Are Jamstack websites better than Wordpress?

Static - Jamstack websites vs Dynamic (Wordpress, Wix, Squarespace etc)

 

Jamstack sites are not something new, they've been around since 2015, over the years they've matured well, and I predict that they will be the new standard for the web.

Choosing the right technology for a website in 2024 can be a daunting task, I know I struggled with it, and I'm a developer.

There are so many options to choose from, and in this article I will explain the differences between the traditional way of building sites, and the new and cutting-edge approach. By the end, you should have a better understanding of why your existing Wordpress sites should be re-created, or why it's a no-brainer for any new site to go Jamstack.

Key Takeaways:

  • Speed and performance - Static sites serve static content, this means that the document that your site serves to your customer is generated when your site is created (on build time). While dynamic sites generates it when a visitior requests it. Because of this, static sites can load up to 10 times faster than traditional ones.

  • Google ranking - Search engines award sites who are fast, and pushishes the slow ones, meaning that if your site has a faster loading time, it will come up higher in the search results

  • Security - Dynamic sites are known to being susceptible to common web threats like SQL injections, requiring regular updates for security. Static sites are almost impenetrable because of their simplicity, and the lack of server.

  • Scalability - Static sites are distributed across a CDN, which can handle high traffic without additional cost or configuration. Scaling dynamic sites is harder and requires managed hosting solutions and optimization plugins

     

Why are static (Jamstack) sites faster than traditional ones?

When you run a Lighthouse test on your website, performance is the first thing you see, it's the most vital part of any site. If a site takes more than 3 seconds to load the majority of the users abandon the site before they even see it. This is the biggest drawback when it comes to sites made with Wordpress or Wix, they require a database and a server to run, and depending on your visitor internet speed, this is something you cannot control.

With Jamstack sites, the HTML document that your client are served, is already built and ready to be viewed, there's no communication with a server or a database, all the browser has to do is show it to them.

The other problem with Wordpress is that it ships a lot of messy code that in some cases you don't even need, and you have virtually no control over removing it, which makes your visitiors download code that are not required, making the site even slower.

Jamstack allows us to select what's send to the visitor, and with this fine grain control, we can make sure that only the neccessary things are downloaded.

When it comes to Google and other search engines, they do what's called a Mobile first indexing, meaning that they measure how fast your site loads on mobile, the faster it loads the better you rank.

Jamstack technology promotes the benefits of a static website, such as improved performance and enhanced security. At the same time, it retains the dynamic features of a database-driven CMS like WordPress, without the necessity for a database. Jamstack websites are built with pre-rendered HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files that are served from a CDN. They use APIs to fetch data and functionality from various sources, such as e-commerce platforms, content management systems, or third-party services. Jamstack websites are faster, more secure, and easier to scale than traditional websites. Jamstack is the ideal solution for modern web development, as it offers the best of both worlds: static and dynamic.