WordPress or Next.js for a Company Website? 2026 Comparison

You need to create a new company website, and the question arises: WordPress or Next.js? An agency recommends one, a programmer friend the other, and everyone has their own arguments. In this comparison, we introduce both technologies one by one: what they are, their maintenance costs, which is faster, who will edit the content, and what hosting you need. By the end, you'll have a simple cheat sheet on when to choose each solution.

Let's be honest right away: we offer both on Saplo with a single click, so we have no interest in recommending one over the other. The choice depends on the project, not on trends.

Table of contents

1. What is WordPress?
2. What is Next.js?
3. How do WordPress and Next.js differ in practice?
4. Who will edit the content on the site?
5. What is faster and better for SEO?
6. How much does it cost to build and maintain a website?
7. What is more secure?
8. What hosting does WordPress need, and what does Next.js need?
9. Or maybe both at once?
10. When to choose WordPress and when to choose Next.js?
11. How to set up WordPress or Next.js on Saplo?
12. FAQ

What is WordPress?

WordPress is a content management system (CMS) written in PHP, with a MySQL or MariaDB database. According to W3Techs, it powers more than 40 percent of all websites on the internet. You install it, choose a theme, add plugins, and you immediately have a dashboard where you can add pages, blog posts, images, and forms.

The strength of WordPress is its ecosystem. There is a ready-made plugin for almost every need: contact forms, SEO, multilingual support, bookings, and e-commerce. An online store is created with the WooCommerce plugin, which turns a website into a full-featured e-commerce platform with a shopping cart, payments, and inventory management.

A WordPress website consists of three layers: the core, the theme (appearance), and plugins (features). Each of them needs regular updates, as we explain below in the section on security.

What Is Next.js?

Next.js is a framework for building websites and applications in React, developed by Vercel. It is not a ready-made CMS with an admin panel, but a tool for developers. A website built in Next.js is created as code: components, subpages, styles, while content comes from files, a database, or an external CMS.

The most important feature of Next.js is its rendering method. Pages can be:

• statically generated during the build (SSG), so the server serves ready-made HTML,
• server-rendered on every visit (SSR), when content needs to be fresh,
• incrementally regenerated (ISR), meaning static but rebuilt from time to time.

Thanks to this, a well-built Next.js website loads very quickly, and Google sees the full content in the HTML right away. The tradeoff is that every visual change or new feature requires a developer's work.

How do WordPress and Next.js differ in practice?

In short: WordPress is a ready-made house you decorate yourself. Next.js is an architectural plan and a construction team. Here are the details.

Feature	WordPress	Next.js
Type	ready-made CMS with an admin panel	framework for developers
Language	PHP	JavaScript / TypeScript (React)
Content editing	in the admin panel, no code required	in code or through a separate CMS
Project start	hours or days	days or weeks
New features	usually a plugin	usually code
Speed	depends on the theme, plugins and cache	high right from the start
Maintenance	core, theme and plugin updates	npm dependency updates
Store	WooCommerce out of the box	integration with an external engine
Hosting	PHP + database	a Node.js process or static files

Neither column is "better". WordPress wins on implementation time and the site owner's independence. Next.js wins on performance and flexibility when the site is more of an application than a brochure.

Who will edit the content on the site?

This question comes up more often than speed or cost. If, after the site is handed over, someone from the company who does not code will be updating the content, WordPress is the natural choice. The dashboard is familiar to millions of people, the block editor makes it possible to lay out a subpage without knowledge of HTML, and changing the price list or adding a blog post does not require calling an agency.

In Next.js, changing the text alone may mean editing code and deploying again. You can work around this by connecting a headless CMS (for example, Directus, Strapi, or WordPress as the backend), but that is another component you need to set up, configure, and maintain.

Simple rule: if the content changes weekly and the marketing team is responsible for it, start with WordPress. If the content changes rarely and a developer is building out the site, Next.js will not get in the way.

Which is faster and better for SEO?

