Why we left WordPress behind

I worked with WordPress for years. It was the standard. Everyone used it, so we did too. But at some point it started to chafe. Then it started to irritate. And eventually we switched. This is why.

The plugin pile

It started innocently. A plugin for contact forms. One for SEO. One for security. One to speed things up. Before you know it, an average WordPress site runs on twenty to thirty plugins. They all need updates. They all need to work together. And they all have their own vulnerabilities. Update one? Chances are something else breaks. Don't update them? Chances are you get hacked. It felt like a house of cards you had to watch constantly.

The speed illusion

WordPress sites get slow. Not because WordPress itself is slow, but because the combination of theme, plugins and hosting is rarely optimised. So you install a caching plugin. And an image optimiser. And you tinker with the database. The site gets faster. For a while. Three months later you start all over again. It's like mopping the floor with the tap still running. You spend more time keeping the site running than on what the site is actually meant to do. The dependency. This is what bothered me most. "Could you just change that text in the header?" No, because it's in the theme. "Could you give that button a different colour?" Yes, but then I have to go into the code. "Could you move this block up?" Depends on how it's built. The whole point of a CMS is that you can change things yourself. But in practice you needed a developer for almost every change. The client depended on us. And we depended on how the theme was put together. Nobody had real control.

The switch to Webflow

Then I discovered Webflow. And everything that irritated me about WordPress was gone.

• ‍No plugins. Everything is in one platform. Design, development, CMS, hosting. Nothing you have to manage or update separately.
• ‍Genuinely fast. Webflow generates clean code and hosts on a global CDN. Sites load in milliseconds. By default. Without optimising afterwards.
• ‍Real freedom. Your client can edit text, swap images and add pages. Without anything breaking. Without a developer.
• ‍Design without limits. You're not restricted to what a theme allows. You design exactly what you want and build it exactly that way.

So is WordPress bad?

No. For some situations it works fine. Very complex multisite setups, for example. Or if your team knows WordPress inside out and doesn't want to move away from it. But for most of the businesses I speak to, it's too much on one side and too little on the other. Too much technical complexity. Too little flexibility where it matters.

What if you're on WordPress now?

Migrating is easier than you think. Your content can come with you. Your SEO rankings are preserved if you do it properly. You can keep the structure or improve it. We've done it dozens of times. It takes a few weeks. And you benefit from it for years. A site that's fast without the hassle. Secure without plugins. And one your team can manage themselves.

Want to see for yourself?

If you're curious what your site could look like in Webflow, let us know. We're happy to take a look. No obligation, no strings attached.