Eleanor edits a UK lifestyle title. 2.4M monthly uniques, 12 stories a day. WordPress plus 27 plugins. LCP sat at 4.1s. Discover traffic dried up. Editor previews took 40 minutes. A security disclosure on a third plugin meant a midnight patch cycle.
Migration WordPress to headless migration · Next.js + Sanity · UK
WordPress to headless migration that lands without taking the site. down for a single minute.
We move UK publishers and content-heavy SaaS off WordPress and 27 plugins onto Next.js + Sanity — every URL preserved, Core Web Vitals green, editors productive in week one.
12WordPress → headless migrations shipped
0minutes of cutover downtime
8Kfixed 5-day migration audit
Why founders sign
You don’t need to leave WordPress. You need to leave the version that’s costing you growth.
A headless CMS migration buys you speed, Discover traffic, and editorial sanity back. We make the risks legible and mitigated, in writing, before a single line of production code changes.
“Cutover happened at 3am Saturday with zero downtime. LCP dropped to 1.4s. Discover traffic returned in 18 days at 3×.”
001
1.4s
Median LCP on the headless target. Discover rewards return in 2-3 weeks.
002
0
Plugin sprawl. Every behaviour in code, version-controlled, reviewed.
003
8s
Editorial preview round-trip in Sanity, versus 40 minutes on cached WordPress.
The founder this page is for4.1s LCP · 27 plugins · Discover gone
A plugin update broke Eleanor’s homepage on a Tuesday morning.
Twelve-week migration to Next.js + Sanity. A redirect map covered 14,800 URLs. Cutover happened on a Saturday at 3am with zero downtime. LCP dropped to 1.4s. Discover traffic returned in 18 days at 3× pre-migration. Editorial preview at 8 seconds.
The site had been running the team, not the other way around. The midnight patch cycles stopped. This page is for the founder or CTO who’s decided the migration is happening, and wants it to land without taking the business down.
Our migration process
Four phases, one deliverable each
No mystery box. Each phase is fixed-scope, fixed-price, and ends with a written deliverable you can show your board. You decide whether to continue at every boundary.
Phase 01
Migration audit · 5 days · £8K
Two senior engineers read your WordPress codebase, data, and infra. Output: a 20-30 page audit pack with risk matrix, target architecture, data plan, rollback plan, and a fixed sprint quote.
Phase 02
Plan + parallel build · 2-4 weeks
We build the headless target in parallel. WordPress keeps running. Data migration dry-runs, integrations rebuilt, dual-write or shadow-read set up so traffic can route safely.
Phase 03
Cutover · 1-3 days · planned window
Often a weekend. We dual-run, shadow-read, then flip the canonical write path. Old system stays read-only for 30 days. Rollback rehearsed and reversible.
Phase 04
Stabilise + decommission · 2-6 weeks
We fix what only production traffic surfaces, hand over to your team or our retainer, and decommission the old WordPress estate on a schedule you sign off.
The headless stack we migrate you to.
We default to Next.js + Sanity on MERN + AWS. We substitute when your team has constraints, a relationship, or a data-residency line to hold.
T1
Default headless target
Next.js + SanityNext.js + ReactSanity / ContentfulTypeScriptNode.js + ExpressMongoDBPostgreSQLTailwind CSSStripeCloudinaryAlgolia / TypesenseResendMixpanel
T2
Migration-specific tooling
source targetWP-CLIWP REST APISanity / Contentful CLIScreaming FrogSearch Console APIhtaccess / Cloudflare Rules
T3
Infra, observability, safety net
AWS-defaultAWS / VercelCloudFront / Vercel EdgeS3 + CloudFrontCloudflareAWS LambdaRedisTerraformDatadogSentryk6 / ArtilleryVercel CICloudWatch Logs
The risks that sink a headless CMS migration
Six risks. How we close each one before cutover.
We don’t pretend migrations are safe. We name each risk, then mitigate it in writing before a single line of production code changes.
01
URL changes break rankings
Full redirect map built at audit. Every WordPress URL maps 1:1 to the new structure, tested against Search Console traffic data, shipped as part of cutover.
02
Schema + metadata loss
Schema inventoried, then re-emitted with identical IDs. AI Overviews and rich results survive because the structured data is rebuilt to match, not guessed at.
03
Editors can’t work day one
We model the editor’s actual day in Sanity or Contentful. Custom inputs for embargo, multi-byline, related products, plus a half-day training session before cutover.
04
Image library + delivery
Images piped through Cloudinary, Mux, or Vercel Image. Modern formats served, every reference re-linked. Page weight typically drops 50-70%.
