WordPress Is Undermining Its Own Future by Treating Optimization as an Upsell

The Problem: Performance Is Paywalled

The author expresses frustration with WordPress for making performance features a premium service, impacting creators negatively. Despite paying for high-tier plans, users face slow sites and must rely on external tools for basic optimization. This leads to lost readers and revenue, prompting many creators to consider other platforms. A call for essential optimization integration is made.

After four hours of trying to manually optimize my WordPress.com Business site—despite paying $40/month—I’m no longer just frustrated. I’m seeing the deeper problem: WordPress is not only failing content creators, it’s shooting itself in the foot by making performance a premium add-on rather than a baseline standard.

Bloat by Default, Fixes Behind a Paywall

Let me be blunt: I shouldn’t have to use Jetpack Boost and external diagnostics to fix what WordPress should already be doing out of the box. Page load speed affects everything—search ranking, bounce rate, ad impressions, reader retention. Yet WordPress ships bloated templates, half-optimized AI content tools, and heavy images without offering meaningful performance checks during the publishing workflow. And when it does offer solutions? They’re tucked into a separate product behind another paywall or manual workflow.

The Real Cost: Lost Readers, Revenue, and Reach

If you want to know why readers bounce, why ad revenue drops, and why your creators struggle to grow an audience, this is it. You’re creating a system where site owners pay top dollar and still have to duct-tape together performance with third-party tools and plug-in patchwork.

This Hurts WordPress, Too

This doesn’t just hurt us—it hurts WordPress itself.

When readers abandon a slow site, they’re not just leaving the creator—they’re leaving WordPress. And with them goes your potential ad revenue, your platform loyalty, and your conversion opportunities. Worse, you’re also killing the chance to convert loyal readers into creators. If someone is inspired by a blog post or portfolio on a WP site and considers building their own—but the page loads slowly or lags on mobile—they’re far less likely to make that leap. That’s a lost subscriber, a lost upgrade, and a lost future creator.

Creators Are Leaving—And They’re Right To

Meanwhile, the creators who are already here? They’re leaving in frustration. After paying for premium plans and still having to fight for basic performance standards, many of us are done waiting for WordPress to get it right. We’re exploring other platforms—ones that don’t charge extra for the basics.

The Fix: Build Optimization Into the Workflow

Want to keep creators? Start by respecting their time. Start by making speed and optimization a core feature—not an afterthought. Put Jetpack Boost inside the prepublish panel. Run performance checks when content is saved. Offer one-click optimization when the featured image is generated. Make performance the default, not a struggle.

Because if you’re profiting from creators, then every reader they lose due to slow load times is money WordPress is choosing to throw away.

And that’s a system flaw—not user error.

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To WordPress: Respect the people who build your platform—your creators. Give us the tools we need as part of the plans we already pay for.

To fellow creators: Speak up. Share your experience. Demand better. We’re not asking for extras—we’re asking for the essentials.