A website is not just a part of your company's digital presence—it's a fundamental tool that impacts your business outcomes. Like any tool in a toolbox, the quality and features of your website are directly linked to how well it serves your business needs. Whether you're looking to enhance customer engagement, streamline content management, or secure your online operations, choosing the right web architecture is crucial.
This blog delves into the world of WordPress and Jamstack, explaining how their features align with different business goals to help you make a well-informed decision.
Imagine a website that's fast, secure, and scales effortlessly—this is what Jamstack offers. By combining Javascript, APIs, and Markup (JAM), Jamstack allows developers to build high-quality websites that are flexible and perform excellently under pressure. This architecture is ideal if your business needs a website that can handle sudden spikes in traffic without compromising on user experience. (More on this later.)
You’ve most likely heard of Wordpress before coming to this blog. Wordpress has a rich history, and it helps to know a bit about its origins before we make any direct comparison between it and the Jamstack.
Wordpress started out as a way to post your blog online. Over the years, it transformed into a fully-fledged, website-building experience where you could host on your own infrastructure, and more recently into a SaaS (software as a service) offering. It now offers a more universal content management experience referred to as a “headless” content management system (CMS).
Think of WordPress as a complete web toolkit that comes with everything you need to build a website. It's flexible, meaning you can easily add new features or change how your site looks through a 'plugin store'—kind of like adding apps to your smartphone. And for more unique needs, you can also customize it further to make sure it does exactly what you want.
While Jamstack heralds a new era in web architecture by separating front-end and back-end concerns, our preferred CMS, Contentful, illustrates the modern approach to content management within this framework. As what’s known as a “headless” CMS, Contentful offers a powerful editor interface and robust APIs, enabling content to be delivered seamlessly to your Jamstack site. This means even team members without technical backgrounds can easily manage content, while the site remains fast, secure, and scalable.
Now, consider the traditional WordPress CMS, which many are familiar with. Unlike Contentful, WordPress provides a “headed” system where the content management and delivery environment are tightly integrated. This setup allows for a straightforward, out-of-the-box website building and managing experience. With WordPress, content creators and developers work on the same system where changes can be previewed in real-time, providing a highly interactive user experience.
However, this traditional approach often involves managing web servers and databases, which can add complexity and overhead. In contrast, using Contentful with Jamstack allows for dynamic content updates pushed through APIs to statically served sites. This results in enhanced performance and security, as the content delivery and management are decoupled.
Imagine managing your digital storefront's product listings or your blog's articles through a sleek dashboard that pushes updates to your static site instantly—this is the streamlined workflow that Contentful offers. It's like having your cake and eating it too: dynamic content capabilities without the overhead of traditional site management.
In summary, while WordPress offers a familiar, all-in-one environment that is beneficial for many use cases, the headless CMS approach with Jamstack, exemplified by Contentful, caters to modern needs for high performance, security, and scalability without the complexity of traditional web infrastructure.
The tech stack that you use also has an impact on the means by which you deploy that site when you are ultimately ready to “go live.” When deciding between Wordpress or Jamstack, you’ll find that there are many hosted options for both. A do-it-yourself approach is also possible, but comes with its own set of considerations.
While Wordpress is better supported by a more traditional infrastructure approach, a server with the appropriate tooling installed to support the Wordpress framework is required. This approach requires a bit more technical oversight and long term maintenance to stay up to date with security patches both for Wordpress and the dependencies. Conversely, with a Jamstack website, the manual deployment approach is a bit more modern, and the complexity can vary depending on the technical architecture of your organization.
I won’t dive into the details of deployment for either one, but with either option there are a number of hosted options that are built specifically for serving websites with these technologies to properly highlight their key features. Ultimately, whether you choose Wordpress with its widespread industry support and infrastructure or opt for the modern, scalable approach of Jamstack, both paths offer solid solutions tailored to meet different technical and operational requirements.
Deciding between WordPress and Jamstack supported by Contentful may initially seem daunting. However, it's about aligning technology with your business goals. If your organization values a time-tested solution with extensive plugin options and flexibility, WordPress is a reliable choice. It offers a comprehensive, all-in-one platform that's equipped to scale alongside your business, with a user-friendly interface that simplifies site management.
However, if your priorities include high performance, robust security, and the ability to future-proof your digital presence against the evolving demands of the web, Jamstack presents a compelling alternative. When supported by Contentful, Jamstack not only meets these needs but excels at them, providing a streamlined, efficient environment that handles traffic spikes with ease. This makes Jamstack particularly suited for businesses aiming to stay at the forefront of digital innovation, ensuring their website infrastructure is as dynamic and adaptable as the markets they serve.
In the world of web development, there's no one-size-fits-all solution, but armed with the knowledge from this article, you're well-equipped to make a decision that best fits your needs. Whether you lean towards the robustness of WordPress or the cutting-edge technology of Jamstack and Contentful, remember that your choice will shape your digital strategy for years to come.
Choosing the right technology is like choosing a partner in growth—make sure they're ready to support your journey towards achieving your business objectives.
Interested in learning more about the Jamstack? We have a whole host of blogs written by our awesome developers that can help you take a deeper dive. Check out our Jamstack category here.
Sign up for our email newsletter. Nothing spammy about it. Just a monthly rundown of what we’re sharing.
