# When to choose DatoCMS over Wordpress?

Our customers prefer DatoCMS for its convenient scalability, unrivaled developer experience, and clean editing interface.

## DatoCMS vs. Wordpress: How we're different

DatoCMS is the right option for agencies and tech teams that want to embrace headless and **speed up development**, while maintaining a **smooth experience for editors**.

Wordpress is the juggernaut CMS on the market, but it's also known for its **heavy-load maintenance** and bloated plugin system, **leading to performance lags**.

## At a glance comparison

### Who is it for

**DatoCMS:** Built for tech teams that want to **speed up development pace** and leave antiquate systems behind, ensuring editors keep a user-friendly platform.

**Wordpress:** The **world’s most adopted CMS**, powering 43% of the internet, well known for being easy to use, but still fairly customizable through plugins.

### Costs

**DatoCMS:** **Transparent pricing** with no hidden costs, and a full-featured free tier to experiment before committing.

**Wordpress:** Starts free, but **costs add up quickly** - premium plugins and themes, hosting, engineering - resulting in dozens or even hundreds of dollars per month for larger-scale projects.

### Developer Experience

**DatoCMS:** Gives engineers the freedom to **choose any tech stack and framework**, like Next.js, Vue, React, as the content is separated from the presentation layer, **without worrying about the backend**.

**Wordpress:** While integrating a chosen frontend using WordPress APIs is doable, it **comes with its challenges** — you'll still need to **handle backend tasks** to ensure scalability and maintaining security.

**DatoCMS:** **Frontend development demands time**, but opens the door to user experiences that are both **custom-fit** and **technologically superior**.

**Wordpress:** An all-encompassing solution allows for **rapid site building** and deployment, but venturing into **customizations quickly becomes complex** and time-consuming.

### Editor experience

**DatoCMS:** A clean editing experience where editors coming from Wordpress can **transition quickly** and be productive from the get-go.

**Wordpress:** The editor delivers an environment that has **achieved widespread adoption** and recognition throughout industries.

### Extensibility

**DatoCMS:** Extend UI and functionality using a mix of official, community, and private plugins. However, **they may lack the capabilities of WordPress's**, and often require frontend modifications for integration.

**Wordpress:** Offers a **huge selection of plugins and themes** to enhance a site's functionality and appearance, optimizing for SEO, security, and user experience without any development.

### Performance & Scalability

**DatoCMS:** Without the burden of managing backend scalability, developers can **channel their creativity** into actually building their projects.

**Wordpress:** Scalability hinges on the backend's web and database servers, **placing a burden on your IT** or forcing reliance on **expensive hosting services**.

**DatoCMS:** Includes **media management with storage and CDN** on Imgix [for images](https://www.datocms.com/features/images-api.md) and Mux [for video optimization](https://www.datocms.com/features/video-api.md).

**Wordpress:** Plugins can enhance multimedia content with a CDN to boost performance, but **they are not cheap** and can lead to **vendor lock-in**.

### Security & Maintenance

**DatoCMS:** **Enterprise-grade network security** with DDOS mitigation, TLS encryption at rest and in transit, network rate limits, and two layers of caching to minimize downtime risks, with an average 99,99% uptime.

**Wordpress:** **Widely known for security issues** due to vulnerabilities in plugins, themes, and outdated versions.

**DatoCMS:** Sit back and relax, no need to worry about backend maintenance - DatoCMS **keeps the solution up-to-date for you.**

**Wordpress:** Navigating updates across themes, plugins, and various software layers can be a minefield that often leads to site disruptions, **turning maintenance into a tricky endeavor**.

## Ready to migrate from Wordpress to DatoCMS?

Switching to DatoCMS is a breeze with our Wordpress importer. It takes care of the complexities, allowing you to move your site to a new DatoCMS project in no time at all.

[Learn More](https://www.datocms.com/docs/import-and-export/import-from-wordpress.md)

## Three reasons to consider DatoCMS

1.  Lightning-fast performance
    
    With a global CDN and optimized media delivery, your projects get an impressive boost in speed, plus improved SEO rankings and user engagement. It’s what your projects need to match the swift pace of today’s web.
    
2.  Delightful developer experience
    
    We’ve designed DatoCMS as a flexible platform to build precisely what you need. Our native GraphQL API and visual content modeling give you the freedom to build a content infrastructure that adapts to any scenario.
    
3.  A perfect blend of easy and powerful
    
    Our editing interface feels like a friendly wave from Wordpress, but with more power under the hood. Get creative with features like Blocks and Modular Content for a no-fuss, no-code page building experience that still packs a serious punch.