Next.js has the advantage right from the start. Ready-made HTML, code splitting into small bundles, built-in image optimization (the next/image component), and font loading without layout shifts usually deliver good Core Web Vitals results without extra work.

WordPress can be just as fast, but you need to take care of it: a lightweight theme, a reasonable number of plugins, page caching, up-to-date PHP, and compressed images. A heavy page builder and thirty plugins can drag your PageSpeed score below 50. If your site is already struggling, check out the guide Is WordPress running slowly? 9 causes and how to fix them.

For SEO itself, both technologies are fine. Google has been indexing WordPress for twenty years, while plugins such as Yoast or Rank Math give you convenient control over titles, descriptions, and sitemaps. In Next.js, developers configure meta tags, sitemaps, and structured data in code. Your position in Google depends on your content, links, and speed, not the name of the framework.

How much does it cost to build and maintain a website?

The cost has three components: building, maintenance, and hosting.

Building. A simple one-page site on WordPress with a ready-made theme takes a few days to build. Creating the same site in Next.js, with its design and code written from scratch, usually takes the developer more time, so it costs more initially. The difference narrows for less conventional projects, where you would need to create a custom theme and custom features for WordPress anyway.

Maintenance. WordPress requires regular updates to its core, theme, and plugins, and some quality plugins are paid for on an annual basis. Next.js has no plugins to pay for, but every substantial change takes hours of developer time.

Hosting. A WordPress site works on any hosting that supports PHP and offers a database. Next.js with server-side rendering requires a running Node.js process, which standard shared hosting does not provide. Many people therefore deploy Next.js on Vercel. The free plan is designed for non-commercial projects, while the Pro plan costs $20 per month for each team member, plus charges for traffic above the limit.

With Saplo, you can host both technologies in a single Box on an annual plan. Box S costs $29 per year (1 GB RAM, 15 GB of NVMe storage), Box M costs $69 per year (2 GB RAM, 30 GB, SSH access), and Box L costs $149 per year (6 GB RAM, 60 GB). Every plan includes an unlimited number of applications and domains, so WordPress and Next.js can run side by side at no extra cost. Current prices are listed in Saplo pricing.

What is safer?

WordPress's popularity cuts both ways. Because so many websites run on it, it is the most common target of automated attacks. Most compromises, however, do not affect the core itself, but outdated plugins and themes. A website where someone keeps everything updated, uses strong passwords, and removes abandoned plugins is secure.

Next.js has a smaller attack surface because it has no public login panel at a well-known address or a plugin marketplace with thousands of authors. In practice, a statically generated website is just a set of HTML files. That does not mean there are no problems: npm dependencies can also have vulnerabilities and need to be updated, and a mistake in the API code is your developer's responsibility.

In both cases, the location where the website is hosted also matters. On shared hosting, an infected neighboring website can cause problems for other accounts on the same server. With Saplo, every Box is a separate container with its own resources, and every plan includes nightly backups stored off the server.

What kind of hosting does WordPress need, and what kind does Next.js need?

WordPress needs:

• PHP in its current version (today, a reasonable minimum is 8.2 or 8.3),
• a MySQL or MariaDB database,
• a web server (nginx or Apache) and an SSL certificate,
• preferably server-side caching, and for an online store, object caching (Redis) as well.

Next.js needs:

• Node.js in the version required by the relevant version of the framework,
• enough space to build your project (npm install and npm run build use a lot of memory, and a larger project will benefit from more than 1 GB RAM),
• a process that runs continuously and restarts automatically after a failure,
• a web server in front of the application that routes traffic from your domain to the Node.js port and handles SSL.

If you export your entire Next.js project to static files (output: 'export'), standard file hosting is enough. However, you then lose server-side rendering and the API, which account for half of the reasons people choose Next.js. To learn more about when running your own process makes sense, read about Node.js hosting.

What about having both at once?

There is a third option, increasingly common in larger projects: headless WordPress. WordPress remains the backend, where the editorial team writes content in the familiar dashboard, while Next.js renders the site for visitors, fetching content through the REST API or WPGraphQL.

