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Migrate off WordPress, onto a stack you don't have to keep rescuing

When a heavily targeted WordPress flaw goes public, the weighted median time to the first exploit attempt is five hours, and in 2025 nearly half of new vulnerabilities had no fix available the moment they were disclosed (Patchstack). Our WordPress migration services move UK small businesses off that plugin-patching treadmill onto a modern, secure stack with far fewer moving parts to maintain. If your site has been hacked or is barely holding together, we rescue and harden it first, but the endpoint is always a clean migration off WordPress, not a long-term life on it. We audit before we recommend.

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The real picture: WordPress isn't the problem, the upkeep is

WordPress runs around 41.5% of all websites and 59.3% of every site whose content management system is known, according to W3Techs' web technology usage survey (updated daily). It's popular for good reasons, and its core software is well maintained, with just six vulnerabilities in 2025, all low priority, per Patchstack's State of WordPress Security in 2026 report.

The burden lives somewhere else: the plugins. The same Patchstack report found that 91% of new WordPress vulnerabilities in 2025 were in plugins (the other 9% in themes). Every plugin you add is another piece of someone else's code you're now responsible for keeping patched, forever. For a small business owner with a shop to run, that's a maintenance contract nobody signed up for.

So this page isn't an argument that WordPress is unsafe. It's about whether you should be the one carrying the upkeep, and what it looks like to hand that weight to a stack that has far less of it to carry.

Who this is for

You're a UK small business on WordPress, and one or more of these is true:

Your site was recently hacked, or you suspect it has been.
It keeps going offline, slowing down, or showing errors you can't explain.
A "This site may be hacked" label has appeared next to your site in Google results.
Plugin conflicts keep breaking things after updates.
Nobody is actually keeping the plugins and themes updated — there's no maintenance routine, just hope.
You're about to start taking payments or storing customer data and you're uneasy about the security and compliance side.

We've run WordPress sites ourselves, so this is peer-to-peer, not a lecture. We're a small UK business too, and we know the difference between a tidy theory and what you can keep on top of while running everything else.

The problem, in plain numbers

A few verified figures explain why "we'll get round to updates eventually" stopped being a safe plan. All are from Patchstack's State of WordPress Security in 2026 report, which covers 2025 data, unless noted.

11,334 new vulnerabilities were found across the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, a 42% rise on the year before. What it means: the number of known ways in keeps growing faster than most owners can track.
46% had no fix available from the developer at the moment they were made public. What it means: nearly half the time, the flaw is public knowledge before there's anything to install, and attackers read the same disclosures you do.
For the most heavily targeted flaws, the weighted median time from disclosure to first exploitation was five hours, and roughly half of high-impact vulnerabilities were exploited within 24 hours. What it means: "I'll patch it next month" isn't a strategy. Automated scanners start probing the same day.
57.6% of new vulnerabilities in the first half of 2025 needed no login at all to exploit, so any anonymous visitor could attempt them against an unpatched site (Patchstack, 2025 Mid-Year Vulnerability Report; 6,700 new vulnerabilities were recorded in that half alone).
Common security solutions, the WAFs and CDN-edge filters many "security plugins" lean on, blocked only 12% of attacks that exploited known WordPress vulnerabilities, and 26% of attacks overall. What it means: a security plugin helps, but it isn't a substitute for keeping the software patched and the plugin count low.
Paying for a plugin doesn't buy safety: premium components had three times more known exploited vulnerabilities than free ones in 2025.

None of this is a reason to panic. It's the reason to stop carrying the upkeep by hand.

What attackers actually do to a hacked site

When a WordPress site is compromised, it's rarely dramatic vandalism. It's quiet, and it's built to make money off your traffic and your rankings. Sucuri's 2024 SiteCheck Malware Trends Report scanned 70.8 million websites and detected 1,176,701 infected ones; of those, 74.7% were carrying malware or malicious redirect code and 38.4% carried SEO spam.

In plain terms, that's:

SEO spam injection — hidden gambling or pharmaceutical links and pages added to your site to ride your search rankings. It quietly drags down the rankings you've paid to build.
Malicious redirects — visitors who click your link in Google get bounced to a scam or malware site instead of your shop.
Credit-card skimmers — on WooCommerce stores, code that copies customers' card details at checkout.

