WordPress alternative
WordPress runs 40% of the web. It also accounts for an outsized share of breaches. Here's when to migrate to Next.js.
✦ Stay on WordPress if
- ✓You have a WordPress workflow your team already knows
- ✓You depend on specific plugins (WooCommerce at scale, etc.)
- ✓Your site is content-only with no app logic
✦ Migrate when
- →You're patching security issues monthly
- →Plugin conflicts have caused outages
- →Page speed is consistently <50 on PageSpeed Insights
- →You want a faster CMS workflow than WP-Admin
WordPress isn't going anywhere
WordPress will outlive most of us. It powers nearly half the internet, the ecosystem is enormous, and for a lot of content-only sites it's the right tool. I've built WordPress sites for clients who explicitly wanted it, and that was fine.
Where WordPress actively hurts you
- Security — WordPress + plugins is the most-attacked stack on the internet. Most "your site got hacked" stories are WordPress.
- Performance — out of the box, even cached, WordPress is slower than a flat Next.js site by 5-10x.
- Plugin chaos — your features depend on third-party plugins; their bugs become your bugs.
- Editor UX — Gutenberg is fine; Sanity / Contentful / Tina are dramatically better for non-technical editors.
The headless pattern
For clients with too much content to migrate, I often go headless: keep WordPress as the CMS (no front-end), serve the front-end via Next.js. The editorial team uses what they know, the visitors get a fast site, security surface area shrinks dramatically.
✦ Keep reading
Outgrowing WordPress?
Tell me what your stack looks like — I'll send back a migration plan and a fixed-price quote within 48 hours.