Structured content model
Custom post types and fields designed around your real content, so the API returns something sensible rather than a wall of HTML.
10 / Services
The WordPress your team knows, with a much faster front end
Headless WordPress keeps the editor your team already uses and replaces the theme with a modern React or Next.js front end — faster pages, no plugin bloat, and content that can feed more than one place.
- Projects delivered
- 50+
- Years of experience
- 10+
- Countries served
- 15+
- Typical timeline
- 6–12 wks
SAME EDITOR DIFFERENT FRONT END
Headless WordPress splits a website into two halves. WordPress stays where it is, doing what it is genuinely excellent at — storing content and giving your team a familiar place to edit it. The theme layer, which is where most WordPress performance problems live, is replaced by a separate front end built in React or Next.js that reads the content over an API.
The result is a site that can be dramatically faster, because the pages your visitors load are no longer assembled by PHP on every request with a stack of plugins joining in. It also means the same content can feed a marketing site, an app and a partner’s system without being written three times.
The honest caveat is that you now own two systems instead of one. Some WordPress conveniences — live preview, plugins that inject front-end markup, a page builder — stop working the way editors expect unless they are deliberately rebuilt. Headless is a real advantage for the right project and an expensive detour for the wrong one, so most of this page is about telling the two apart.
WHAT CHANGES WHEN YOU GO HEADLESS
Three practical differences, and what each one means for your team.
Speed
Pages built ahead of time
With Next.js, most pages can be rendered at build time or cached at the edge, so a visitor gets a ready-made page from a server near them instead of waiting for PHP, a database and a dozen plugins. This is where the biggest, most visible gain comes from.
Content
One source, several destinations
Content lives in WordPress as structured fields and is delivered over REST or GraphQL. The same product description, article or landing page can feed the website, a mobile app and an internal dashboard without anyone copying and pasting.
Editing
Preview has to be rebuilt
This is the trade-off nobody mentions in the sales pitch. Live preview, some SEO plugins and anything that injects front-end markup need a deliberate replacement. We set up preview and structured SEO fields as part of the build, because a CMS your team distrusts is worse than a slow theme.
WHAT THE BUILD INCLUDES
Everything needed for a headless site your team can actually run day to day.
Next.js or React front end
A front end built for your templates, with static generation or incremental rendering where it helps most.
Editor preview restored
Draft preview wired back up, so editors can see a page before it is published.
SEO handled explicitly
Titles, descriptions, canonical tags, structured data, sitemaps and redirects rebuilt properly rather than inherited from a plugin.
Edge caching & hosting
Hosting and cache invalidation set up so a published edit appears quickly without rebuilding the world.
Locked-down WordPress
The WordPress install is hidden behind authentication and hardened, since it no longer needs to serve public traffic.
Headless is a performance and architecture decision, not a fashion statement.
Ask if headless suits youWHEN HEADLESS IS WORTH IT
The situations where the extra complexity pays for itself.
Content at scale
Thousands of pages where render time and crawl budget genuinely matter.
Web plus app
The same content feeding a website and a mobile or partner application.
Performance-critical marketing
Paid traffic landing pages where every hundred milliseconds has a measurable cost.
Complex front-end interaction
Configurators, calculators and dashboards that a theme cannot express cleanly.
Multi-brand or multi-region
Several front ends drawing from one content source with shared components.
Migration from a legacy stack
Modernising the front end without throwing away years of WordPress content.
THE STACK WE USE
Boring, well-supported tools. No framework chosen because it was interesting.
WordPress
As the editor and API, with custom fields and a locked-down admin.
Next.js
Static generation, incremental revalidation and server rendering where each fits.
REST & GraphQL
Whichever suits the shape of your content and the number of requests.
Edge hosting
CDN caching with sensible invalidation, so edits appear without a full rebuild.
HOW A HEADLESS PROJECT RUNS
Six stages, starting with an honest check that headless is the right answer.
-
01
Fit assessment
We look at your content, your team and your traffic and tell you whether headless is worth the added complexity. Sometimes the answer is no.
