How so? I maintain two WordPress websites and really "maintaining" means I get an email telling me it automatically updated every so often. I spend more time on it restarting the server because it was updated to a newer kernel (it runs on Debian Stable, to give you an idea for how often that happens).

I do agree that if you need plug ins, that appears to get messy very fast, but the default WordPress site does everything I want and requires very little for maintenance.