Headless WordPress, built properly.

Headless WordPress is the architecture for businesses that have outgrown classic themes but love WordPress as a CMS. You keep the editorial experience your team is trained on. You replace the PHP front-end with a modern React or framework-based application that loads in milliseconds, deploys to the edge, and gives developers the DX they actually want to work in. Done well it's the best of both worlds. Done badly it's a complicated mess that breaks SEO and confuses everyone.

When headless makes sense

You're running content marketing at scale and Core Web Vitals matter financially. You need exceptional front-end performance — sub-second LCP, no layout shift, instant navigation. You want to deploy globally on Vercel, Cloudflare or Netlify edge networks. You're building omnichannel (web + app + in-store screens + email) and want one CMS feeding everything. You've outgrown what Gutenberg + a theme can do design-wise. Or you simply have a React-first development team and PHP theming is friction.

When it doesn't

You have a small content site loading fine on traditional WordPress. Your team has zero JavaScript capability and doesn't want to hire any. Your plugins do heavy front-end work (e.g. complex form builders, calendar plugins) that don't have headless equivalents. Your budget can't sustain the 2x build cost and ongoing front-end maintenance. In any of these cases, a well-built classic WordPress site is the right answer.

Our headless stack

Backend: WordPress with WPGraphQL or REST API, ACF Pro for structured content, Yoast SEO for metadata, custom blocks where needed. Locked-down admin (often behind Cloudflare Access). Front-end: Next.js, TanStack Start or Astro depending on project. Hosting: Vercel, Cloudflare or Netlify on the front, managed WordPress (Kinsta, WP Engine) on the back. Build pipeline: ISR or static-with-revalidation, edge caching, image optimisation via next/image or Cloudflare Images. Preview: draft preview flow so editors see changes before publishing.

SEO in a headless build

This is where most headless projects fail. We handle it explicitly: server-side rendering of all metadata (title, description, og:*, canonical), Yoast SEO data piped through to head tags, JSON-LD schema rendered server-side, sitemaps generated dynamically, robots.txt configured, URL parity with the existing WordPress site, 301 redirect strategy planned upfront. Done right, headless sites typically rank slightly better than the WordPress original thanks to Core Web Vitals improvements.

Editor experience matters

Your team don't care about the architecture — they care that publishing a post still takes 30 seconds. We make sure custom blocks render with live preview, ACF fields are organised sensibly, and the WordPress admin feels like a normal WordPress admin, not a stripped-down API tool. Editors can keep working the way they always have.

Pricing

Headless WordPress brochure / content site: £12,000–£25,000. Headless with WooCommerce or complex interactivity: £20,000–£45,000. Enterprise multi-region or app + web: £40,000–£120,000. Hosting £80–£500/month split across WordPress backend and edge front-end. Care plans from £200/month covering both sides.