-
02
Content model
Post types, fields and relationships designed for an API rather than for a theme.
-
03
Design
Templates designed for the real content, on desktop and mobile.
-
04
Front-end build
The Next.js or React application, with rendering strategy chosen per template.
-
05
Editor workflow
Preview, SEO fields, roles and publishing tested by the people who will use them daily.
-
06
Launch & handover
Migration, redirects, monitoring, and documentation covering both halves of the system.
HOW LONG IT TAKES
Headless projects usually run 6–12 weeks — longer than a themed build, because there are two systems to fit together.
| Stage | Typical time | What you receive |
|---|---|---|
| Fit assessment & scope | 1 week | Recommendation, architecture, fixed estimate |
| Content model | 1 week | Post types, fields, API shape |
| Design | 1–2 weeks | Designed templates for every page type |
| Front-end build | 3–4 weeks | Staging front end reading live content |
| Editor workflow & launch | 1–2 weeks | Preview, SEO, redirects, training, go-live |
WHAT HEADLESS COSTS
A headless build costs more than a themed one, and the running costs are different too — hosting for two systems, and a front end that needs a developer for structural changes. We set both out before you commit.
Get your estimate- What moves the price
- How many templates the front end needs
- How complex the content model and relationships are
- Whether editor preview and SEO tooling must match what your team has today
- Migration volume from an existing WordPress site
- Integrations with other systems over the API
- Whether one front end or several consume the content
WHEN HEADLESS IS THE WRONG CHOICE
We would rather tell you now than six months into a build. If several of these are true, a well-built classic WordPress site will serve you better.
Get an honest assessment- Reasons to stay with a theme
- Your marketing team composes pages freely and needs to keep doing that
- The site is small and already loads quickly
- Nobody in-house or on retainer can maintain a JavaScript application
- You depend on plugins that render front-end markup
- The budget only covers the build, with nothing left for maintenance
- Speed problems are caused by images and plugins, which are cheaper to fix directly
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WordPress Development
Custom themes, plugins and integrations on WordPress — lean, fast and structured so your team can edit pages confidently instead of being afraid to touch them.
Learn moreReact & Next.js
Web applications, dashboards and high-performance sites built in React and Next.js — typed, tested and structured so the next developer can read them.
Learn moreHeadless Shopify
A custom storefront in Next.js or Hydrogen, running on Shopify’s commerce engine and checkout — for brands whose experience no longer fits inside a theme.
Learn morePerformance Optimisation
Core Web Vitals, page speed and server tuning for WordPress, WooCommerce and Shopify — measured on mid-range devices and real connections, not on a developer’s laptop.
Learn moreHEADLESS WORDPRESS QUESTIONS
What businesses ask before committing to a headless build.
Still have a question? Ask us on WhatsApp
WordPress keeps storing and editing your content, but it stops rendering the public site. A separate front end, usually Next.js, reads the content over an API and serves the pages your visitors see.
Yes. That is the main reason to choose headless WordPress over a different CMS. We do have to rebuild preview and some plugin-driven features so the experience stays familiar.
Usually, and often dramatically so, because pages can be pre-rendered and cached at the edge. But if your current site is slow because of huge images and twenty plugins, fixing those is cheaper and may get you most of the same gain.
They no longer control the output, so titles, descriptions, canonicals, schema and sitemaps are implemented in the front end. We keep the fields in WordPress so editors still control them.
Not in the usual way. Instead we build a set of components editors can arrange through structured fields, which is more predictable but less free-form than a builder.
Yes, modestly. You are maintaining a CMS and a front-end application, with two sets of dependencies. Budget for that before choosing it.
Yes. Content, media and users move across, URLs are mapped, redirects created, and rankings monitored after launch.
Not necessarily, but you need access to one — in-house, us, or another agency — because front-end changes are code changes rather than settings.
It can, though a headless store is a bigger undertaking than a headless content site. We would talk through whether a well-built classic WooCommerce store meets the goal first.
That is what the fit assessment is for. We look at your traffic, content and team, and give you a straight recommendation, including the option of not doing it.
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