Web Development in Vancouver: Why We Chose Next.js Over WordPress for Client Sites

We used to build everything on WordPress. For 8 years, it was the right call — easy for clients to update, huge plugin ecosystem, familiar hosting landscape. Then the world changed.

The Problem with WordPress in 2026

WordPress still powers 40%+ of the web, but for modern client work, we kept hitting the same walls:

Performance ceiling: A typical WordPress site with 10 plugins loads in 3-5 seconds on a good CDN. Core Web Vitals become impossible to optimize without aggressive caching that then breaks the editor.

Security: Every plugin is a potential vulnerability. We've cleaned up more WordPress malware infections than we'd like to count. For clients in regulated industries, this is a compliance risk.

Developer experience: PHP templating hasn't aged well. Building custom post types, taxonomies, and meta boxes requires significant boilerplate that other frameworks solve better.

Cost: WordPress "free" hides the real cost: hosting that can handle the CPU spikes, security monitoring, plugin licenses, and developer time for maintenance.

The Alternative: Next.js + Headless CMS

Our current default stack:

• Next.js 14 (App Router) for the frontend
• Cloudflare Pages for hosting (free tier, global CDN, edge functions)
• Contentlayer or Sanity as the CMS (editor-friendly, API-first)
• Tailwind CSS v4 for styling

For clients who want to edit content: we give them a beautiful CMS interface. For clients with developer teams: we give them Markdown files in Git.

Real Results

Comparing a recent client migration (same scope, same content):

Metric	WordPress	Next.js
Load time	4.2s	0.8s
Lighthouse score	62	97
Monthly hosting cost	$45	$0 (Cloudflare)
Security incidents	2/year	0
Time to add new page	30 min	5 min

When We Still Use WordPress

• Clients who need WooCommerce (the e-commerce ecosystem is unmatched)
• Clients with an existing WordPress installation who want to continue
• Clients whose team is already trained on WordPress and the cost of retraining is high

But for new projects over $5K? Next.js every time.

Looking to migrate or start fresh? [e-mail]