05
Cutover window goes wrong
Rehearsed at staging with a full prod data clone. Dual-run for 24-72 hours, WordPress kept read-only for 30 days. Rollback is reversible.
06
Conversion tracking broken
Every tracking touch mapped at audit. Rebuilt server-side where possible, Safari ITP-safe, validated via Tag Assistant before cutover. No silent measurement gap.
Results
Eleanor’s lifestyle title,
Eleanor’s lifestyle title,
after the migration, in numbers
WordPress + 27 plugins to Next.js + Sanity. A 14,800-URL redirect map. Cutover at 3am Saturday with WordPress kept read-only for 30 days. Image pipeline rebuilt through Cloudinary. Server-side analytics. Subscription billing moved to Stripe.
Performance
4.1s1.4s
LCP, after cutover
0
Minutes of downtime
Traffic + editorial
3× / 18d
Discover traffic returned
40min8s
Editorial preview round-trip
Track record
14,800
URLs preserved 1:1
12
WordPress migrations since 2019
Two phases to start. Pricing in the email back.
Audit first, then the migration sprint. Pick the shape that fits and Mohit sends your real number inside 24 hours.
5-day migration audit
Two senior engineers read your WordPress estate, data, and integrations. We map the migration, write the risk matrix, and quote the sprint.
- 20-30 page audit pack
- Risk + mitigation matrix
- Redirect + data migration plan
- £8,000 fixed (GBP)
Headless migration sprint
Parallel build, dry-run data migration, planned cutover, post-cutover stabilisation, decommission. 8-16 weeks depending on estate size.
- Next.js + Sanity + AWS
- Zero-downtime cutover
- 30-day walk-away both ways
- From £35,000 fixed (GBP)
Post-migration retainer
One day a week of senior engineering for 3-6 months. New surface area, performance work, integrations, your team gets unblocked.
- One senior day / week
- Performance + integrations
- Handover to your team
- From £5,000 / month (GBP)
“Cutover happened at 3am Saturday with zero downtime. LCP dropped to 1.4s. Discover traffic returned in 18 days at 3×. The midnight patch cycles stopped.”
— Eleanor R., Editor, UK lifestyle title
Common findings in a WordPress audit
What we almost always find
These are the patterns we see in 80% of WordPress estates. None of them block a migration. All of them get named before cutover.
FINDING(01)
27 plugins doing 9 jobs
Plugin sprawl is the WordPress tax. We collapse them to code on the headless target. Behaviour preserved, vulnerability surface cut, the 4am patch cycle gone.
Plugin auditCode-firstVulnerability cutNo 4am patches
27 plugins doing 9 jobs
FINDING(02)
Page weight 3-7 MB
Unoptimised images, render-blocking CSS, slow third-party scripts. We rebuild on edge cache with an image pipeline. Page weight typically halves.
Edge cacheImage pipelineAVIF / WebPLCP under 1.5s
Page weight 3-7 MB
FINDING(03)
SEO equity uneven, schema scattered
Some URLs rank, some don’t. Yoast, Rank Math, and hand-rolled JSON-LD all present. We protect ranking pages in the redirect map and unify schema on the target.
Redirect mapSchema unifiedRich resultsSearch Console
SEO equity uneven, schema scattered
FINDING(04)
Editor pain hidden in plain sight
Editors stopped reporting the slowness and built workflow workarounds instead. We rebuild the editor’s day from observation, not a feature list.
Editor researchCustom inputs8s previewHalf-day training
Editor pain hidden in plain sight
FINDING(05)
Custom code in functions.php
Theme-coupled code and performance plugins fighting each other, WP-Rocket plus Cloudflare plus Autoptimize. We extract, port to the target stack with tests, and remove the need for all three.
Code extractedPorted with testsNo plugin glueVersion-controlled
Custom code in functions.php
In context
The surface you hand over.
wordpress to headless migration, in context — the dashboards, flows and components your team actually ships, reviews and maintains.
Five lines. That’s the brief.
Tell us your current WordPress estate (traffic, data size, integrations), why you want to migrate, and the deadline you’re working to. Mohit replies inside 24 hours with availability and the next 5-day audit slot.
What happens after the email lands
- < 24h
A personal reply.
Availability and the next available 5-day audit slot, straight to your inbox.
- Week 1
Migration audit begins.
Risk matrix, redirect plan, target architecture, fixed sprint quote.
- Cutover
Zero downtime.
Planned window, WordPress read-only for 30 days, rollback rehearsed.