Why We Ditched WordPress (And What We Build With Now)

WordPress powers about 40% of the web. It's the default choice for most agencies and freelancers. For years, we used it too. But we kept running into the same problems.

Plugin conflicts. Security patches. Slow page loads. Clients calling because their site broke after an update they didn't initiate. Every WordPress project came with a maintenance tax that ate into the actual work we wanted to do.

So we switched. Our stack now is Next.js, Payload CMS, and Vercel. It's faster, more secure, and gives us complete control over the architecture. No plugins, no themes, no black boxes.

The biggest change isn't technical — it's structural. With Payload CMS, the content model is defined in code. That means every field, every relationship, every validation rule is version-controlled and deployable. No surprises.

For our clients, the experience is actually simpler. They get a clean admin panel with exactly the fields they need — no bloated dashboards, no confusing plugin settings. Just their content.

The result: sites that load in under a second, score 90+ on Lighthouse, and never break because of a plugin update. That's the standard we hold ourselves to, and WordPress just couldn't get there.