You can easily build MVPs and simple applications with WordPress without coding knowledge. That said, this would inevitably lead to scalability, performance, security, and backward compatibility issues if your application gets some traction.
I’ve been compiling a list of common problems for large WordPress websites which uncovers a good number of challenges when using large and bloated plugins (premium sliders or visual builders), randomly picked extensions and plugins generating a large number of database queries, or different pieces of code which may not play well within the application itself.
Websites face different challenges with the increasing volume of data (users or content) and traffic. You may not see incompatibilities or performance leaks when you get to 10,000 monthly views, but this becomes apparent at 100K, 1M, and especially at 10M and more.
Merely switching to a better hosting vendor won’t solve the problem by itself. WordPress plugins work in mysterious ways – they may stack at a specific hook or cause timeout problems when you take certain actions. It’s not always trivial to analyze (although debugging in WordPress is fairly well supported) and may require forking or rebuilding existing plugins.
If you are launching a pet project for yourself or for a very simple solution that won’t grow with time, bundling a few plugins together into an app may work. As the project scales, you’ll most definitely need some coding chops and understanding of the underlying layers.
Related: The Disconnect Between a WordPress Install and Developed Solutions – WP Elevation
