The Question We Get Asked Most
"Should we build our website on WordPress or use a modern framework like Next.js?" We hear this question from almost every client who comes to us for a new website. The honest answer is: it depends — but the factors that determine the right choice are often misunderstood.
What Traditional CMS Platforms Do Well
Platforms like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla have dominated the web for 15+ years for good reasons:
- Familiarity: Most marketing teams know how to publish content without needing a developer
- Plugin ecosystem: Thousands of pre-built plugins for SEO, e-commerce, forms, and analytics
- Lower initial cost: A basic informational site can be stood up quickly
- Hosting simplicity: Managed WordPress hosting is widely available and inexpensive
For a small informational website that will be maintained entirely by non-technical staff and does not need complex interactivity, a well-configured WordPress installation remains a reasonable choice.
Where Modern Frameworks Win
Next.js and similar React-based frameworks shine in scenarios where:
Performance is Non-Negotiable
Next.js generates static HTML at build time and serves it from a global CDN. The result is sub-second page loads and excellent Core Web Vitals scores. WordPress, even with caching plugins, struggles to match this at scale.
SEO is a Priority
Modern Next.js sites with proper server-side rendering offer fine-grained control over meta tags, Open Graph, structured data, and canonical URLs in a way that is architecturally cleaner than managing SEO plugins.
The Site Will Scale
Once a WordPress site grows beyond ~50 pages with custom functionality, the plugin overhead and database queries become a performance liability. A custom Next.js application scales horizontally with edge computing infrastructure.
Custom Functionality is Required
Need a dynamic pricing calculator, an interactive portfolio filter, a multi-step application form, or real-time data integration? These are built cleanly in React without fighting the CMS's rendering model.
The Headless Approach: Best of Both Worlds
Many of our clients end up on a headless architecture: a modern CMS like Sanity or Contentful manages the content (preserving the non-technical editor experience), while a Next.js frontend handles rendering and delivery (delivering the performance and flexibility of a custom app).
This approach adds some initial complexity and cost, but for any website that takes SEO and performance seriously, it pays dividends quickly.
Our Recommendation
| Scenario | Recommendation | |----------|---------------| | Simple brochure site, small budget, non-technical team | WordPress | | Growing business, SEO-focused, expecting custom features | Next.js + Headless CMS | | Enterprise platform, complex workflows | Next.js + Headless CMS + custom API layer | | eCommerce | Next.js + Shopify (Headless) or custom |
The websites we build at Arizens are almost exclusively on Next.js with a headless CMS, because that is what delivers the best long-term outcomes for our clients. If you are unsure which approach fits your situation, [let us talk it through](/contact).