For years I built sites on WordPress. For myself and for clients. WordPress powers over 40% of the internet. It's proven, has an ecosystem, a community. And then I moved my own site to Astro + Cloudflare Pages. No regrets. But that doesn't mean you should do the same.
Why I left WordPress
It wasn't a romantic breakup. It was a calculation.
My WordPress site:
- Loaded in 3.2 seconds on mobile (Lighthouse score: 61)
- Required hosting at $20/month (to run reasonably fast). I wrote more about website costs in my article on how much a website costs in 2026
- Had 4 security plugins and still got brute force attack attempts every hour
- Something broke after a plugin update once a quarter
- Needed a MySQL database, PHP, Apache/Nginx server
I'm not saying WordPress is bad. I'm saying that for a simple business site, it's overkill.
What I chose and why
Astro. A framework for building static sites. But not like Jekyll from 2015. Astro lets you write components, use TypeScript, and generates clean HTML without JavaScript (unless you need it).
Plus Cloudflare Pages for hosting. Free. Yes, free. With a global CDN, SSL, and automatic deploys from GitHub.
Tech stack for konradkaminski.pl:
- Astro 5 - framework
- TypeScript - because I like knowing what compiles
- Tailwind CSS - because I don't have time to write CSS from scratch
- Cloudflare Pages - hosting + CDN
- Cloudflare Workers - for dynamic features (contact form, analytics)
Hard data - before and after
Here's the comparison. Same content, same design (with minor tweaks).
- Lighthouse Performance: WordPress 61 → Astro 98
- Load time (mobile, 4G): 3.2s → 0.8s
- TTFB (Time to First Byte): 890ms → 45ms
- Homepage size: 2.4 MB → 180 KB
- Hosting cost/month: $20 → $0
- Security vulnerabilities: constantly new ones → 0 (static HTML has no vulnerabilities)
TTFB of 45ms. Forty-five milliseconds. WordPress can't achieve that even with the best caching. Because WordPress has to query the database. Astro serves a ready HTML file from Cloudflare's edge.
And that $0 for hosting. On WordPress, I was paying $20 a month for a server that still didn't deliver great performance. Now - nothing. Cloudflare Pages on the free plan handles even a million requests per day.
But it's not all sunshine
Honestly? The migration wasn't a cakewalk.
Problems I ran into:
- No CMS - on WordPress, the client logs into the admin panel and changes text. On Astro? You need to edit code or connect a headless CMS (Sanity, Strapi). That's extra work and cost
- Contact form - on WordPress, it's a Contact Form 7 plugin and done. On Astro, you need to write an endpoint (Cloudflare Worker), set up email sending, handle validation. An hour of work instead of 5 minutes
- Learning curve - Astro, TypeScript, Tailwind, Git, Cloudflare. If you're not a developer, this isn't for you. You need someone to build and maintain it
- No plugins - WordPress has a plugin for everything. On Astro, you have to write many things yourself or find an npm package. That requires technical knowledge
And one more thing - the blog. On WordPress, you add a post in the admin panel. On Astro, you write a Markdown file, commit to the repo, automatic deploy. For me, that's an advantage. For a client who doesn't know Git - it's a problem.
Who should consider this
Let's be honest. Jamstack isn't for everyone.
Migrate to Jamstack if:
- Your site is a business card or blog (not e-commerce with 10k products)
- You have access to a developer who can handle it
- You care about speed, security, and zero hosting costs
- You want your site in Git - with change history, code review, CI/CD
- You don't need 50 plugins
Stay on WordPress if:
- The client manages content themselves and has no tech knowledge
- You need a WooCommerce store
- The site depends on specific WordPress plugins
- The budget doesn't allow for a developer to build and maintain Jamstack
- The site works fine and you have no reason to change
For my clients in Tomaszow? Most stay on WordPress. Because it's simpler to maintain. Especially businesses that rely on local SEO — WordPress with a good plugin still gets the job done. But when someone asks me "what would be the fastest and cheapest site to maintain?" - the answer is Astro + Cloudflare.
Technology should serve a purpose. If WordPress meets your needs - don't change it for the sake of change. But if you've ever wanted a site that loads in under a second and costs $0 per month - you know where to find me.