WordPress alternative: when switching pays off, and when it does not
Almost every "leave WordPress" article is written by someone selling something else. So are we, which is why we put measurable figures next to it and say plainly when you are better off staying.
What is the best alternative to WordPress?
It depends on why you want to leave. If the problem is speed and maintenance, a lightweight pre-built site (Astro, for instance) is the strongest choice: less weight, fewer moving parts, no plugin upkeep. If you mainly want to click things together without a developer, a closed builder like Wix or Squarespace is more realistic. And if your site mostly needs to surface your business data, an ERP backend comes into play. What is almost never the best answer: rebuilding the same WordPress in WordPress.
Why WordPress sites get slow (it is not WordPress)
It is tempting to say WordPress is slow. It is not, and anyone claiming it is selling you something. WordPress can perform excellently. The problem is what happens by default once a site has been running for a few years.
A theme brings its own CSS framework, plus a page builder, plus a slider you used once. Then come the plugins: a form, a cookie banner, SEO, caching, a chat widget. Each plugin loads its own JavaScript and stylesheet on every page, including pages where it does nothing. Nobody ever takes the decision "let us make this site heavy". It happens in twenty small steps, each of them defensible on its own.
On top of that, WordPress assembles every page at the moment someone requests it. Caching solves that, and it works, until someone edits something or the cache expires. A pre-built site does not have that problem: the page existed before the visitor arrived, and nothing sits between the request and the answer.
The figures below show that difference, but not as simply as you might expect. The lightest site does not automatically win, and that is exactly why we publish the measurement rather than just the conclusion.
How much code a CMS ships before anything is on screen
Page weight is a misleading measure, because images dominate it. You can compress those, and it does not solve the real problem. What matters is how much JavaScript and CSS a platform forces on you before your visitor sees anything. That is the overhead you cannot remove, because it belongs to the system.
Odoo appears in no public performance dataset, so we measured it ourselves: nine websites we could confirm run on Odoo, homepage only, fetched with compression exactly as a browser does.
- This site (Astro) 0 KB
- Odoo site, median of 9 1,510 KB
- odoo.com itself 1,767 KB
It is not the builder, it is the platform
The most telling figure is odoo.com itself: 1,477 KB of JavaScript and 290 KB of CSS, for 18 KB of HTML. That site is built by the people who make Odoo. So you cannot argue a partner made a mess of it. This is what the platform does by default, and that is also the honest explanation: most of that JavaScript is the Odoo web client, the same one that makes your backend work. It is the price of a CMS that doubles as your ERP front end. On a company website you pay that price without using the functionality.
Own measurement, 31 July 2026. Nine sites with Odoo asset markers in the HTML, homepage, fetched with compression (as a browser does). Only JavaScript and CSS files counted, no images. One measurement per site, so a snapshot rather than ongoing research. Not all JavaScript blocks rendering; it does still have to be fetched, parsed and executed.
The figures, and where they come from
A performance promise without a method is marketing. So here is our own site, measured cold, next to the public per-platform figures. You can check both yourself.
Core Web Vitals by platform
The share of real visits that passes Core Web Vitals, with median page weight alongside. Field data from Chrome, not from a test environment.
| Platform | Passes Core Web Vitals | Median page weight | Flexibility | Self-managed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Astro | 67% | 1.65 MB | ●●●●● | ●●●●● |
| Drupal | 64% | 2.39 MB | ●●●●● | ●●●●● |
| Shopify | 79% | 3.77 MB | ●●●●● | ●●●●● |
| WordPress | 49% | 2.76 MB | ●●●●● | ●●●●● |
| Joomla | 58% | 2.53 MB | ●●●●● | ●●●●● |
| Duda | 85% | 1.87 MB | ●●●●● | ●●●●● |
| Wix | 80% | 2.67 MB | ●●●●● | ●●●●● |
Speed and page weight are measured by third parties. Flexibility and self-managed are our own assessment on a 1 to 5 scale.
How "optimal" is calculated
Speed divided by the highest score in the list, times flexibility divided by five. No weighting in our favour: sort by speed and Duda tops the list, sort by self-managed and Wix wins. Astro only rises once you weigh both at the same time, and that is exactly the trade-off most companies are making.
Why lighter is not automatically better
Look at Shopify: by far the heaviest platform on this list, and still 79 percent of visits pass. Weight is only one factor. Stability while loading, quick response to the first interaction and a good CDN carry just as much. Anyone telling you kilobytes decide your ranking is oversimplifying. The gap between 49 and 67 percent is not about file size but about what a platform does by default.
Own measurement: cold load of www.fanatics.nl without cache, sum of HTML and all subresources, median of five TTFB measurements. Platform figures: HTTP Archive Core Web Vitals Technology Report, April 2026 crawl, field data from the Chrome UX Report.
