Let's get something out of the way early: WordPress isn't bad. It powers over 40% of the web for good reason. We built dozens of sites on it over the years, and many of them served our clients well.
But somewhere in the last couple of years, the gap between what our clients needed and what WordPress could comfortably deliver started to widen. So we made the decision to move our entire agency to a modern custom stack: Next.js for the frontend and Payload CMS for content management, hosted on Railway.
This isn't a hit piece on WordPress. It's an honest account of why the platform that served us well for years stopped being the right tool for the work we want to do.
The maintenance treadmill
Every WordPress developer knows the drill. Log in, see fourteen plugin updates waiting. Run them, hope nothing breaks. Check the site, find a layout shifted because a plugin update changed a CSS class. Fix it, move on, repeat next week.
This isn't an exaggeration. WordPress plugin vulnerabilities surged 68% year-over-year in recent security reports, with 91% of new vulnerabilities found in plugins rather than WordPress core. The median time from a vulnerability being disclosed to mass exploitation is now just five hours.
For an agency managing multiple client sites, this creates a genuine support burden. We were spending significant time each month just keeping sites secure and functional, before any actual improvement work. That's time our clients were paying for, and it wasn't adding value to their businesses.
Performance that actually matters
Google has made it abundantly clear that site speed affects rankings. Core Web Vitals aren't optional anymore; they're a ranking factor. And WordPress, for all its flexibility, carries performance baggage.
A typical WordPress site loads in four to eight seconds. Every second over three costs roughly 7% in conversions. When we benchmark our Next.js builds against equivalent WordPress sites, we consistently see first-load times of around one second versus four-plus seconds, and PageSpeed scores in the high 90s versus the mid-40s to 50s.
That's not a marginal improvement. That's a fundamentally different user experience, and it translates directly into better rankings and more conversions for our clients.
The plugin problem
WordPress's greatest strength is also its biggest weakness. There's a plugin for everything, which means most WordPress sites are a patchwork of third-party code from different developers with different coding standards, different update schedules, and different levels of ongoing commitment.
We've lost count of the number of times a client's site broke because two plugins conflicted after an update. Or a plugin was abandoned by its developer and became a security risk. Or a plugin that worked fine on its own slowed the site to a crawl when combined with five others.
With a custom build, every line of code is intentional. We know exactly what's running, why it's running, and how it interacts with everything else. When something needs to change, we change it. We're not waiting for a plugin developer to release a patch or hoping a workaround doesn't break something else.
What we moved to
Our stack is now Next.js with Payload CMS, deployed on Railway. Here's why each piece matters:
Next.js is a React-based framework that gives us server-side rendering, static site generation, and API routes in one package. Sites are fast by default because pages are pre-rendered at build time or generated on the server, rather than assembled in the browser from a database query and a dozen plugin outputs.
Payload CMS is a headless content management system that gives our clients a clean, intuitive admin panel for managing their content. Unlike WordPress, it's built from the ground up as a modern application: no legacy code, no plugin ecosystem to manage, no security surface area from third-party extensions.
Railway handles our hosting and deployment. Push code, it deploys. No server management, no cPanel, no shared hosting headaches.
The result is a site that loads faster, ranks better, costs less to maintain, and gives us the flexibility to build features that WordPress simply can't support without fighting the platform.
What this means for clients
For our clients across Hertfordshire, Essex, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, and London, the practical benefits are significant.
Lower ongoing costs. Without the plugin maintenance treadmill, monthly support is focused on actual improvements rather than keeping the lights on.
Better performance. Faster sites mean better user experience, better Google rankings, and higher conversion rates. These aren't abstract benefits; they show up in analytics.
Future-proof foundations. When a client wants to add an AI-powered feature, a customer portal, a booking system, or an integration with their CRM, we can build it natively. On WordPress, these requests typically mean finding a plugin that sort of does what's needed and then working around its limitations.
Real security. No plugin vulnerabilities, no brute-force attacks on wp-admin, no database injection through a contact form plugin that hasn't been updated in six months.
When WordPress still makes sense
We're not zealots about this. WordPress still makes sense in specific situations. If you need a simple blog or personal site and you're comfortable managing it yourself, WordPress with a well-chosen theme is perfectly adequate. If you have a tight budget and need something live quickly, a WordPress template site will get you there faster and cheaper than a custom build.
But if you're a business that depends on your website to generate leads, sell products, or serve customers, and you plan to grow and evolve that site over time, we believe a modern custom build is the better investment. The upfront cost is slightly higher, but the total cost of ownership over three to five years is typically lower, and the performance and flexibility differences are substantial.
The bigger picture
The web is moving towards faster, more capable, more integrated experiences. WordPress was built for a different era: an era of blogs, brochure sites, and simple content management. It adapted remarkably well, but adaptation has limits.
We want to build websites that don't just display information but actively help our clients' businesses grow. That means AI-powered features, real-time integrations, interactive tools, and performance that meets modern expectations. Our new stack lets us do all of that without compromise.
If you're currently on WordPress and wondering whether a move makes sense for your business, we're happy to have that conversation. Sometimes the answer is "not yet." Sometimes it's "yesterday." Either way, we'll give you an honest assessment based on where your business is and where it's heading.