Advantages: the editorial team does not need to learn anything new, and visitors get a fast website. Disadvantages: you maintain two applications instead of one, some WordPress plugins (especially those that display something on the site) no longer make sense, and you have to build a separate preview of a post before publication. This is a solution for companies with a full-time developer, not for a simple business card site.

On Saplo, you can set up this arrangement in a single Box: WordPress on the backend subdomain, Next.js on the main domain.

When to choose WordPress, and when Next.js?

Choose WordPress when:

• the content will be edited by someone without programming knowledge,
• you need a website quickly and at a reasonable price,
• you are building a store and WooCommerce meets your needs,
• you want a choice of developers because nearly every agency knows WordPress,
• the website is a business card, blog, portfolio, or company site.

Choose Next.js when:

• the website is closer to an application than a business card: login, customer dashboard, calculators, API integrations,
• loading speed directly affects sales and you want it out of the box,
• you have a developer or team who will continue developing the website,
• the project is already built in React and you want to maintain a single tech stack.

Consider headless when the editorial team writes a lot, the website needs to be very fast, and you can afford to maintain two components.

If you are still torn between regular hosting and your own server, read the comparison Saplo vs shared hosting: when a VPS makes sense.

How to set up WordPress or Next.js on Saplo?

Both technologies are available in the Saplo App catalog and can be installed from the panel.

WordPress:

1. In the panel, select WordPress from the App catalog.
2. Enter the site title, choose a PHP version (7.4 to 8.5, 8.3 by default), and specify whether to install WooCommerce right away.
3. After a few minutes, the site is running on the *.saploapp.pl subdomain or your own domain, with a free SSL certificate.
4. You access the WordPress dashboard with one click from the Saplo panel, without needing a separate password.

For detailed instructions, see How to set up WordPress on Saplo (step by step).

Next.js:

1. In the panel, select Next.js from the App catalog.
2. Saplo creates a starter project, builds it, and runs it as a process that restarts automatically after a crash. Traffic from your domain reaches the application through nginx with an SSL certificate.
3. You connect your code through GitHub: link the repository to the application, add a saplo.yaml file, and every git push pushed to the production branch builds and deploys a new version, usually in 1 to 3 minutes.

Details are available in the guide How to set up Next.js on Saplo.

Do you already have a WordPress site hosted by another provider? Migration to Saplo is included with every plan, and you can also move it yourself using the Saplo Migrate plugin. We explain this in the guide How to move WordPress to a new host without losing SEO.

FAQ

Will Next.js Replace WordPress?

Not in the coming years. They serve different audiences. WordPress gives non-programmers a ready-made dashboard, while Next.js gives developers freedom and performance. In many projects, the two work together, with WordPress serving as the content backend and Next.js as the layer visitors see.

Can you edit a Next.js site without a developer?

Yes, but you need to plan for it from the start. You need a separate CMS (for example, headless WordPress, Directus, or Strapi) from which Next.js pulls the content. Without one, every text change means editing the code and making a new deployment.

Is WordPress slower than Next.js?

At first, usually yes, because every request runs PHP and database queries. With page caching, a lightweight theme, and a sensible number of plugins, WordPress achieves very good PageSpeed results. Next.js delivers speed without that extra work, but if it is poorly written, it can be just as slow.

Can I run Next.js on regular shared hosting?

Only in a fully static version (output: 'export'). Server-side rendering, APIs, and ISR require a running Node.js process, which shared hosting usually does not allow you to run. You need a server, a container, or a platform such as Vercel. On Saplo, Next.js runs in your Box as a regular application from the app catalog.

Can I fit WordPress and Next.js on one Saplo plan?

Yes. Every Box includes unlimited apps and domains, so you can run WordPress, Next.js and, for example, n8n side by side. The only limitations are the memory and disk space of your chosen plan, and you can purchase additional resources from the dashboard without migrating.