WordPress
What it is
Open-source software for running a website, installed on hosting you choose and maintained by someone you name.
What it’s good at
A plugin exists for nearly everything, and most have matured for a decade. Editors your next hire has already used, so publishing needs no training week. And the content sits in a database you own and can take with you.
What it costs to own
Updates are a standing job with a named owner. Core and plugins update on separate schedules, and one bad combination takes the site down. Security is the same job; an unpatched site gets found. The cost is invisible until the month it is not. Performance decays as plugins accumulate, so the stack needs an annual cull, and the owner is a retained developer or someone technical in-house.
When it’s a poor fit
It is a poor fit when nobody in the company can name the person who applies updates, since without that person nothing keeps the site running. The same goes for a site of twenty marketing pages and a blog, served by server software and a database where static files would do. And when the agency proposing it leaves at launch, the standing job lands on you in month two.
What it sits beside
It is usually the incumbent; the question is what earns a replacement. Commerce arrives as a plugin, so shop and site share one maintenance surface, which cuts both ways. The overlap to watch is page builders: inherited sites carry two or three, each half-overlapping the editor, and each one is another update to own.
My experience
When I take over a WordPress site, the first thing I ask is who has been applying the updates, and that is often where things have gone wrong.