Astro or WordPress? Why the choice for new SME websites is shifting

WordPress helped build the internet of the past 15 years. More than 42% of all websites run on it today, accounting for nearly 60% of all sites that use a CMS. But that dominance says little about the question every business owner or marketing manager asks when commissioning a new website: what is the smartest foundation if you are starting from scratch today?

In 2026, the answer is no longer obviously “WordPress”. Speed, security, AI findability and total cost structurally favour modern static-site frameworks like Astro, deployed on edge platforms like Cloudflare Workers. ClickForest built clickforest.com itself on Astro and helps Flemish SMEs build a new website on the same stack, with performance and SEO as the starting point.

This article explains why that is a deliberate choice, not a technological whim.

Why is WordPress no longer the obvious default for new SME sites?

WordPress is not dying, but for new projects built from scratch, four structural disadvantages stack up: slow load times without extensive optimisation, an exponentially growing security surface via plugins, total cost of ownership that climbs significantly over three years, and a weaker position in AI-generated search answers.

WordPress’s market share among sites with a detectable CMS dropped from 65.2% in 2022 to 60.2% in 2025, the first clear downward movement after ten years of uninterrupted growth. Across the entire web, WordPress sits at 42% of all sites. The distinction matters: the install base is still growing among non-technical users and existing sites, but the preference for new projects is shifting.

Loading speed as the first pain point. A standard WordPress installation with plugins loads 200-400KB of JavaScript before the page renders. Page builders, analytics, forms, chat tools and cookie banners stack client-side scripts. Every extra second of load time increases bounce rate by 32% relative to the 2.5-second LCP threshold Google uses. Pages that load in under 2 seconds record an average bounce rate of 9%. Above 5 seconds, that rises to 38%.

Security as the second pain point. In 2025, 11,334 new vulnerabilities were discovered in the WordPress ecosystem, a 42% increase versus 2024, according to the Patchstack State of WordPress Security report of February 2026. Nearly all problems sit in plugins and themes: 91% of vulnerabilities in 2025 were plugin-related, zero in the WordPress core. Of all newly disclosed vulnerabilities, 46% had no patch at the time of public disclosure. The median time to first mass exploitation after disclosure is five hours. Standard hosting firewalls block only 26% of WordPress-specific attacks.

Total cost as the third pain point. A WordPress site costs little at the start, but the sum of hosting (€15-40/month for managed environments), premium plugins (€500-1,500/year), security tools (€100-300/year) and maintenance work adds up significantly over three years. That is not an argument never to choose WordPress, but a reason to weigh total cost honestly.

GEO findability as the fourth pain point. AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews crawl differently from classic search engines. Research from Search Engine Land (2025) shows that 46% of ChatGPT bot visits begin in “reading mode”: a stripped HTML version without CSS, JavaScript or images. Pages heavily dependent on client-side JavaScript for their visible content are partially invisible to those crawlers. For anyone working on GEO and AI citability, this is an architectural choice that begins at platform selection. The strategic implications are discussed in detail in the article on zero-click and AI findability.

What is Astro and why does it work for SME sites?

Astro is a modern web framework that ships zero JavaScript to the browser by default unless it is genuinely needed for interactivity. The result: pages that load as pure HTML, without runtime overhead. That makes it the fastest framework for content-driven websites, confirmed by independent benchmarks and by Cloudflare’s acquisition of Astro in January 2026.

For a business owner or marketing manager, that means concretely: speed without configuring cache plugins, blogs and knowledge pages that work multilingually without extra systems, and a site deployed on Cloudflare Workers with edge distribution worldwide.

• Zero JavaScript by default: every page that does not need interactivity loads as pure HTML. A blog, a service page, a contact form does not need 200KB of React code to render.
• Islands architecture: the few components that are interactive, like a chatbot or a form, load as isolated islands. The rest of the page is not slowed down.
• Content collections: blogs and knowledge bases are managed via structured files in version control. No database, no security gap.
• Live Content Collections (stable in Astro 6): real-time content updates are now possible without full site rebuilds, a feature released stable in Astro 6 on 16 January 2026.
• Workerd runtime parity (Astro 6): the local development environment runs on the same Cloudflare workerd runtime as production. “Works on my machine” no longer exists as an excuse.
• Built-in multilingualism: EN, NL and FR as native features, with language-specific URL slugs.
• Vendor lock-in: none. Astro is MIT-licensed, open source and runs on any hosting: Cloudflare, Netlify, Vercel or your own server. The Cloudflare acquisition does not change portability.

Sparkbox benchmarked Astro independently in 2025 and measured a Lighthouse score of 100, a Time to Interactive of 0.3 seconds and an LCP of 0.4 seconds. By comparison: the same component structure in Next.js produced 180ms Total Blocking Time and an LCP of 1.7 seconds. State of JS 2025 placed Astro in first position for meta-framework satisfaction, with a 39 percentage point lead over Next.js. NPM downloads grew from 360,000 to 900,000 per week during 2025, doubling in twelve months.

“With Cloudflare’s resources and support, we can now return our focus fully towards building the best web framework for content-driven websites.”

Fred Schott, CEO at The Astro Technology Company

How does Astro compare to WordPress, Wix and Shopify for SME sites?

For content-driven SME and B2B sites, Astro wins on speed, security and AI findability. Wix wins on absolute beginner-friendliness. Shopify wins on e-commerce out of the box. The honest comparison:

Where WordPress is the right choice: larger editorial teams publishing content daily through a familiar admin interface, complex multisite environments with existing WP expertise in-house, or legacy projects where migration costs more than it delivers.

