It's one of the first questions I hear when a marketing site project kicks off: "We need WordPress, right?" Sometimes it's the opposite: "I heard WordPress is outdated." Both statements are wrong as stated. WordPress is neither mandatory nor obsolete. Next.js is neither startup-only nor always better. The right choice comes down to one real question: who will keep the site alive, and how.
What both do very well
Let's clear away the fake debate first. For a marketing site — a few pages, a clear pitch, a contact form — both tools can produce a professional result. A well-built WordPress site loads fast and ranks well. A poorly thought-out Next.js site can be slow and unreadable to Google. The tool guarantees nothing: execution is what counts.
What separates them isn't the quality you can reach. It's everything around it: who edits the content, who maintains the machinery, what it costs over time, and what breaks when nobody touches it for six months.
Where WordPress wins
WordPress has one asset nothing truly replaces: its editing interface. If you publish content every week, if several non-technical people need to edit pages, add posts, swap photos — WordPress was built for that. The team is autonomous from day one, without going through a developer.
There's also the ecosystem: thousands of plugins, themes, and agencies and freelancers everywhere who know how to evolve it. You're never locked in with your provider. That freedom has real value.
The price you pay is maintenance. WordPress means a PHP engine, a database, a theme and plugins — and all of it must stay up to date. An unmaintained WordPress site becomes a target: outdated plugins are the classic entry point for hacks. So either you look after it, or you pay someone to. That recurring cost is part of the choice, and it's too often forgotten at quote time.
Where I recommend something else
Many marketing sites share one trait: their content barely moves. Pages change a few times a year, when an offer changes or copy gets rewritten. For those sites, shipping a PHP engine, a database and twenty plugins to serve five pages is overkill.
That's where I prefer a static site — generated with Next.js or an equivalent tool. The principle: pages are built once, ahead of time, and the server only delivers files. The consequences are concrete. Nothing to update server-side, so almost nothing to hack. Pages that render immediately, because there's no database to query and no code to run on each visit. Simple, cheap hosting. The site you're reading works exactly this way, and I detailed that choice in an earlier article.
The trade-off is just as concrete: to change the content, the site must be rebuilt. Either the client goes through me, or we plug in an editing interface (a headless CMS) — which adds a moving part and a cost. For a site that changes twice a year, that's a non-issue. For an active blog run by a team, it can become one.
How I actually decide
When a client hesitates, I ask three questions.
- How often will the content change? Several times a month, by non-technical people: WordPress or a CMS. A few times a year: static, no hesitation.
- Who will handle maintenance? If there's no budget and no one to keep a WordPress up to date, it's the wrong choice — not because the tool is bad, but because an abandoned WordPress becomes a risk. An abandoned static site just keeps working.
- Is there anything that truly requires dynamic features? Member area, online booking, a shop: the conversation changes, and other tools come into play.
You'll notice "which tech is more modern" isn't on the list. It's the least useful criterion of all.
No dogma, one choice per project
I build my sites static because it's the best fit for most marketing sites I come across: fast, safe, maintenance-free. But if your situation calls for WordPress, I'll tell you — and if your current WordPress does the job, the right decision is sometimes to keep it and maintain it properly.
Unsure about your own site? Tell me how your content needs to live, and I'll tell you frankly what I'd pick in your place. Let's talk.