The website you’re reading right now was built with Astro. Not WordPress. Not Squarespace. Not a page builder. Astro — a relatively new static site framework that most non-developers have never heard of.
I’ve been building websites professionally for over 20 years. I’ve worked on everything from hand-coded HTML sites in the early 2000s to complex WordPress builds to custom React applications. Choosing Astro for my own business site wasn’t a novelty decision. It was the result of a clear-eyed assessment of what the site needed to do and which tool was best suited to do it.
Here’s what I learned.
Why Not WordPress?
I want to be clear upfront: WordPress is still the right choice for many websites. It’s what I build on for clients who need a CMS they can manage themselves, who need WooCommerce, or who have content workflows that require a database. I’m not anti-WordPress.
But for my own site, the calculus was different. What did I actually need?
- Fast loading everywhere, including on mobile connections (the Sunshine Coast has spotty coverage in places)
- Excellent Core Web Vitals scores for SEO
- A site I could maintain and update without worrying about plugin conflicts, security patches, or hosting headaches
- Full control over the markup and performance characteristics
- A codebase I enjoyed working in
WordPress can technically achieve all of these things. But it requires significant ongoing work to maintain that level of performance — optimizing the database, managing caching plugins, keeping plugins updated and compatible, and dealing with the overhead that comes with a CMS even when you don’t need the CMS features.
Astro ships zero JavaScript to the browser by default. WordPress ships everything and you work backwards from there.
What Astro Is
Astro is a static site framework. You write your pages using a component-based approach (similar to React or Vue, but with less overhead), and at build time it generates plain HTML files. No database. No server-side rendering. Just fast, static files that load instantly.
For content-driven sites — marketing sites, portfolio sites, blogs — this is the right architecture. The content doesn’t change based on who’s logged in or what’s in a shopping cart. It’s the same for everyone. Serving static files from a CDN is dramatically faster and cheaper than running a database-backed CMS.
Astro also supports React components where you need interactivity. The site you’re on now uses React for the modal overlays, the capabilities tabs, and the animated sections. Everything that can be static is static. Everything that needs to be interactive uses React, loaded on-demand.
The Build Process
I built this site over a few weeks, working evenings and weekends around client commitments. The process was genuinely enjoyable in a way that WordPress projects often aren’t.
A few things that stood out:
The component model is clean. Each section of the site is its own component. The hero, the testimonials, the capabilities tabs — each one lives in its own file and does one thing. When something needs to change, I know exactly where to go.
Tailwind CSS 4 pairs well with it. I’ve been using Tailwind for several years. In combination with Astro, writing styles feels fast and intentional. No unused CSS ships to the browser.
Content collections are excellent. The blog you’re reading is built on Astro’s content collections. I write posts in Markdown, with a front matter schema that validates the data. The build system handles everything else.
The performance was immediately good. I didn’t have to fight for performance. The architecture defaults to it.
The Results
Running the site through Google’s PageSpeed Insights:
- Mobile performance: 98
- Desktop performance: 100
- Core Web Vitals: all green
This matters for SEO. Google uses Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor. A site that scores this well has a measurable advantage over competitors with slower sites, all else being equal.
It also matters for users. A site that loads in under a second on a mobile connection — even with the spotty LTE on parts of the Sunshine Coast — keeps people there.
What I’d Use Astro For (And What I Wouldn’t)
Astro is the right choice for:
- Marketing sites and landing pages. Exactly the use case it’s designed for.
- Blogs and content sites. First-class support for this.
- Portfolio sites. Fast, flexible, easy to maintain.
- Sites where performance is a priority. If you’re competing on SEO, the performance advantage is real.
It’s not the right choice for:
- Sites where clients need to edit content without a developer. WordPress or a headless CMS is better for this. Astro’s content collections work well, but they require comfort with Markdown and Git.
- E-commerce. Use Shopify or WooCommerce. Don’t build a shopping cart in Astro.
- Complex web applications. If you need real-time data, user accounts, and database queries, Astro isn’t designed for that. Use Next.js or a proper full-stack framework.
The Broader Point
Every technology decision should be driven by what the project actually needs — not by what you’re most comfortable with, what the biggest market share is, or what the latest trend dictates.
For my own site, Astro was the right answer. For many of my clients’ sites, WordPress is the right answer. For a couple, Shopify or a custom React application was right.
The platform fits the problem. That’s the only rule I consistently apply.
If you’re thinking about rebuilding your website and want a second opinion on what stack makes sense for your specific situation, that’s a good conversation to have.