Where Shopify is the right choice: e-commerce with 100+ products, real-time inventory and a fully tuned checkout system. ClickForest builds Shopify webshops for those projects and combines them with performance marketing. Astro is not a replacement for Shopify in an e-commerce context.

ClickForest delivers websites for Flemish SMEs and scale-ups that score on speed, security and AI findability from day one. Not a standard solution, but a stack that fits the business goal. See what that involves or schedule a conversation via the video call page.

What has ClickForest concretely built on Astro?

ClickForest built clickforest.com itself on Astro with Cloudflare Workers as the deployment platform. No traditional hosting, no WordPress plugins, no caching configuration. What is technically in place:

• Multilingual site with NL, FR and EN via native Astro i18n, each language variant with its own URL structure
• Full contact form with spam protection, without external service
• AI chatbot trained on the site’s own content, integrated as an Astro island
• Admin panel for leads and content management, without external CMS
• 60+ blog posts managed via content collections in version control
• Schema.org structured data per page across six layers: Organization, WebSite, WebPage, BlogPosting, BreadcrumbList and FAQPage

That structured data approach follows a specific logic outlined in the articles on JSON-LD implementation and structured data in Google. The full schema architecture is built for GEO findability in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, not just for classic Google snippets.

“Websites that rely heavily on JavaScript for initial rendering often struggle to deliver this speed, hurting search rankings and customer conversions.”

Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO at Cloudflare

ClickForest built clickforest.com on this stack and helps Flemish SMEs do the same. Anyone wanting to build a new website on Astro with Cloudflare Workers works directly with Frederiek Pascal, without account managers or junior profiles in between.

How does Claude Code make this feasible without a dev team?

Claude Code lowers the barrier to building an Astro site, but does not replace domain knowledge. Anyone who understands how GEO works, what structured data requires and which page structure converts can use Claude Code to build a production site that takes no shortcuts on quality.

A concrete example from ClickForest’s practice: for every blog article on clickforest.com, ClickForest uses its own Claude Skill that automatically delivers the full format correctly, including frontmatter, summary, FAQ, crosslinks and schema.org markup. What used to take half a day now takes 30 minutes. The skill works because the underlying logic, GEO architecture, internal link strategy and tone rules, has been systematically built in by someone who understands that logic. More on how such a skill works in the articles on Claude Desktop and Claude Skills.

The same approach applies to building the site itself. ClickForest writes Astro components, implements schema layers and configures deployment via Claude Code, not as a shortcut but as an accelerator for expertise that is already in place. The tools are also used for broader marketing automation at clients, always with the same principle: automate what is repeatable, retain judgement where it matters.

State of JS 2025 shows that 62% of surveyed developers use AI tools daily for coding tasks, and that the largest self-reported win lies in repetitive tasks like boilerplate, test configuration and deployment logic, exactly the category where Claude Code makes a difference in an Astro project.

The combination of Astro, Claude Code and Cloudflare Workers is therefore not an experimental setup. It is the stack with which a solo operator or small team builds a site that runs faster, cheaper and safer than a typical agency WordPress environment.

For whom is Astro the right choice or not?

Astro is the better choice for marketing sites, B2B sites, portfolios and content-driven sites with blogs or knowledge bases. For complex e-commerce or teams without any technical knowledge, caveats apply.

Astro is the strong choice for:

• Marketing sites, service businesses and portfolios where speed and CRO reinforce each other
• B2B sites focused on lead generation where load speed determines conversion points
• Multilingual sites where URL structure and hreflang must be correct
• Sites where SEO combined with AI findability is a priority
• Content-driven sites with extensive structured data needs

Astro is less suitable when:

• The webshop has 100+ products with real-time inventory and complex checkout: choose Shopify
• A team of multiple non-technical editors publishes daily content without any workflow setup
• The client wants to manage a familiar WP environment they have known for years

ClickForest’s rule: existing sites that perform well are not rebuilt without a clear business reason. New sites being built today almost always justify the question of whether Astro is the better foundation. The same applies in the broader approach ClickForest deploys for SMEs and scale-ups in the Mechelen and Flanders region.

Does this approach also work outside websites?

The same logic behind the Astro approach applies to internal software. ClickForest also built the ClickForest CRM with Claude Code, an internal system without external licences, fully tailored to the company’s own workflow. No SaaS subscription, no data with third parties, no functional compromises from a generic system.

That is precisely the scope of building with AI: for SMEs that want to go beyond a website, towards an internal dashboard, AI agent or custom integration. The principle is the same as with Astro: less overhead, better fit for the actual need, no vendor lock-in.

Conclusion: Astro as the standard for new SME sites

WordPress is not disappearing. But for a new site built from scratch today, Astro on Cloudflare Workers is the smartest choice for most SMEs. Faster, safer, lower in total cost over three years and better positioned for the shift to AI-driven discovery.

“Generative AI solutions are becoming substitute answer engines, replacing user queries that previously may have been performed in traditional search engines.”

Alan Antin, VP Analyst at Gartner

ClickForest delivers websites for Flemish SMEs and scale-ups that score on speed, security and GEO findability from day one. See what building an Astro website concretely involves, or book a video call to discuss your project directly.

And if you want to go beyond a website, towards an internal dashboard, AI agent or custom integration: building with AI is the logical next step.