These aren't theoretical. The top campaigns Sucuri detected on infected sites in 2024 were Balada Injector (149,351 detections), SocGholish (147,332) and Sign1 (96,084). Balada Injector has been running since 2017 and Sucuri estimates it has infected over a million WordPress sites in total, exploiting known theme and plugin flaws to plant backdoors for repeat access.

Part of our job is recognising these by their signatures. Not just reporting "malware found", but knowing whether you're looking at Balada, SocGholish or Sign1, because that tells us how they got in and what else to check.

The Google consequence

Hacked content — injected spam, hidden links, malicious redirects — is a Google Search spam-policy violation. Google's guidance is clear that sites which violate the policies "may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all". Separately, Google Search Console can flag an affected site with a "This site may be hacked" label in results until it's cleaned and reviewed. So a hack isn't only a security incident; it's a direct hit to the customers and rankings you depend on, and recovery takes a Search Console review plus time.

The compliance side

If your site stores or processes personal data — customer names, emails, order history, payment details — a breach can become a legal matter, not just a technical one.

Under UK GDPR, organisations must notify the ICO of a notifiable personal data breach without undue delay and within 72 hours of becoming aware, where the breach is likely to risk individuals' rights and freedoms. Failing to notify when required can attract a fine of up to £8.7 million or 2% of global annual turnover (the lower tier), and this applies to organisations of every size. The ICO enforces it in practice: in April 2025 it fined DPP Law Ltd £60,000 after attackers brute-forced an administrator account that lacked multi-factor authentication, then reported the breach 43 days late. That incident wasn't a website hack, but the failure behind it — an exposed admin account with no MFA — is exactly the kind of access-control gap an unmaintained site leaves open. It's a cost worth designing out.

Two routes off WordPress: rescue first, or migrate straight away

The destination is the same either way: a modern, secure stack off WordPress. What differs is the order of work. We audit your site first, then recommend the right route.

Route A — Rescue first, then migrate

Right when your site has been hacked or is too fragile to move as-is. We stabilise it before anything else: remove the confirmed threats, close the specific vulnerabilities, rotate credentials and trim the plugin footprint, so you're not running a compromised site while we plan the move. From that safe, migration-ready state, we rebuild your content on a modern stack and retire the WordPress install. The rescue is the first step of the migration, not an alternative to it. We don't leave you parked on WordPress long-term.

Route B — Migrate straight away

Right when the site is stable enough to move directly. We rebuild it on a stack with a smaller inherent attack surface: fewer third-party dependencies to track, and no public exploit database cataloguing every component for attackers to shop from. Fewer moving parts means fewer things to patch and fewer things that break. The upkeep that made WordPress a chore also shows up as cost and as performance drag, so leaving it behind takes weight off all three. That is the whole point.

Which route fits depends on your site's condition: whether it's compromised or fragile enough to need stabilising first. Either way the outcome is the same: off WordPress, onto a stack you don't have to keep rescuing. We pick the destination around your needs, not a house favourite.

What we do

A clear, ordered process: no jargon, and you'll know what's happening at each step.

Audit. We inventory every plugin and theme, check them against the public WordPress vulnerability databases, and review your access logs for signs the site has already been compromised. You get a plain-English picture of where you stand.
Immediate triage (if you've been hacked). We quarantine or remove confirmed threats, rotate every credential, and remove any rogue administrator accounts an attacker may have created. The priority is stopping the bleeding.
Migration plan. Based on the audit, we recommend Route A or Route B and scope the move in writing, so you know the work and the cost before anything starts.
Rescue (if needed), then rebuild, followed by ongoing managed patching. We stabilise a compromised site first if there is one, rebuild it on a modern stack, then keep it updated on a managed cadence, aligned to the NCSC's default guidance that internet-facing services be patched within five days of a fix being available.
Handover with documentation. You finish on a stack you understand, off WordPress, with a record of what was done, not a black box you're afraid to touch.

Proof

We identify the named campaigns above — Balada, SocGholish, Sign1 — by their signatures rather than reporting generic "malware found", and we frame ongoing patching around the NCSC's five-day window, so the advice carries official UK backing rather than our opinion. We're a small UK business serving small businesses across the UK, including Peterborough and Cambridgeshire, not only London, so we understand the maintenance burden from the inside, because we carry it too.

