TL;DR: I migrated two WordPress sites to custom Next.js apps built entirely by Claude Code and deployed on Vercel. Zero hosting costs. Zero plugin headaches. Full control. WordPress had a good run — but for most use cases, it's over.
I've been building and managing WordPress sites for years. Plugins, themes, page builders, hosting configs, SSL certs, security patches, database backups — the whole circus.
Last month, I killed both my WordPress sites and replaced them with custom-built Next.js applications. The entire migration — design, code, deployment, DNS cutover — took one afternoon.
I didn't write a single line of code myself. Claude Code did all of it.
What Actually Happened
I had two sites running on WordPress via AWS Lightsail:
- randymichak.com — my personal brand site
- empowerment-ai.com — my AI consulting business
Both were running the typical WordPress stack: Hello Elementor theme, Elementor Pro page builder, Jetpack, Wordfence, WPCode Lite, and a handful of other plugins. Monthly hosting cost on Lightsail: ~$20/month combined.
Here's what I told Claude Code to do:
- Build a minimalist personal site with my bio, links, and a CTA
- Build a full business site with home, about, services, blog, community, and contact pages
- Use Next.js + Tailwind CSS with my brand colors
- Deploy both to Vercel
- Migrate my domains from the old WordPress hosting
It did all of it. Created the repos. Wrote every component. Configured the builds. Deployed to Vercel. Set up the DNS records. Both sites were live on their real domains within hours.
The Honest WordPress Pros and Cons
I'm not going to pretend WordPress is garbage. It dominated the web for 20 years for real reasons. But the calculus has changed.
What WordPress Still Does Well
-
Content management for non-technical teams. If you have writers, editors, and marketers who need a visual dashboard to publish content, WordPress's admin panel is genuinely great. No other CMS matches its plugin ecosystem for this.
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Plugin ecosystem. Need a booking system? WooCommerce store? Membership site? LMS? There's a plugin. The sheer breadth of WordPress plugins is still unmatched.
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Community and support. Millions of developers. Thousands of tutorials. Any problem you hit, someone's solved it on Stack Overflow or the WordPress forums. That support network took two decades to build.
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Familiarity. Your client probably already knows WordPress. That matters when you're handing off a site.
Where WordPress Falls Apart
-
Security is a full-time job. WordPress sites get targeted constantly. Every plugin is an attack surface. Wordfence, Sucuri, constant updates — you're always patching holes. I spent more time on WordPress security than on actual content. (This is something I deal with daily as a cybersecurity professional — read more about why AI security strategy matters.)
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Plugin bloat destroys performance. Every plugin adds JavaScript, CSS, database queries, and HTTP requests. A "simple" WordPress site with 10 plugins routinely scores 40-60 on Google PageSpeed Insights. My Next.js replacement? 100/100 out of the box.
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Hosting costs add up. Shared hosting is cheap but slow. Managed WordPress hosting (WP Engine, Kinsta) runs $30-100+/month. Lightsail was my budget option at ~$10/site/month. My Vercel bill? $0.
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Updates break things. PHP update breaks a plugin. Plugin update breaks the theme. Theme update breaks the page builder. It's an endless game of dependency whack-a-mole.
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You don't own the output. WordPress generates whatever HTML it wants. Elementor's markup is a nested nightmare of divs. Good luck getting semantic, accessible HTML out of a page builder.
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Speed. WordPress serves dynamic PHP pages from a database. Even with caching plugins, you're fighting the architecture. Next.js pre-renders static HTML at build time. There's no contest.
What Claude Code + Vercel Actually Looks Like
Here's the workflow that replaced my entire WordPress setup:
Building the Site
I described what I wanted in plain English. Claude Code:
- Created the Next.js project structure
- Built every page component with Tailwind CSS
- Implemented responsive design, dark mode, animations
- Set up the blog system with markdown files (no database needed)
- Added SEO meta tags, OpenGraph images, structured data
- Configured security headers (CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options)
When I wanted changes — "make the logo bigger," "add a blog section," "change the hero copy" — I just said so. Changes deployed in under a minute.
