Headless CMS or WordPress: which should you choose for your website?

WordPress powers a considerable share of the web. It’s well known, flexible, and almost every provider knows how to use it. But more and more professional websites are built differently: a “headless” CMS to manage content, and a separately developed website to display it. What’s the difference for you, and should you make the switch?

Two ways to build a website

Classic WordPress is a “monolithic” CMS: the same application stores your content, generates the pages and displays them. The theme and plugins define the look and the features.

A headless CMS only handles content: text, images, pages, articles, products, team members. It makes them available through an API. The website, meanwhile, is a separate application, often built in Next.js, which retrieves this content and generates fast pages. The same content can feed the website, a mobile app or an in-store screen.

The most widely used headless CMSs

• Payload: open source and very flexible, it installs directly inside a Next.js application. Your data stays with you, in your own database.
• Strapi: also open source, very widespread, with an admin interface that’s easy to get to grips with.
• Sanity: a hosted service, known for its real-time collaborative editing and its flexibility.
• Contentful: a hosted solution aimed at large companies, more expensive.
• Headless WordPress: you can also keep the WordPress interface and display the website with Next.js. A compromise for teams attached to WordPress.

What headless changes

Speed

Pages are generated in advance and served instantly, with no database query on each visit. That’s a direct gain for Core Web Vitals, SEO and conversion. We explain why in our article on SSR, SSG and CSR.

Security

WordPress websites are frequent targets, often through an outdated plugin. With a static website, there’s no longer an admin interface exposed on the public site, and the attack surface shrinks considerably.

Design freedom

No more theme to work around: the website is designed exactly as planned, with no superfluous code.

Content structure

Instead of pages filled in with a visual builder, you define content types: a service has a title, a description, benefits, an FAQ; a project has a client, a sector, images. Content stays consistent, easy to reuse and to translate.

What headless requires

• Custom development: no €60 theme or one-click plugin.
• A provider skilled in these technologies, and the guarantee that you can switch provider: favour open-source, widely used tools.
• A change of habits: editors don’t always see the final page while they write, even though live previews have come a long way.
• Upfront thinking about content structure, which is also a long-term benefit.

Which should you choose?

WordPress remains a good choice if…

• your budget is tight and a well-chosen theme is enough;
• you need a specific plugin that only exists on WordPress;
• your team already knows WordPress and doesn’t want to change tools.

A headless CMS is preferable if…

• performance and SEO are major issues;
• your website has structured content: catalogue, projects, job offers, properties, team;
• you want to feed several channels (website, app, store) with the same content;
• you’re tired of plugin updates and security problems;
• your website needs to connect to other tools, such as a headless Shopify store or a CRM.

What about the cost?

The initial investment is higher than a WordPress website on a theme, but the gap narrows over time: cheap hosting for a static website, less plugin maintenance, fewer security incidents. Our article on the price of a website in Marseille gives the orders of magnitude, and our comparison WordPress, Wix, Shopify or custom rounds out the topic.

Torn between the two? For a new website or a redesign, we recommend the solution suited to your project and your team, and we train you to manage your content.