WordPress and Jamstack are not the same thing at all.
While it may seem interesting to compare WordPress and Jamstack directly, it is not possible to compare them side by side in a meaningful way. WordPress and Jamstack are not the same thing, either in terms of architecture or functionality. If you’re used to building websites with WordPress, where everything is bundled together into a single monolithic blob, this may cause some confusion.
The difference between WordPress and Jamstack is that WordPress is a platform for building websites, whereas Jamstack is an architecture for building websites. Jamstack is a service that combines multiple services and platforms to help you build websites and web applications that are faster, more secure, and overall better. Essentially, you have the option of selecting the CMS, front-end technology, and service that you want for your site. If you use WordPress, you are pretty much restricted to… well, using WordPress!
Is it possible to create Jamstack websites using WordPress? Yes! WordPress can be used as a Headless Content Management System (CMS), but most businesses are moving away from WordPress entirely. An increasingly popular alternative to WordPress is the modern Headless CMS, which includes products like Agility CMS and XenForo.
Is Jamstack a better alternative to WordPress?
The term “better” is extremely subjective. In our subjective opinion, the answer is yes. WordPress is terrible – it’s an out-of-date way of creating websites, and it’s difficult to keep up with modern standards when using it. When it comes to optimizing WordPress sites for Google’s Core Web Vitals, for example, you’ll have a difficult time. With Jamstack, this is a LOT less difficult.
Jamstack assists web developers in making websites harder, better, and faster.
Why Jamstack, when WordPress is perfectly adequate, right?
It is possible for Jamstack to be more resilient in terms of security and scalability because it uses static file delivery rather than server-side rendering. In addition, because you are not rendering anything on the server side, you are virtually DDoS proof when using a content delivery network (CDN) such as Vercel or Netlify to deliver your static files.
Jamstack is up to date: Do you prefer to code in React and Javascript rather than that pesky PHP? This is accomplished through the use of Next.js and Gatsby. It is the year 2022! Isn’t it past time to switch from PHP to something else?
Jamstack is a static object that moves at lightning speed: Jamstack sites, in contrast to WordPress sites, do not render content on a server when a user visits your site. Your website’s content is pre-rendered long before any visitors arrive on the scene. It is significantly faster to deliver pre-built static files rather than having to build them from scratch each time someone requests them. The reality is that you are not going to be updating your front page or privacy policy on a daily basis.
Make use of Jamstack to optimize your website for Google’s Core Web Vitals and instantly gain more swag on the search engine results page. It is a known fact that Google will rank your website based on the Page Experience it provides to users. Performance, particularly on mobile devices, is a significant factor influencing the Page Experience.
The cost of developing with Jamstack versus WordPress
Considering that WordPress is a blogging platform, it’s relatively simple to set it up for a simple website. Because WordPress’s inability to scale, as more features and functions are added, costs quickly escalate as a result of the inability to scale.
Because Jamstack is an architecture and requires more work to set up than WordPress, the initial costs of setting up Jamstack are higher than those of setting up WordPress. However, in the long run, the costs of using Jamstack are offset by the fact that new features are implemented in less time.
WordPress security flaws and the financial toll they take
It’s important to remember that WordPress is well-known for its numerous security issues involving third-party plugins. Having your website hacked could cost you a lot of money. You hear clients’ cases, where a vulnerability in their WordPress website caused them to experience significant downtime. Despite the fact that they had backup systems in place, the incident cost them lost revenue.
Because Jamstack only delivers static pages, which are virtually impossible to hack, you can be confident that you will eliminate the risk of third-party security issues. Jamstack is virtually impenetrable to DDoS attacks, third-party plugin security flaws, and a slew of other common threats that you would normally have to worry about when working with WordPress.
With Jamstack, you can achieve WCAG 2.1 accessibility and ADA compliance.
In the United States, you must be familiar with the Americans with Disabilities Act if your company has a presence there. In 2022, the number of lawsuits related to web accessibility is expected to steadily increase. However, while having an accessible website is a fundamental human right, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) causes greater concern for business owners because of the numerous lawsuits filed against companies that fail to meet satisfactory accessibility levels for their websites. In almost all cases, conformance to WCAG 2.1, Level AA is required in order to avoid ADA litigation.
90 percent of the time, screen readers and other assistive technologies have difficulty deciphering the HTML in WordPress’s content. Third-party plugins may fail to set ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) attributes at all, making it impossible or at the very least time-consuming to add them.
Jamstack makes this a whole lot easier because you aren’t reliant on any third-party plugins that may or may not be suitable for use with assistive technology, depending on their accessibility. Jamstack allows you to hand craft your HTML to meet any level of WCAG 2.1 guidelines (A to AAA), reducing the likelihood of being sued by the Americans with Disabilities Act. A-level may be sufficient for some, but you may be required to have an AA-level qualification in some cases, particularly if you work in the healthcare industry or the public sector.
WordPress versus Jamstack Performance
Google ranks websites based on a number of key metrics, one of which is performance. In the foreseeable future, it is unlikely that this trend will wane. If you’ve ever attempted to optimize WordPress for performance, you’ll know that it’s not a simple undertaking.
WordPress makes use of server-side rendering, which is slow. A combination of outdated technologies and programming languages, such as PHP, makes WordPress a very slow platform to work with. Third-party plugins that are slow, old, and unmaintained give developers virtually no control over the content they display. As a result, it is nearly impossible to optimize WordPress for Google Core Web Vitals at this time.
Prior to being loaded by users, Jamstack delivers static files that have been pre-built and optimized by the platform. It is much easier to optimize Jamstack websites for Google Core web vitals than it would be to do the same thing with WordPress because you have complete control over everything that is served to the client. If you work hard enough, you can achieve over 90 performance scores while using a mobile device.
Jamstack is a content management system.
WordPress includes content management as part of the platform, which allows it to combine the content and presentation layers. To begin with, this is a difficult situation. When you manage and use the same content across multiple media channels, it becomes more difficult. WordPress was originally intended to be used as a blogging platform, and it is a poor choice for any serious content management due to the reasons outlined in this article. Yes, it may have been a good CMS in the 1990s, but it is now the year 2022. We drive electric vehicles, so why would you want to build your website on an outdated content management system?
To manage and create content models with Jamstack, you can use a Headless CMS that allows you to decouple the content from the front-end of your website. As a result, there are numerous advantages for content management and marketing, not to mention that development costs become more reasonable over time.
In conclusion, WordPress is an antiquated method of creating websites.
It all started out as a simple blogging platform, but over time it has grown into something it was never intended to be, creating an array of issues in the areas of performance, scalability, security, and software development, among other things. In terms of website development, it does not have a structured approach that we could classify as architecture.
Jamstack is an architecture that was created specifically to address the issues that we are experiencing with WordPress.