# Strapi to WordPress migration > How to migrate from Strapi to WordPress, with a side-by-side comparison and FAQs. --- ## Source: Strapi - **Type:** headless - **Official site:** https://strapi.io - **Pricing:** https://strapi.io/pricing - **Last reviewed:** 2026-07-28 ## Key advantages If you’re the kind of team that likes to get your hands dirty with real code instead of fighting a bloated enterprise UI, Strapi will feel like home. It’s open-source, customisable, and developer-centric. You get full access to the codebase, no licensing paywalls, and the freedom to shape your CMS exactly the way you want it. It is flexible. You can use React, Vue, Angular, mobile apps, and smart displays to push content. And despite being dev-leaning, it still gives you GUI-based drag-and-drop schema generation, which means you can spin up content models fast without digging into JSON files every five minutes. ### Node.js driven architecture Built on Node.js, Strapi plugs straight into the modern JavaScript ecosystem. If your team already lives in JS-land, Strapi fits right in. ### Easy frontend framework integration Pick your poison React, Vue, or Angular. Strapi plays nicely with all of them, making it easy to ship content. ### Highly modular approach Every part of Strapi is built like Lego. Add what you need, remove what you don’t, and customise endlessly. It’s great if you love building your CMS exactly your way instead of wrestling with rigid templates. ### RESTful API flexibility Out of the box, Strapi generates clean REST APIs that are easy to consume, easy to extend, and easy to customise. Ideal for multi-channel content delivery without rewriting half your backend. ### Supports GraphQL APIs With its GraphQL plugin, you get structured queries, reduced over-fetching, and a nicer developer experience with zero hacking required. ### Flexible content management Strapi lets you model content however you want, from simple pages to complex, relational structures. Combined with a drag-and-drop schema builder, it gives teams full control without feeling boxed in. ## Key pain points Strapi has a fan club because it’s self-hosted, which sounds great until you realise that means you are now responsible for every update, every backup, every scaling issue, and every "why is the server down again?" moment. Wouldn’t it be easier to use a cloud infrastructure that just… scales, instead of babysitting infra at midnight? And having to maintain a Node.js environment for your content editors is completely unnecessary pain, in our opinion. It also isn’t exactly friendly for non-technical teams. If you don’t have solid developer talent, the learning curve hits hard, and even simple customisations can turn into "let’s build this from scratch" moments. Plugins help, but not always, and you’ll quickly run into gaps that require custom development. Add the lack of traditional CMS features out of the box, and setup time (and costs) spiral fast. If you're set on Strapi, fine! Just let us look at it first so we can tell you whether it's actually doable or whether you're about to become a full-time system admin by accident. ### Steep learning curve Strapi looks simple at first, then politely reminds you it’s a developer-first tool. Non-technical teams usually hit a wall long before they hit publish. ### Node.js knowledge required If your team, especially your content team, doesn’t speak Node.js, prepare for a few "so… what does this error mean?" moments. Strapi assumes you’re comfortable under the hood. ### Limited traditional CMS features Things that come out-of-the-box in classic CMSs often need custom setup here. If you’re expecting plug-and-play page building, Strapi is not for you. ### Custom development needs If you need anything slightly beyond the basics, it quickly drifts into "can we ask a developer to build this?" territory. Great for flexibility, not so great for speed. ### Plugin limitations The plugin ecosystem is growing, but not everything works flawlessly, and some gaps still require hand-rolled solutions, which means more dev time than you planned. ### Cost-efficiency concerns Sure, Strapi is free… until you factor in hosting, DevOps, scaling, and ongoing maintenance. "Open-source" doesn’t always mean "cheap." ## Target: WordPress - **Type:** headless - **Official site:** https://wordpress.org - **Pricing:** https://wordpress.com/pricing - **Last reviewed:** 2026-07-28 ## Key advantages We're trying our hardest to think of good reasons to move to WordPress, but outside of "I like PHP errors" or trying to build a website for under £500, I honestly can't think of a good reason. If you're trying to do things on the cheap, we would highly recommend using a template from Framer or Webflow. They're better solutions in almost every way. But if you're hell-bent on building a WordPress website, we can't stop you. For that reason, we'd highly recommend SiteGround for hosting to keep it cheap and optimize the hell out of it with their performance plugin. Avoid installing tons of plugins if you can; keep it lean and simple. ### Plugins for everything You want a form? A store? A booking system? A horoscope generator for cats? WordPress has a plugin for it. Half the internet runs on "someone already built that." ### Strong community support If something breaks, someone online has already fixed it, documented it, blogged about it, and made a YouTube tutorial with dramatic background music. ### Easy to use You can be a writer, founder, or intern, you can easily build a website using WordPress. It doesn’t demand a CS degree. Click, type, publish. Done. ### Vast theme selection You might need a corporate website, minimal, or even a neon-purple-cyber-punk ecommerce store; just pick a theme and ship. Some even look good straight out of the box. ### Ideal for beginners One of the easiest ways to get a site live without knowing