Research brief: WordPress + Page Builders vs Modern Custom Stacks — sourced performance comparison (piece 18)
Created 2026-05-22
Status: Refresh of Research brief: The Case Against Page Builders (piece 10 of 15) and Research brief: Page Speed as a Moat — why CWV separates the agencies from the freelancers (piece 9 of 15) using November 2025 CrUX Tech Report data. Compiled May 22, 2026.
TL;DR
- WordPress (46.28% mobile CWV pass, Nov 2025) trails Duda 84.87%, Wix 74.86%, Shopify 75.22%, Squarespace 70.39%, Drupal 63.27%. See Platform mobile CWV pass rates, November 2025 CrUX Tech Report (SEJ analysis, Dec 2025).
- The gap is driven primarily by hosting (TTFB) + page builders + plugin sprawl — not WordPress core. See WordPress CWV gap causal decomposition (May 2026): ~40-50% hosting/TTFB, ~20-30% page builders, ~15-20% plugins, ~5-10% core, ~5-10% theme.
- A well-optimized Gutenberg-only WordPress site on managed hosting can match an Astro-on-Cloudflare site in the field. See A well-optimized WordPress + Gutenberg + Kadence/GeneratePress site on managed hosting can plausibly match an Astro-on-Cloudflare site in CWV.
Depends on
- reference Research brief: Page Speed as a Moat — why CWV separates the agencies from the freelancers (piece 9 of 15)
- reference Research brief: The Case Against Page Builders (piece 10 of 15)
- reference Platform mobile CWV pass rates, November 2025 CrUX Tech Report (SEJ analysis, Dec 2025)
- reference WordPress CWV gap causal decomposition (May 2026): ~40-50% hosting/TTFB, ~20-30% page builders, ~15-20% plugins, ~5-10% core, ~5-10% theme