We're building this section with real client outcomes and will publish them here as they're confirmed. We won't print invented numbers; ask us and we'll share what we've seen across audits and rescues.

What it costs

The move off WordPress is scoped as a project, so you know the price before any work starts. The size of the job depends on your site's content, integrations and whether it needs rescuing first. If you've been hacked, the emergency triage to stabilise the site is scoped up front too, as the first step of that project, not an open-ended bill. The free audit returns a fixed written scope, so you see the figure before you commit to anything.

Once you're on a modern stack, keeping it that way (patching, backups, monitoring and updates) folds into our single monthly plan rather than landing as separate invoices, so the upkeep that made WordPress a chore stops being something you have to manage or pay for piecemeal.

See our pricing page for the monthly plans (Essential, Growth, Scale) and the custom project rate, or just ask for a quote when you get in touch. We put the numbers up front, partly because the DMCC Act requires total prices to be clear, and partly because it's how we'd want to be sold to.

Frequently asked questions

My site was hacked — what happens to my Google rankings?

Hacked content (injected spam, hidden links, malicious redirects) breaks Google's spam policies, so the site may rank lower or drop out of results entirely, and Search Console can show a "This site may be hacked" label. Once the site is genuinely clean, you request a review in Search Console and the label is removed. Malware reviews usually take a few days, spam reviews can take longer, and organic rankings recover more slowly still. The faster it's cleaned properly, the less ground you lose.

Do I have to report a website hack to the ICO?

If personal data was accessed, stolen or encrypted without authorisation, it's likely a notifiable personal data breach under UK GDPR, and the ICO must be told within 72 hours of you becoming aware, where there's a risk to people's rights. If the risk to individuals is high, you usually have to tell the affected people too. This applies to any organisation, regardless of size: the ICO fined DPP Law Ltd £60,000 in April 2025, partly for taking 43 days to report.

My WordPress site hasn't been hacked — why should I worry?

Because 46% of new WordPress vulnerabilities in 2025 were public before the plugin developer had a fix, and once a flaw is public, automated scanners start probing within hours (the weighted median time to first exploit for heavily targeted flaws was five hours in 2025). Being uncompromised today may just mean you haven't been scanned yet. The real question is whether unpatched plugins are leaving a window open.

Is WordPress itself the problem, or is it the plugins?

Mostly the plugins. In 2025, 91% of new WordPress vulnerabilities were in plugins, while the core had just six, all low priority. The risk lives in the third-party plugin ecosystem and in day-to-day site management, not in the CMS itself. And paying for a plugin doesn't make it safer: premium components had three times more known exploited vulnerabilities than free ones in the same report.

Can't I just install a security plugin and be protected?

A security plugin helps, but it isn't enough on its own. Patchstack's 2026 report found that the common security defences many plugins rely on blocked only 12% of attacks exploiting known WordPress vulnerabilities. Broken access control — a leading exploited category — looks like normal logged-in traffic, so signature-based tools miss it. Real protection is prompt patching, a minimal plugin footprint, access-control hardening and monitoring working together, not a single plugin.

What's the difference between a rescue and a migration, and how do we decide?

They're two stages of the same job, not two destinations. A rescue stabilises a hacked or fragile site first — removing threats, rotating credentials and trimming plugins — so it's safe to move; a migration then rebuilds it on a stack with a smaller inherent attack surface, so there's less to patch and track. If your site is compromised or too fragile to move as-is, we rescue first, then migrate; if it's stable, we migrate straight away. Either way you end up off WordPress. We don't leave you parked on it.

Do you build or support WordPress?

No. We don't build, host or maintain WordPress sites. The only WordPress work we take on is helping you move off it onto a modern, secure stack. If a site has been hacked, we'll rescue and stabilise it first, but as the first step of that migration, not as a way to keep you on WordPress.

Tell us about your site {#cta}

Whether you've been hacked, you're worried you're next, or you're just tired of the upkeep, the first step is the same: a plain look at where your site stands.

Get a free audit — we'll inventory your plugins, check for known vulnerabilities and signs of compromise, and tell you plainly whether your site needs rescuing before the move or can migrate straight away. No obligation, and what you tell us stays confidential.

Start a project — ready to move off WordPress, with an emergency rescue first if your site's already been hit? Let's scope it.