Why We Switched from WordPress to Statamic: A Journey to Better Content Management

As many of you know, we’re a technical digital agency that helps companies develop and optimize their software and digital services. Like many other teams, we started with WordPress. We even went further and developed our framework to give our marketing teams a structured way to create and manage content. 

While this worked for a while, WordPress is now at a crossroads. Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder, commented that the difficulties they’re currently facing could eventually even lead to the closure of WordPress.org. In light of these recent instabilities, we discovered that Statamic offered exactly what we were trying to build, but better! It focuses on simplicity and ease of use in web development. Its intuitive control panel makes it an excellent choice for developers seeking a streamlined workflow. Continue reading to find out why it’s a better solution.

Our journey with WordPress

We initially built a custom WordPress framework to solve a specific problem: giving our marketing teams the ability to create content within a consistent structure. Our solution included:

  • A structured content framework

  • Predefined layouts and components

  • A unified visual style across all content

However, maintaining this custom solution came with challenges. The content structure could become inconsistent between pages, our custom framework needed constant updates, and we were essentially rebuilding features that existed elsewhere.

Over time, we also became painfully aware that for a “free and open source” platform, WordPress incurs a significant amount of recurring costs in terms of paid plugin licenses and optimization costs. People frequently pay over €2K per year just in plugin and add-on costs. We decided it was time for a better solution!

Discovering Statamic

When we discovered Statamic, we were wowed. It was like finding the solution we'd been trying to build all along because it offered:

  • Built-in content structuring that matched our needs

  • A clean, intuitive interface for content creators

  • Consistent content modeling out of the box

  • Version control through flat files

  • No database management headaches

Let us tell you about the benefits of switching

Interested to learn how this switch transformed our content management process? We’re happy to share the benefits:

  • Consistency by design
    Instead of enforcing consistency through our custom framework, Statamic's built-in content structures handle this naturally.

  • Simplified maintenance
    We no longer maintain a custom framework, allowing our developers to focus on building new features rather than supporting infrastructure.

  • Better content creation
    Marketing teams can work more efficiently with tools designed specifically for structured content creation.

  • Improved performance
    Static site generation and flat-file architecture have made our site faster and more secure.

Looking back on this journey

While our WordPress framework served its purpose, moving to Statamic was definitely the right decision. We've eliminated the overhead of maintaining a custom solution while gaining a more robust and user-friendly content management system.

For teams considering a similar move, especially those who find themselves building extensive customizations on top of WordPress, Statamic is worth exploring. It could be that, like us, you'll find it solves the problems you're working so hard to fix. Isn’t it exciting to find user-friendly, simple solutions that make your life easier?

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