comes from the tech lead. Every so often a small winery hires a CTO (or the owner’s nephew who “does tech”), and within a week there’s a plan for a headless storefront and a custom Webflow build, or a Claude-designed Vercel app, all for a winery with two people in the office, no developer on the payroll, and a budget that also has to cover barrels.

We’ll call that CTO “Chad”. Chad means well. Chad is going to cost you a fortune.

TL;DR: WordPress runs about 40% of all websites, including whitehouse.gov and Rolling Stone, and it hasn’t been “just a blogging tool” for years. We build on it because the winery owns the site, it’s open source so it can do almost anything, it works deeply with Commerce7, and your team can edit it without calling a developer. When WordPress sites are slow, broken or insecure, it’s because of how they were built, not the platform.

Isn’t WordPress just for blogging?

It started as one, in 2003. It has had a block editor for building pages since December 2018, full site editing since January 2022, and the current version, 7.1, came out in August 2026.

WordPress also runs 40.2% of all websites, and 58.7% of every site whose content management system is known (W3Techs, September 2026). That includes whitehouse.gov, The Walt Disney Company’s corporate site, The New York Times Company’s site, Rolling Stone and Variety. (Don’t take our word for it: open any of them, view the page source and search for “wp-content”.)

Nobody at Rolling Stone is writing a blog about their weekend. WordPress grew up. Some of its reputation didn’t.

Why do we build winery websites on WordPress?

Because it does what a winery needs, at a price a winery can pay, and it doesn’t hold you hostage. Here’s why:

• You own it. Your site, your content, your data. WordPress is licensed under the GPL, which gives you “the freedom to run the program for any purpose” and “the freedom to study how the program works and change it to make it do what you wish”. If you ever leave us (we’d be sad), your site comes with you.
• It’s open source, so it can do almost anything. There are more than 73,000 free plugins in the WordPress directory, and when there isn’t one for what you need, a developer can build it. That’s how we built our own Commerce7 integration.
• It works properly with Commerce7. The free Commerce7 for WordPress plugin, with 1,000+ active installations, was written by our CTO, Michael Bourne. Our Enhanced Commerce7 integration goes even further: on-site product search, product schema, social sharing images and personalization you design in the block editor.
• Search engines understand it. WordPress gives you control over titles, descriptions, structured data and site speed, which is the core of technical SEO. Our Commerce7 sites put product data in the page itself, so Google sees it on the first visit.
• Your team can run it. The block editor works like building with Lego: headings, images, buttons, quotes, columns. Amista Vineyards said we “took the time to teach us best practices and empowered us to confidently maintain the site on our own.” No developer ticket required.
• It’s built with accessibility in mind. WordPress commits its own core code to “all WCAG 2.2 Level A and Level AA guidelines” (WordPress Developer Resources). We build to the same standard, and we test with people, not overlay plugins.
• And it pays its way. In the words of the Sweet Wine Club: “The website paid for itself in a month.”

Is WordPress secure?

The core software has a strong record. The risk lives in the extras. Patchstack’s 2026 report, covering vulnerabilities found in 2025, says “91% of new vulnerabilities were found in plugins, and 9% were found in themes. There were only 6 vulnerabilities reported in the WordPress core, but these were low priority issues” (Patchstack, 2026). And WordPress installs its own security releases automatically on most sites by default (WordPress Developer Resources).

So the cousin’s site that got hacked probably had 40 plugins, half of them abandoned. Ours use as few as possible, keep them updated, and look after them on a care plan.

Isn’t WordPress slow?

The average WordPress site is, ours are not. In our experience, slow sites happen when they are built with bloated themes, page builders and every plugin someone found at 2am. Speed comes from how a site is built and where it’s hosted, and that’s where we put the work. Our sites are built for speed from the ground up and run on our optimized hosting, and they typically test in the top 1% on Lighthouse and GTmetrix.

Do wineries need a headless or Webflow website?

Almost never, and this is where Chad costs you money. A headless site splits your storefront and your content into separate systems joined by custom code, so in our experience most changes, and many Commerce7 updates, need a developer who understands both. That makes sense for a company with an engineering team. For your average winery, it’s a very expensive way to make simple things hard. Before Chad signs anything, ask who will maintain that connection when he moves on.

What goes wrong with WordPress sites?

The same thing that goes wrong with any site: who built it and how. When wineries come to us with a broken WordPress site, it’s usually one of three things:

• A page builder that turned every page into a tangle nobody can edit safely.
• Too many plugins, some abandoned, some fighting each other.
• A developer who holds the keys, so the winery can’t get into its own site without them.

None of those is WordPress’s fault. All of them are avoidable. Make sure your winery has the admin login, a short list of well-maintained plugins, and a site your team can edit without breaking.

Is it time to stop hating on WordPress?

We think so. Before your next website meeting, ask whoever’s pitching the new platform three questions: who owns the site, who can edit it without a developer, and what happens if you want to leave. If the answers make you nervous, let’s talk, or have a look at how we build winery websites.

(Sorry, Chad.)

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