Since March, for every new customer in my two-person web shop, I have been offering my services in two variations: using WordPress or a much faster AI-powered solution, with the exact same cost for both options. And for the last thirty customers, seventy percent choose WordPress over the AI-powered version.

For me, it was quite surprising, and it appears that the critical factor was not design in any way, shape, or form. The only reason I could think of is that people who choose WordPress have some editing capabilities, while for the AI-powered sites, any change had to be approved by me. And when a customer asks, “so if I need to change the price list this Saturday, I just wait,” they tend to change their mind and go for the much clumsier CMS option. There also seems to be some confusion about the images in the design, mostly among clients over fifty, asking me if my site is not a chatbot in the website clothes. So I think I understand their concern, and until I invent some kind of a WordPress plugin architecture, any dynamic elements would require either custom coding on the WordPress side or a separate database, which most often means Supabase. And for thirty percent of clients who sign up for the AI option, it turns out that it is their only option after the launch because they will never edit the site again, ever. So it is much better to have a mobile detailer who needs nothing but a WordPress page with booking than to have an unhappy customer because their Saturday night edits have gone live only after my morning approval.

Finally, there is one crucial technical consideration for me in choosing between the platforms, and it is the hosting. For now, I have a couple of clients on Hostinger, a couple of older sites left on SiteGround from the previous year, and one Wix customer who still refuses to leave it for unknown reasons. But when it comes to WordPress, the critical consideration is whether a customer can update something at 11 pm without asking me for permission first.