Your WordPress Site Will Cost You $18K More Next Year. Here's Why.
If you're a product owner watching AWS bills spike every campaign launch, you've hit the moment where WordPress becomes the most expensive option.
WordPress still powers 43% of the web. But the headless CMS market is on track to hit $22B by 2034. Here's how to figure out which path actually makes sense for your situation -- and what migration really costs.
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Frequently Asked Questions
WordPress is cheaper upfront — $5-50/month hosting plus free plugins. But total cost of ownership climbs fast once you factor in premium plugins, security monitoring, and performance work. A headless CMS like Sanity runs $99-500/month with lower maintenance overhead. For sites over 50 pages with real growth plans, headless typically breaks even within 18 months.
Yes. WPGraphQL or the REST API lets WordPress serve content to a Next.js or Astro frontend. Editors keep the familiar dashboard while users get a static, edge-cached site. The tradeoff: you're maintaining two systems, you'll need custom preview environments, and frontend-dependent plugins — page builders, most SEO tools — stop working.
For a typical site with 200-500 pages, plan for 8-10 weeks. Most of that time goes into content schema mapping and frontend development, not the data migration itself. Complex ACF field groups, WooCommerce, or multilingual content adds another 2-4 weeks. We run migration scripts in parallel with frontend builds to keep timelines tight.
Not if redirects, canonical URLs, and structured data are handled properly. We generate 1:1 redirect maps, preserve URL structures where possible, and validate schema markup after migration. Most clients see ranking improvements within 4-6 weeks — Core Web Vitals scores jump, and Google responds to faster, more accessible pages.
It depends on your team. Sanity works well for developer-led teams who need custom content models. Contentful fits enterprise workflows with approval chains. Strapi is self-hosted and open-source for teams who want full control. Cosmic handles multi-site architectures well. We look at your content model, team skills, and budget before making a call.
Three paths: stay on WordPress with caching and security hardening — the right move for simple blogs under 50 pages. Go hybrid with WPGraphQL and a Next.js frontend — best for large content libraries with non-technical editors. Or migrate fully to Sanity, Contentful, or similar — the right choice for multi-channel, high-performance, AI-integrated applications.
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