the difference between HTML and "the thing that makes the text bold." ### Flexible configuration options Layers of configuration, widgets, design settings, and custom plugins will only let you shape WordPress into something that actually fits your use case. ## Key pain points Talking trash about WordPress is therapy at this point. We've had to build it for years, and it's consistently awful. I guarantee that if you have used it for long enough, you've experienced a site-breaking PHP error or been locked out of your admin panel due to a faulty plugin. We know the world of horrors, and we regret adding to that share of the web. Yes, it really does power over 40% of all sites, roughly 41.5% at the last count. ### Potential security vulnerabilities When you power half the internet, the hackers notice. WordPress stays safe, but only if someone is constantly updating, patching, and watching it like a hawk, which, trust us, you don't want to. ### Heavy reliance on plugins If you want any new feature, install a new plugin. Before you know it, your site is held together by 27 plugins and a prayer that none of those plugins are removed from the market. ### Compatibility issues Themes, plugins, and core updates sometimes play nicely together, leading to surprise breakages and debugging sessions you didn’t plan for. ### Maintenance takes time WordPress doesn’t run itself. You have to run backups, security patches, plugin conflicts, and random errors. Someone has to tuck it in at night. ### Performance needs tuning WordPress sites need caching, CDN, and database optimization to stay fast, especially if you plan to scale. ### Customization has limits You think you can do a lot with themes and plugins, but when it comes to custom experiences, it means custom dev work (or going headless entirely). ## Frequently asked questions ### What is Strapi used for? Strapi is an open-source headless CMS built on Node.js. Teams use it to manage content and serve it to websites, mobile apps, and other frontends through REST or GraphQL APIs. It's popular with JavaScript developers who want full control over their CMS without paying SaaS fees. Common use cases include marketing sites, blogs, e-commerce product catalogues, and multi-channel content delivery. It works well when you have dedicated developers on the team. Without them, it gets painful quickly. ### How much does Strapi cost? Strapi's Community Edition is free and self-hosted. That sounds great until you factor in hosting ($20-100+/month depending on traffic), database costs, backups, and the developer time to maintain it all. Strapi Cloud now has a free Developer plan for prototyping, then Essential at $18/month per project ($15 on yearly billing), Pro at $90/month, and Scale at $450/month, each with higher entry, seat, and API limits. Enterprise Edition is custom pricing and adds SSO, audit logs, and review workflows. The hidden cost is always developer time. We've seen "free" Strapi setups cost $500-1,000/month in maintenance hours alone. ### What are the best Strapi alternatives? Sanity is our top recommendation for teams leaving Strapi. You get a managed platform with no server maintenance, real-time collaboration, and a content studio that non-technical editors can actually use. Contentful is another option if you want a large plugin ecosystem, though it's more expensive. If the self-hosted aspect of Strapi matters to you, Directus is worth a look. It gives you a similar open-source approach with a more polished admin interface. ### Can I migrate from Strapi to a managed CMS? Yes, and we do this regularly. We export your Strapi content types and entries through the API, then map them to the target platform's schema. Most Strapi-to-Sanity migrations take 2-4 weeks. The content itself transfers cleanly. The harder part is usually replicating custom controllers, middleware, and lifecycle hooks that teams built into Strapi. We rebuild that logic in the frontend or through serverless functions, so you're not losing functionality in the move. ### Is Strapi good for production websites? It can work, but self-hosting a CMS for production means you're responsible for uptime, scaling, security patches, and database management. Every Strapi version upgrade risks breaking custom plugins. We've rescued several production sites that went down because a Strapi update conflicted with a custom controller. If you don't have a dedicated DevOps person, we'd steer you toward a managed CMS like Sanity where infrastructure is handled for you and your team can focus on content. ### What's involved in upgrading Strapi from v4 to v5? More than the release notes suggest. Strapi 5 was a major version, and teams we've spoken to describe the v4 to v5 move as time-consuming, with regressions in custom plugins and lifecycle code that worked fine before. If you have heavily customised controllers or community plugins, budget real testing time rather than an afternoon. This upgrade tax is one of the reasons teams move to a managed CMS, where breaking changes are absorbed by the vendor instead of landing in your codebase. ### How much does WordPress cost per month? WordPress.org itself is free, but hosting, themes, premium plugins, and maintenance add up quickly. Managed hosting like SiteGround looks cheap at intro pricing, around $3-8/month, then renews closer to $18-45/month. Add a premium theme ($50-200 one-time), a few paid plugins ($100-500/year), and a security solution. Realistically, you're looking at $30-100/month for a properly maintained small business site. WordPress.com's managed plans run $9/month (Personal, or $4/month billed annually) to $70/month (Commerce, or $45/month billed annually) on annual billing. Since September 2025, plugin installs work on every paid plan from Personal up, not just Business as they used to. WordPress.com Enterprise starts at $25,000/year.