Why we build on Next.js instead of WordPress

WordPress powers roughly 40% of the web. For a lot of projects it’s a completely reasonable choice — the ecosystem is massive, hosts are cheap, and most editorial teams already know how to use it. We don’t hate it.

But most of the work we get hired for is not a brochure site that someone’s cousin is going to take over in six months. It’s a marketing site that needs to rank, load fast, and be editable by a non-technical team for years. For that, Next.js plus a structured CMS wins almost every time. Here’s why.

The stack is the product

On WordPress, the stack is PHP, MySQL, and whatever plugin landscape your site has accumulated. Upgrades are a calendar item. Plugin conflicts are a class of bug. Performance work usually starts with "turn off the plugins."

On Next.js, the stack is React, TypeScript, and a database adapter of your choice. Dependencies update through a single package manifest. There’s one place the code runs and one place your content lives. That’s not an accident — it’s the point.

Performance is a default, not a retrofit

Next.js ships static HTML for anything that can be statically rendered, with automatic code splitting, image optimization, font optimization, and edge caching built in. A fresh Next.js install loads in under a second on a 3G connection. A fresh WordPress install usually does not.

You can make WordPress fast. We’ve done it. But "make WordPress fast" is a separate engagement. With Next.js, fast is the starting line.

The CMS is part of the design

The worst WordPress sites we’ve inherited have a content layer that fights the design. Gutenberg blocks don’t line up with the theme. Editors use paragraph tags where the design expects a specific component. Every page ends up looking slightly different.

With Payload CMS (our usual pick for Next.js), we define the content schema in TypeScript alongside the components that render it. The editor only sees blocks that actually exist in the design. The design and the CMS can never drift.

When WordPress is still the right call

We pick WordPress for:

• News sites with multiple editors, existing editorial workflows, and a Gutenberg-native team
• Sites where the client explicitly owns a WordPress host and isn’t looking to migrate
• Simple directory or landing-page sites where the $30/mo managed WordPress host is legitimately the cheapest option

Everything else — marketing sites, SaaS product pages, lead-gen sites, internal tools — gets Next.js.

Pick the tool that will still be working in three years when the person who hired you has moved on.

That’s the real test. Not the benchmark on the homepage. Not the number of plugins. Whether the site your successor inherits is something they can actually maintain.