I’ve been building products on WordPress for a very long time.
In fact, my entire journey in online education started with WordPress. Like many entrepreneurs, course creators, and agency owners, I loved the freedom it offered. If I wanted a new feature, there was usually a plugin for it. If I wanted to customize something, I could hire a developer or write the code myself.
WordPress helped build a large part of the modern web, and it deserves credit for that.
But over the years, I’ve also seen the other side of the story.
I’ve seen websites break after updates.
I’ve seen plugins abandoned by developers.
I’ve seen security vulnerabilities appear in software that thousands of businesses depended on.
And I’ve seen business owners spend more time maintaining their websites than growing their businesses.
The truth is that WordPress was already one of the most targeted platforms on the internet long before AI entered the picture.
Today, I believe AI is making that problem even bigger.
The Problem Was Never WordPress Itself
Whenever people talk about WordPress security, the discussion usually turns into a debate about whether WordPress is secure or insecure.
I think that’s the wrong question.
The real challenge isn’t WordPress core.
The challenge is the ecosystem around it.
A typical WordPress site might have twenty, thirty, or even fifty plugins installed. Each plugin is developed by different teams, follows different coding standards, and has different maintenance schedules.
Some plugins are exceptional.
Some are not.
As site owners, we’re effectively trusting dozens of third-party developers with access to our business, our customer data, and our revenue.
That’s a lot of trust.
According to Wordfence, plugin vulnerabilities account for the overwhelming majority of reported WordPress security issues. Patchstack reported thousands of new WordPress ecosystem vulnerabilities in a single year, most of them originating from third-party plugins rather than WordPress itself.
That doesn’t surprise me.
When you have tens of thousands of plugins created by thousands of developers, vulnerabilities are inevitable.
AI Changes the Game
What concerns me isn’t where we are today.
It’s where we’re heading.
AI has dramatically lowered the barrier to analyzing code, identifying weaknesses, and automating attacks.
A task that once required a skilled security researcher can now be accelerated with AI tools.
Attackers can scan more websites.
Analyze more code.
Identify more vulnerabilities.
And do it faster than ever before.
Meanwhile, the website owner is still responsible for maintaining plugins, testing updates, monitoring vulnerabilities, managing hosting, running backups, configuring firewalls, and making sure everything continues to work.
The balance is shifting.
The attacker needs to find one weakness.
The website owner needs to secure everything.
The Hidden Cost Nobody Talks About
When people compare WordPress with SaaS platforms, they usually compare software costs.
I think that’s a mistake.
The real cost isn’t the monthly hosting bill.
The real cost is the time spent managing complexity.
Think about everything required to keep a modern WordPress business running:
- Plugin updates
- Theme updates
- Security monitoring
- Backup management
- Performance optimization
- Server maintenance
- Malware scanning
- Compatibility testing
None of these activities generate revenue.
None of them help students learn better.
None of them help instructors create better content.
They’re simply the cost of keeping the system running.
As your business grows, that cost grows with it.
Why I Started Believing in SaaS
Over the last few years, I’ve become increasingly convinced that most education businesses don’t actually want software.
They want outcomes.
They want students.
They want memberships.
They want course sales.
They want communities.
They want engagement.
Very few people wake up excited about updating plugins.
That’s one of the reasons I became passionate about SaaS platforms.
With SaaS, security updates happen behind the scenes.
Infrastructure is managed centrally.
Backups are automated.
Monitoring is built in.
Customers can focus on teaching instead of maintaining technology.
The software fades into the background, which is exactly where it should be.
WordPress Isn’t Going Away
To be clear, I don’t think WordPress is disappearing.
It remains one of the most important platforms on the internet and will continue to power millions of websites for years to come.
But I do think we’re entering a period where businesses will start asking different questions.
The question used to be:
“Can WordPress do this?”
Today, the question is becoming:
“Do I want to be responsible for maintaining this?”
For many businesses, especially those focused on education, coaching, memberships, and online communities, the answer is increasingly no.
My Conclusion
Having spent years building products in the WordPress ecosystem, I don’t see this as a criticism of WordPress.
I see it as an evolution.
The internet has become more complex.
Security threats have become more sophisticated.
AI is accelerating both innovation and risk.
In that environment, managed platforms become more valuable.
Not because they’re trendy.
Not because they’re new.
But because they remove complexity from the lives of business owners.
That’s ultimately why I believe the future belongs to SaaS.
Business owners should spend their time serving customers, creating products, and growing revenue—not worrying about whether a plugin update is going to break their website or whether a vulnerability was disclosed while they were asleep.
Technology should help businesses move faster.
Not give them more things to maintain.