It’s a question that still surfaces in WordPress communities, support forums, and hosting consultations: should site owners still be implementing Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in 2025? The answer requires understanding how dramatically the landscape has shifted since Google’s AMP framework first gained traction nearly a decade ago.
What Is AMP, and Why Did It Matter?
AMP was created by Google in 2015 as a quick fix to improve page load speed and user experience for mobile users. Back then, mobile web performance was genuinely terrible, and AMP offered a structured solution that promised lightning-fast loading times through stripped-down HTML, aggressive caching, and strict limitations on JavaScript and CSS.
Many WordPress site owners looked to plugins like AMP and AMP for WP – boasting features like Google Analytics support, ad integration, and custom post type compatibility – believing they needed these accelerated pages to compete in mobile search results.
But here’s what many discovered the hard way: AMP’s promise of better performance often came at the cost of functionality, design flexibility, and user experience. Sites that spent months perfecting their mobile experience suddenly found themselves managing two different versions of their content, with the AMP variant looking like a shadow of their actual website.
Google’s Removal of AMP Dependency
The writing appeared on the wall when Google removed AMP as a requirement for appearing in Top Stories in May 2021. This change marked a fundamental shift in Google’s approach to mobile web performance, moving away from a technology-specific solution toward broader user experience metrics.
Core Web Vitals became Google’s new standard, focusing on measurable aspects of user experience:
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) for loading performance.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP) for responsiveness.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) for visual stability.
These metrics evaluate actual user experience rather than adherence to a specific framework.
The implications were immediate and far-reaching. Google’s John Mueller has repeatedly emphasized that Core Web Vitals are not giant ranking factors, stating “I doubt you’d see a big drop just because of that”, but the message was clear: sites could achieve excellent performance without AMP’s constraints.
The Technical Limitations
WordPress site owners who implemented AMP often encountered frustrations that plugin documentation glossed over. AMP’s restrictive framework only allows inline CSS up to 75kB and third-party JavaScript up to 150kB, making functionality and engagement with webpages severely limited.
This means interactive elements that define modern web experiences (complex forms, dynamic content loading, advanced animations, etc.) can either break entirely or require annoying workarounds. The “stripped-down” appearance that AMP enforces often bears little resemblance to a carefully crafted WordPress theme.
User confusion becomes another significant issue. When visitors land on pages from Google’s AMP Viewer, they don’t see the actual website URL, creating trust and branding concerns. Users might share AMP URLs that don’t properly represent the site, or bookmark pages that lead to cached versions rather than the live website.
For WordPress sites that depend on lead generation, subscription forms, or detailed product catalogs, these limitations can directly impact business objectives. The promise of faster loading times loses its appeal when conversion opportunities disappear.
The Performance Myth Debunked
Modern WordPress hosting infrastructure has evolved dramatically since AMP’s introduction and quality hosting plans now provide optimized server configurations, advanced caching systems, content delivery networks, and performance monitoring that can deliver sub-three-second loading times without AMP’s restrictions.
Well-optimized WordPress sites can consistently achieve these benchmarks through proper hosting, theme selection, image optimization, and caching strategies. Simply put, the performance advantages that made AMP attractive in 2015 can now be achieved through conventional optimization techniques. Modern WordPress themes built with performance in mind, combined with professional hosting environments, regularly outperform AMP pages in real-world usability while maintaining full functionality. Progressive web app technologies, lazy loading, critical CSS inlining, and modern JavaScript frameworks provide speed improvements without sacrificing the interactive elements that make websites engaging and effective.
Maintaining AMP Pages
WordPress site owners who implemented AMP often underestimate the ongoing maintenance burden. Managing two versions of every page means double the testing, double the potential for errors, and constant vigilance to ensure content synchronization.
Plugin updates can break AMP functionality in unexpected ways, particularly when themes or other plugins introduce changes that conflict with AMP’s strict requirements. The debugging process becomes more complex because issues might only surface in the AMP version of pages.
SEO management becomes unnecessarily complicated when canonical tags, structured data, and meta information must be coordinated across both AMP and standard versions. Analytics tracking requires additional configuration to ensure accurate reporting across both experiences.
For teams without dedicated development resources, these complications can consume a lot of time and energy that’d be better invested in content creation, user experience improvements, or business development.
The Modern WordPress Performance Stack
Rather than relying on AMP for performance gains, WordPress site owners should focus on proven optimization strategies that don’t sacrifice functionality or user experience:
- Choose a reputable hosting provider: Where you choose to host could significantly impact loading times, reliability, and user experience more than any individual plugin or framework. Having quality managed hosting provides the foundation for excellent performance through optimized server configurations, automatic scaling, and professional monitoring.
- Theme selection matters enormously: Modern WordPress themes built with performance optimization in mind can achieve excellent Core Web Vitals scores while maintaining functionality and design flexibility. Look for themes that prioritize clean code, efficient CSS, and minimal JavaScript dependencies.
- Optimize images: Modern solutions provide automatic compression, format selection, and responsive sizing without manual intervention. Properly optimized images often represent the single largest performance improvement opportunity for WordPress sites.
- Employ caching strategies: Think beyond simple page caching and include object caching, database query optimization, and a CDN. Professional hosting environments typically handle these optimizations automatically, removing complexity while maximizing performance.
Combine all of these, and you’ve got a stack that can outperform AMP no problem.
When AMP Actually Makes Sense (Spoiler: It’s Rare)
According to Newzdash’s AMP Tracker, currently non-AMP results account for 79.2% of Top Stories content in the U.S., suggesting that solid search performance can be achieved perfectly fine without the use of AMP. Still, despite the general recommendation against AMP implementation, specific scenarios may exist where it might provide value. Large-scale news publishers with simple content structures might benefit from AMP’s caching, particularly if their primary goal is content consumption rather than user engagement or conversion.
Sites that publish primarily text-based content with minimal interactive requirements (think traditional blogs focused on information delivery) might still see marginal benefits from AMP. However, even these cases must weigh the maintenance overhead against diminishing returns.
The key consideration is whether the simplified user experience aligns with business objectives. For most WordPress sites, the answer is definitively no.
Making the Decision for Your WordPress Site
At this point, the decision about AMP implementation should be straightforward for most WordPress site owners: avoid it unless you have compelling, specific reasons to accept its limitations.
Focus instead on comprehensive performance optimization through professional hosting, theme selection, image optimization, and modern caching strategies. These approaches provide better performance outcomes while maintaining the full functionality and user experience that makes WordPress sites effective.
Google’s shift toward Core Web Vitals means that website speed, user experience, and mobile optimization are the true ranking factors that matter. Meeting these standards doesn’t require AMP’s compromises, it simply requires thoughtful optimization of WordPress and its existing capabilities.
For site owners currently running AMP, consider conducting performance comparisons between AMP and optimized standard pages. Many will find that properly optimized WordPress sites deliver better user experiences with improved functionality and easier maintenance.
Wrapping Up
So, should WordPress site owners use AMP in 2025? For most, the answer leans toward no. With W3Techs showing AMP adoption at a measly 0.2% and alternatives aplenty, AMP’s glory days are behind it. Google’s Core Web Vitals shift sealed that fate, pushing site owners to optimize smarter, not harder.
The choice hinges on specifics – traffic, content, resources, goals. Whatever the call, fast hosting and sharp optimization keep any site competitive. Focus on what your site needs, and the path forward becomes a little clearer.
