Anyone else feel like WordPress sites in the same agency slowly drift apart over time?
Not sure if I’m imagining this or if it’s just how WordPress naturally evolves when you manage multiple clients.
I’ve been looking after a bunch of agency-built WP sites recently (mostly small brochure + a few WooCommerce), and one thing keeps bothering me:
Even when they start from a similar setup… they don’t stay similar for long.
Some sites end up:
- using slightly different caching setups
- having different optimisation plugins added over time
- behaving totally differently under load
- feeling “heavier” even if nothing obvious changed
And the weird part is it’s not usually one big decision that causes it.
It’s just… lots of small changes over time.
What really stood out was that two sites built by the same agency, on similar hosting, can feel completely different a year later.
I can’t tell if this is just normal WordPress behaviour or if most agencies just don’t standardise things as tightly as they think they do.
Curious if others see this or if I’m overthinking it.