Your brand, your control: why WordPress still wins in 2025
Your website is your digital home — and choosing the right platform is one of the most important decisions you’ll make. At Weave, we build exclusively on WordPress because it consistently delivers flexibility, performance, and future-proof ownership for our clients. For New Zealand companies looking for the best CMS for business websites, WordPress remains the smartest choice in 2025.
1. Open source power
WordPress is free, open-source software licensed under GPL. That means no vendor lock-in, total transparency, and a global community constantly improving the platform. You’re not tied to a single developer or agency — your website belongs to you. For small businesses and growing brands alike, open-source freedom ensures long-term security and control.
2. Clean, well-structured code
WordPress is built on modern coding standards, making it easier to maintain, extend, and optimise. Weave’s developers use lightweight, efficient code for speed, security, and longevity — no bloat, no shortcuts. If you’re wondering why choose WordPress over other CMS platforms, this commitment to clean, maintainable code is a major advantage.
3. A custom CMS that grows with you
With WordPress, your site can start small and scale without limits. From marketing websites to large-scale membership portals, the flexibility of custom themes, the Gutenberg editor, and a rich plugin ecosystem means we can design a CMS that fits exactly how your team works. This is one reason it’s widely regarded as the best website platform for small businesses as well as for large, content-driven enterprises.
4. Trusted by the web — statistics that speak volumes
- Powers over 43% of all websites worldwide in 2025.
- Holds a 60–62% CMS market share, far ahead of alternatives.
- Used by brands like TechCrunch, PlayStation Blog, Sony Music, CNN, Reuters, Vogue, Spotify, and The New York Times (blog).
- Chosen by enterprise publishers like Vox Media for its scalability and reliability.
Whether you’re a small business in Christchurch or a national organisation, the fact that top companies worldwide choose WordPress is a strong signal that it’s the best CMS for New Zealand businesses looking to grow.
5. Why we don’t use Silverstripe
Silverstripe is a New Zealand-developed CMS with a small but loyal following. It has strengths — particularly for government websites requiring specific compliance frameworks — but for most businesses, it can be limiting.
Here’s why Weave doesn’t recommend Silverstripe for our clients:
- Smaller Developer Pool – Finding experienced Silverstripe developers is harder, which can make long-term support more difficult and expensive.
- Limited Ecosystem – Compared to WordPress’s 60,000+ plugins, Silverstripe’s module library is much smaller, meaning more features must be built from scratch.
- Less Flexibility – Silverstripe often requires more custom development for functionality that WordPress can deliver quickly and cost-effectively.
- Lower Adoption – With only a fraction of the global CMS market, Silverstripe has a smaller community, slower update cycles, and fewer integrations with modern marketing tools.
While Silverstripe may be right for some very specific use cases, for most organisations seeking flexibility, scalability, and easy access to skilled developers, WordPress is the smarter long-term investment.
6. Why WordPress is the best solution
- Scalable from day one — start small, grow big.
- Fully customisable — your CMS works how you need it to.
- Future-proof ownership — no lock-in, open source forever.
- Thriving ecosystem — tens of thousands of themes, plugins, and integrations ready to go.
Ready to go further with WordPress?
At Weave, we harness the open-source flexibility, clean architecture, and vast ecosystem of WordPress to create custom websites that reflect your brand and scale with your goals. If you’re looking for the best website platform for small businesses in New Zealand, or want an enterprise-ready solution that can grow with you, WordPress is it.
Connect with our WordPress experts today to see how we can create a powerful, easy-to-manage website for your business. Visit our WordPress specialists page.
- About the Author
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Transforming technical complexity into business clarity is what Gareth does best.
Gareth has been building for the web since the mid-90s – from the early hand-coded days to leading large ISPs and telcos, and now Weave Digital Studio with his wife, Liz.
At Weave, he helps professional services, science, and agritech organisations turn complex, data-heavy information into clear, compelling digital solutions that engage the right audiences and support informed decision-making.
An advocate for open source, online-privacy, and high-performance hosting, Gareth also manages a custom WordPress hosting stack powering 100’s of sites across New Zealand and Australia.
Gareth is fueled by single origin coffee, vinyl records, calisthenics for fitness, and a steady supply of bad dad jokes – plus the occasional game of netball to keep him honest.