Deploying to Vercel
Vercel's free tier gives you:
- Unlimited static sites
- Automatic SSL certificates via Let's Encrypt
- Global CDN (your site loads fast everywhere)
- Automatic deployments from GitHub
- Serverless API routes (for contact forms, etc.)
- Analytics
Push to GitHub → site deploys automatically. That's the entire ops workflow.
The Blog System
Instead of WordPress's database-driven posts, my blog uses markdown files. Each post is a .md file with frontmatter metadata:
---
title: "My Post Title"
date: "2026-02-01"
excerpt: "A brief description..."
author: "Randy Michak"
tags: ["AI", "Web Development"]
coverImage: "/blog/my-image.png"
---
Your content here. Standard markdown.
## Headers work
**Bold works**
`Code blocks work`
No database. No admin panel. No WYSIWYG editor fighting you. Just files. Want to write a post? Create a markdown file. Want to edit? Edit the file. Want to delete? Delete the file.
For technical content with code examples, markdown is infinitely better than WordPress's block editor.
The Numbers
| WordPress (Before) | Next.js + Vercel (After) | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly hosting cost | ~$20 | $0 |
| PageSpeed score | 55-65 | 98-100 |
| Time to deploy changes | 5-10 min (login, navigate, edit, save, clear cache) | ~45 seconds (push to GitHub) |
| Security plugins needed | 3+ (Wordfence, Jetpack, etc.) | 0 (headers configured in code) |
| Database | MySQL (needs backups, optimization) | None |
| SSL setup | Manual or plugin | Automatic |
| Build time | N/A (dynamic PHP) | ~30 seconds |
| Attack surface | Large (PHP, MySQL, plugins, admin panel) | Minimal (static files on CDN) |
Who Should NOT Ditch WordPress
Let me be fair. WordPress is still the right choice if:
- You run an e-commerce store. WooCommerce is mature and feature-rich. Shopify is the real competitor here, not Next.js.
- You need a multi-author CMS with editorial workflows. If you have a content team that needs draft/review/publish flows, WordPress handles this well. (Though headless CMS options like Sanity or Contentful are catching up fast.)
- Your client will maintain the site themselves and they're not technical. WordPress's visual editor is still more accessible than editing markdown files.
- You depend on specific plugins that have no equivalent. Some WordPress plugins represent years of domain-specific development.
Who SHOULD Make the Switch
- Solo founders and small teams building business/portfolio/blog sites
- Developers who are tired of fighting WordPress's architecture
- Anyone paying $20+/month for hosting a site that could be static
- Security-conscious organizations that want to minimize attack surface — check out 5 AI automations every small business should be using to see how AI can streamline your operations too
- Anyone who can describe what they want in English — because that's all you need now
That last point is the game-changer. You don't need to know React, Next.js, Tailwind, or JavaScript. You need to be able to say "build me a site with these pages, this color scheme, and this content." Claude Code handles the rest.
The Bigger Picture
This isn't just about WordPress vs. Next.js. It's about what AI coding tools mean for web development as a whole.
The value of a WordPress developer was never really about WordPress expertise — it was about translating business requirements into a working website. That translation layer is exactly what AI coding tools eliminate.
When I can go from "I want a professional business site with a blog, contact form, and these brand colors" to a deployed, production-ready site in an afternoon — without writing code — the traditional web development workflow doesn't make sense anymore.
WordPress won't die overnight. It powers 40%+ of the web. But the moat is gone. The convenience advantage that kept people locked in? AI-assisted development just built a bridge over it.
How to Make the Switch
If you're ready to ditch WordPress:
- Export your content. WordPress has built-in export tools. Save your posts and pages.
- Pick your stack. Next.js + Vercel is my recommendation for most cases. Free, fast, reliable.
- Use an AI coding tool. Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot — describe what you want and let it build.
- Deploy to Vercel or Netlify. Connect your GitHub repo and push. That's it.
- Update your DNS. Point your domain to the new host. Most registrars like Amazon Route 53 or Cloudflare make this straightforward.
The whole process can be done in a day. I know because I did it.
Randy Michak is an AI and cybersecurity consultant who helps businesses adopt AI without compromising security. Get in touch to modernize your tech stack, or check out our services to see how we can help.