The options, honestly scored
We build lightweight sites, so we are not impartial. We would rather say that than pretend otherwise. The scores below are about what each route gives you and costs you, not about what we most like to sell.
| Route | Speed | Self-managed | Freedom and integrations | Short verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Keep WordPress and clean it up | Reasonable to good | Unchanged | Large ecosystem | Often the sensible first step. Cheap, and only afterwards do you know whether the platform was the problem. |
| Wix, Squarespace or Duda | Good | Very easy | Limited, closed | Strong if you mainly want to click things together and need no integrations. You trade freedom for convenience. |
| Lightweight site (Astro) with a CMS Our route | Very good | Editing in a CMS | Full, integrates with anything | Best when findability and speed genuinely matter and you want to connect to your own systems. |
| Lightweight site with Odoo as backend | Very good | Managed in Odoo | Surfaces your business data | When your site has to show stock, prices or customer data. Requires an ERP that is open enough. |
Assessment by Radical Fanatics based on our own projects. The right choice depends on your editors, your integrations and how much you want to be able to change yourself.
When you should simply stay on WordPress
Switching costs money and time, and there are plenty of situations where that does not pay back. We would rather say so now than halfway through a project.
Stay put if your site is actually doing fine and the complaint is mostly a feeling. Measure first. Run your own pages through PageSpeed Insights and check whether the field data is genuinely poor. A site that passes Core Web Vitals and that your editors are happy with does not need replacing because the platform is out of fashion.
Stay put too if you have not fixed the real problem yet. Often eighty percent of the gain sits in things you can do on WordPress itself: remove unused plugins, compress images and serve them at the right size, pick a theme that does not drag in three frameworks, and get decent hosting. Skip that and switch, and you carry the same habits to the new platform and are back where you started in two years.
And stay put if your organisation leans on the WordPress ecosystem: editors who know it, an agency that maintains it, plugins your processes are built around. Replacing technology is easier than replacing habits. Switching only really pays off when you want to change something on that side too.
What switching costs and returns
Indicative, based on our own projects. A site with heavy customisation or a lot of content lands higher.
- Clean up on WordPress first a few days
Remove plugins, fix images, sort hosting. Often eighty percent of the gain, and the most honest first step.
- Lightweight site, limited content 4 to 8 weeks
Design follows your existing identity, content is migrated, editing through a CMS.
- With integrations to your backend 8 to 14 weeks
Prices, stock or customer data live from your ERP. The integration sets the timeline, not the site.
- Ongoing maintenance lower than WordPress
No plugin updates and no security patches across dozens of components. You do still have hosting and the occasional dependency bump.
Frequently asked questions about leaving WordPress
Is WordPress bad for SEO?
No. WordPress can score excellently on the technical side and plenty of high-performing sites run on it. What is true is that WordPress sites miss Core Web Vitals more often on average: 49 percent passes, against 67 percent for Astro. That gap is not caused by WordPress itself but by what tends to come with it: heavy themes, stacked plugins and images that are never optimised.
Will I lose my Google rankings if I switch?
Not if you handle the migration properly. The key conditions: keep the same URL structure or point every old URL at the new one with a 301, carry over all content and metadata, and preserve your structured data. Expect a period of a few weeks in which positions can fluctuate while Google reindexes. What you avoid is the classic mistake: launching a new site without a redirect plan.
Can I still manage content myself without WordPress?
Yes. A lightweight site pulls its content from a CMS, just like WordPress, except the page is built in advance instead of on every visit. For your editors little changes: log in, edit text, publish. The difference sits under the bonnet.
What does a WordPress alternative cost?
For a site with limited content we typically reckon on four to eight weeks. If integrations to your business system are needed, that becomes eight to fourteen weeks and the integration sets the schedule, not the site. If you are in doubt, start by cleaning up on WordPress: that takes a few days and often delivers the bulk of the gain.
I already use Odoo. Should I use the Odoo Website app?
That is a different trade-off from the one on this page. If your site mainly belongs with your backend and your editors want to stay inside Odoo, the Odoo Website app is a legitimate choice. If you want maximum findability you will hit limits: our own measurement shows an Odoo site loads a median of roughly 1.5 MB of JavaScript and CSS. In that case we build a lightweight site with Odoo as the backend, so you keep your data without the front-end overhead.
Should I move to Wix or Squarespace?
They post good performance scores and are easy to manage yourself, so for a straightforward company site they are a fine choice. You do trade freedom for it: integrations with your own systems are limited and you are bound by what the platform allows. As soon as your site has to show data from your ERP or needs genuine customisation, you run into those limits.
Not sure whether switching pays off?
Send us your current site. We will measure it and tell you honestly whether the platform is the problem or what is running on it. If cleaning up is enough, we will say so.
Odoo Gold Partner · Amsterdam · sites on Astro, ERP behind them where needed