Why we stopped using WordPress for small business client sites (and moved to Astro)

For years the default for any local business site was spinning up another WordPress install, throwing 10 plugins at it, and charging a monthly retainer just to keep Elementor and Contact Form 7 from breaking.

Now that Claude Code and Cursor can build a clean Astro site in a couple hours, WordPress feels like way too much overhead for a 5 to 20 page business site.

Here is the workflow we switched to for migrating client sites off WordPress:

1. Map the old URLs first

The main way agencies mess up a WordPress to Astro migration is breaking old URLs that already rank on Google. Before building anything, have your agent pull their sitemap and generate a /_redirects file so every old /wp-content/ link or weird trailing slash 301s cleanly.

2. Skip the headless CMS for small clients

Most local business owners log into wp-admin twice a year to change their opening hours or update a price list. Wiring up Sanity or Strapi for that is overkill.

Instead, we just drop a /data/services.json or /data/hours.json file into the static build.

3. Keep all the clients in one spot

Instead of paying WP Engine per site or glueing together separate form and hosting accounts for every client, we deploy the Astro dist/ folder straight to novence.ai (npx novence deploy ./dist).

It keeps all our client projects and contact forms in one place, checks for broken links on deploy, and gives the business owner a simple /edit page on their domain where they can get an email code and update their JSON data themselves without a rebuild.

If you run a small agency or freelance, ditching PHP updates and database backups for plain static Astro files is honestly the best quality of life upgrade you can make.