You have probably heard it from someone: WordPress is insecure, you should have used Squarespace, everyone gets hacked. It comes up most often when you are already stressed about your site.
The claim is not made up. It is just badly interpreted. Here is what the numbers actually mean.
Why WordPress tops the hacked-site charts
WordPress powers a very large share of all websites on the internet. When one platform holds that much of the market, it will inevitably account for the largest raw number of compromised sites, even if its per-site risk were identical to everything else.
It is the same reason the most-stolen car models are the most common ones on the road. Volume, not vulnerability.
There is a second effect too. WordPress is open source and self-hosted, so incidents are visible, discussed publicly and catalogued in vulnerability databases. Closed hosted platforms handle problems internally and quietly. That does not mean fewer problems. It means fewer headlines.
The actual difference: who is responsible
This is the real answer, and it has almost nothing to do with code quality.
On a hosted platform like Squarespace, Wix or Shopify, the company controls the entire stack. You cannot install arbitrary third-party code, and you cannot fall behind on updates because you do not do updates. Security is handled for you, and in exchange you accept tight limits on what your site can do.
WordPress hands you the keys. You choose the host, the plugins, the theme, the users, the update schedule. That flexibility is exactly why so many businesses use it, and it is also why the security outcome depends entirely on the person holding the keys.
So the honest framing is not "WordPress is less secure". It is that WordPress puts security in your hands, and hosted platforms do not offer you the choice.
WordPress core is not the problem
Worth stating clearly, because the criticism usually lands in the wrong place.
WordPress core is maintained by a dedicated security team, patched quickly, and ships automatic updates for security releases. Core vulnerabilities are comparatively rare, and when they appear they are fixed fast.
The large majority of WordPress compromises trace back to three things, none of which are core:
- Outdated plugins and themes. Tens of thousands of third-party components, wildly varying maintenance standards.
- Weak or reused login credentials. No exploit required, just a password from a breach list.
- Poor hosting and configuration. Old PHP versions, bad file permissions, no isolation between accounts on shared servers.
All three are decisions, not defects. Which is genuinely good news, because decisions can be changed.
What hosted platforms cost you in return
If security were the only consideration, the trade would be obvious. It is not.
Hosted platforms restrict functionality, charge more as you grow, and own the environment your business lives in. Exporting your content and moving elsewhere ranges from awkward to genuinely painful. Pricing and feature decisions are made for you.
They also are not invulnerable. Hosted platforms suffer breaches, outages and account takeovers too. Weak passwords and phishing work against a Squarespace login exactly as well as a WordPress one.
Most businesses on WordPress are there for a reason: they need custom functionality, they own their data, and the ecosystem lets them build what they actually need. The right response is not to abandon the platform. It is to take the responsibility that comes with it.
Getting the flexibility without the exposure
A well-maintained WordPress site is a perfectly secure choice for a business. The word doing the work in that sentence is "maintained".
In practice that means updates applied and tested on a schedule, unused plugins and themes deleted rather than deactivated, strong unique credentials with two-factor on every admin, a firewall filtering the obvious attacks, off-site backups that have been tested, and someone actually reading the scan results.
The fix: pick the one item on that list you know is currently not happening and handle it this week. For most sites it is either update lag or an old administrator account belonging to a developer who left years ago.
Where a care plan fits
Choosing a hosted platform is really a decision to pay someone else to handle the maintenance, at the cost of control. A managed care plan gives you the same outcome without giving up your platform.
Up Speed runs tested updates, malware scanning, 24/7 uptime monitoring and scheduled off-site backups on every plan. The hardening layer, Wordfence firewall, iThemes configuration, two-factor login and blacklist monitoring, comes with the Professional plan.
And the part no platform gives you: when something breaks, a real person fixes it. Not a ticket queue, not a dashboard you have to learn. No site can be made completely secure, on any platform. But the reason WordPress sites get hacked is almost never the software. It is that nobody was looking after it.