Executive Summary
We scanned 100 staffing agency websites to understand the true state of WordPress in the industry. Of the sites analyzed, 61 were confirmed WordPress sites—and the data tells a concerning story.
The average staffing agency website has 8.7 plugins installed, creating a fragile stack that requires constant maintenance. Worse, 72% of sites received a failing grade (F) for mobile performance—a critical metric when candidates are increasingly job-hunting on their phones.
With an estimated $183/month in hidden maintenance costs per site, staffing agencies are collectively spending over $133,000 annually just to keep their WordPress sites running. Our analysis suggests they could save $112,440/year by migrating to a modern platform.
Mobile Performance: The Ugly Truth
Google's PageSpeed Insights measures real-world performance. Here's how staffing agency sites scored on mobile:
Why this matters: 53% of mobile users abandon sites that take longer than 3 seconds to load. Poor mobile performance directly impacts candidate applications and client conversions.
Plugin Fragility: A House of Cards
Every plugin is a potential point of failure—an update that breaks your site, a security vulnerability, or an abandoned project. Here's how staffing agencies stack up:
The sites with 20+ plugins face the highest maintenance burden—each update cycle risks breaking functionality, and the more plugins you have, the more likely conflicts become.
Page Builder Lock-in
Page builders promise easy editing but create vendor lock-in and performance overhead. Here's what staffing agencies are using:
74% of WordPress staffing sites use a page builder. While these tools make editing easier, they add significant performance overhead and make future migrations more complex.
Security Concerns
Outdated WordPress installations and vulnerable plugins are the #1 attack vector for hackers. With staffing agencies handling sensitive candidate and client data, these security gaps pose significant business risk.
The Real Cost of WordPress
We calculated the true cost of ownership including hosting, security, plugin licenses, maintenance time, and developer support:
By migrating to a modern platform like Webflow, staffing agencies could eliminate plugin costs, reduce security overhead, and drastically improve performance—all while cutting their total cost of ownership.
Methodology
We compiled a list of 100 staffing agency websites from industry directories and public sources. Each site was scanned using our automated analysis tool, which checks:
- WordPress detection and version identification
- Plugin enumeration and vulnerability scanning
- Google PageSpeed Insights API for performance metrics
- Page builder and theme detection
- Security header analysis
Of the 100 sites scanned, 61 were confirmed WordPress installations. The remaining 39 used other platforms (Webflow, custom builds, etc.) and were excluded from WordPress-specific analysis.
Scan conducted December. Individual site data kept anonymous.