Migrating from WordPress to Astro and Sanity: why it pays off
Why we move WordPress sites to Astro and Sanity, what the migration involves, and what a fast, well-built site looks like afterwards.
This article is available in English.
WordPress runs a huge share of the web, and many brands outgrow it quietly: slower pages, a pile of plugins, updates nobody wants to touch. Here is why beterdesign moves those sites to Astro and Sanity, what the migration involves, and what to expect afterwards.
What is a WordPress to Astro and Sanity migration?
A migration moves your website off WordPress and onto a new foundation without losing what you have built. Astro is the framework that renders the pages. Sanity is the content studio where your team edits texts, images, projects and articles. Your design, your copy, your URLs and your search visibility come with you; the platform underneath changes.
It is the same stack we chose when we rebuilt our own studio site, and the one we now build most new sites on.
Why brands leave WordPress
WordPress is flexible, and that flexibility has a cost. Over the years a typical site collects a theme, a page builder and a long list of plugins, each one a piece of code someone has to keep updated. The common pain points are easy to recognise:
- Pages that feel heavy, because every request runs through a database and a stack of plugin code.
- Constant updates, where one plugin change can break a layout or open a security hole.
- A design held back by what the theme or page builder allows.
- An editor that mixes content and layout, so a simple text change can disturb the page.
Why Astro is a better foundation
Astro builds pages as clean, static HTML and sends almost no JavaScript until a page needs it. There is no database to query on every visit and no plugin layer to maintain, so pages load quickly and there is far less surface for things to go wrong. Hosting on a global network such as Cloudflare keeps the site close to every visitor.
Because the markup is ours, the design is not limited by a theme. Typography, motion and layout are built to measure, which is how a luxury brand keeps its look intact while getting faster.
Why Sanity is a better editor
Sanity separates content from design. Your team opens the studio, changes a text, an image, a project or an article, and clicks Publish. The site rebuilds and the change is live about a minute later. Nobody can accidentally break the layout, because the layout is not what they are editing.
If you would rather not edit anything yourself, we make the changes for you. Either way the content is yours, stored in a structured form you can reuse.
What the migration involves
- Audit: we review your pages, posts, URLs and what already ranks, so nothing valuable is lost.
- Content: your pages and articles move into Sanity in a clean, structured form.
- Design: the site is rebuilt in Astro, either keeping your look or improving it.
- Redirects: old WordPress URLs point to their new addresses, so links and search rankings carry over.
- SEO and AEO: titles, descriptions and structured data are set up so the site is understood by Google and by AI answer engines.
- Launch: we check everything on the live site and stay on hand afterwards.
What a well-built site looks like afterwards
The clearest way to judge a build is to measure it. Here is a Lighthouse report for Cora Bett Thomas Rentals, a Savannah rental site we designed and built: Performance 99, Accessibility 100, Best Practices 100 and SEO 100. That is the standard we aim for on every site we ship, and it is what we expect to see once a heavy WordPress site is rebuilt properly on Astro and Sanity.
Fast, accessible and clean under the hood also helps discovery. Search engines and AI assistants can read a well-structured page more easily, and visitors stay because the page opens instantly.
Case study coming soon: Reed Ventures Developments
The first WordPress migration in our new series is Reed Ventures Developments. The full case study is coming soon, and we will publish what changed once it is ready. Watch the journal for it.
Is your WordPress site ready to move?
beterdesign is now actively looking for WordPress websites that need a migration. It is usually time to talk if your site feels slow, if updates worry you, if your design is limited by a theme, or if editing content is harder than it should be.
Send us your address and we will tell you honestly whether Astro and Sanity are the right move, and what the migration would involve.
