WordPress vs Contentful: Which Makes More Sense for Your Next Website?

If you’re planning a new website or a redesign, you’ll hear two very different recommendations:

• “Just use WordPress, it does everything.”
• “You should go headless with something like Contentful.”

Both can be right, it depends on what you’re building, who will manage it, and
how far you want to go with omnichannel, app integrations, and composable architecture.

This article compares WordPress and Contentful from both a
business and technical perspective, with a slight bias toward the reality most teams face:
you want advanced features without painful complexity.

TL;DR for Busy Decision-Makers

If you only have a minute:

WordPress

• Powers roughly over 40% of all websites and well over half of all sites using a CMS.
• Huge ecosystem: tens of thousands of plugins and themes for almost any feature you can think of.
• Extremely familiar for content and marketing teams.
• Can also be used as a headless CMS via its REST API and GraphQL plugins.
• Cheaper and easier to develop, host, and maintain for most marketing and content sites.

Contentful

• Headless, API-first SaaS designed for multi-channel digital products.
• Used by thousands of organizations, including a significant share of the Fortune 500.
• A leading player in the headless CMS segment, especially in enterprise and SaaS.
• Great for enterprises with complex governance and omnichannel needs, and the budget to match.

Very simplified:

• If your main surface is “a website” that marketing needs to run quickly and cost-effectively → WordPress.
• If content is a core digital product powering many apps, devices, and regions → Contentful (or WordPress in a very well-engineered headless setup).

What Exactly Are We Comparing?

WordPress in 2025

WordPress is an open-source CMS written in PHP and using MySQL/MariaDB. It was originally built for blogging,
but is now used for everything from blogs and marketing sites to major media brands and enterprise platforms.

It can run in:

• Traditional “monolithic” mode, where WordPress handles both content and theming.
• Modern headless mode, where WordPress acts as a content backend and a separate frontend (e.g. Next.js, React, Vue) consumes content via APIs.

Big brands using WordPress include well-known publishers, media companies, tech brands and global organizations, proving that
WordPress can comfortably operate at enterprise scale.

Contentful in 2025

Contentful is a cloud-hosted, headless, API-first content platform.

• You define structured content models (e.g. article, product, FAQ).
• Editors manage content in a dedicated web interface.
• Developers consume that content via REST or GraphQL APIs in websites, mobile apps, and other channels.

It is strongly positioned as an enterprise digital experience platform, particularly for organizations
that see content as a product, not just as pages.

Market Share and Ecosystem

WordPress: The Default Web CMS

• WordPress powers a large portion of the entire web, more sites than all other CMSs combined.
• It owns the majority share of the CMS market.
• There are tens of thousands of plugins and themes for SEO, ecommerce, memberships, LMS, booking, forms, and more.

In practice, that means:

• It’s easy to hire WordPress talent at almost any budget.
• There’s a plugin for nearly every marketing or publishing need.
• The ecosystem is battle-tested at every scale, from micro-sites to huge publishers.

Contentful: Focused on Enterprise and Headless

• Contentful powers tens of thousands of websites and digital products worldwide.
• It has a relatively small share of the total web, but a strong share of the headless CMS category.
• Its customer base includes many enterprise and high-growth SaaS companies.

So:

• WordPress wins on raw numbers, community, and ecosystem.
• Contentful wins on penetration inside large, API-driven enterprises.

Technology & Architecture: Monolithic vs Headless

WordPress Architecture (Traditional + Headless)

Under the hood, WordPress uses:

• Language: PHP
• Database: MySQL / MariaDB
• Rendering: Normally server-rendered themes (PHP templates + HTML/CSS/JS)
• APIs: Built-in REST API for posts, pages, taxonomies, media, users, and more; optional GraphQL via plugins such as WPGraphQL.

In a classic setup, WordPress renders the front end directly. In a headless setup,
WordPress becomes the content backend and a separate frontend (Next.js, React, Vue, native apps) consumes content via REST or GraphQL.

Contentful Architecture (Headless by Design)

Under the hood, Contentful uses:

• Type: Multi-tenant SaaS platform, hosted in the cloud.
• APIs: Content Delivery API (REST), Content Management API, GraphQL Content API, Image API, Preview API, and webhooks.
• Frontend: Any framework or platform, websites, mobile apps, kiosks, in-product UIs, and more.

WordPress started as a “website CMS” and learned headless later. Contentful started as headless, API-first
and never tries to render your website for you.

Cost & Maintenance: How Much Do These Choices Really Cost?

WordPress Costs

• Licensing: Core WordPress is free and open-source. You may pay for some premium themes or plugins, but core usage has no license fee.
• Hosting: Anything from low-cost shared hosting to fully managed enterprise WordPress hosting.
• Development & Maintenance: Many features are available via plugins, which keeps custom development costs lower. You still need regular updates, security, and performance work.

Contentful Costs

• Licensing: Free tier with limited usage, plus paid plans that increase with content volume, users, and environments. Enterprise plans are priced for larger organizations.
• Implementation: Most projects require developer work to design the content model, build frontends, and integrate with other systems.
• Hosting & Ops: Contentful hosts the content platform, but you still host your frontends (e.g. on Vercel, Netlify, AWS).

As a rule of thumb:

• WordPress tends to keep platform costs lower and shifts most spending into design, development, and content.
• Contentful shifts more of the budget into platform licensing and custom engineering, especially as usage grows.

WordPress + Headless API: Going Beyond “Classic” CMS

One of the most important points in this comparison:

WordPress is not just a traditional page-based CMS anymore. It’s also a realistic headless content platform.

With the WordPress REST API (and, increasingly, GraphQL plugins) you can:

• Keep your content team in the familiar /wp-admin interface, using the block editor, SEO tools, forms, and patterns.
• Serve content to a high-performance front-end built with Next.js, React, Vue, or other modern frameworks.
• Feed content into mobile apps, microsites, and other digital touchpoints.
• Use modern deployment (CI/CD, CDNs, edge rendering) while WordPress focuses on content authoring.

For many organizations, a headless WordPress approach delivers most of the benefits of a headless CMS like Contentful,
with lower platform costs and a friendlier editorial experience.

When Is Contentful Actually the Better Choice?

WordPress is the better answer surprisingly often, but not always. Contentful shines when:

• You’re building a multi-channel content platform, not just a website.
  Content has to power web, mobile apps, in-store screens, devices, and partner integrations from day one.
• You need strict governance and complex workflows.
  Multiple teams, markets, and brands, with tight permissions, approval flows, and localization.
• You have a mature engineering team and a multi-year roadmap.
  Contentful pays off most when you can invest in content modeling, integrations, and long-term composable architecture.
• You are already in a composable / MACH mindset.
  You’re choosing best-of-breed systems for commerce, search, personalization, and analytics, and need a central content hub.

When Is WordPress the Better Choice?

In many cases, especially for marketing and early-stage businesses, WordPress is the more pragmatic decision:

• Your main channel is a website.
  You might have a mobile app later, but for now, your priority is a fast, flexible marketing site, blog, or content hub.
• You want advanced features without a huge dev team.
  Landing page builders, SEO tools, forms, memberships, ecommerce, there’s likely a plugin for it.
• You care about long-term cost and independence.
  No mandatory license renewals; you can change hosts, agencies, and infrastructure as you grow.
• You need to move quickly.
  A solid WordPress build can launch in weeks, then evolve into headless or more complex architectures later.
• You want talent availability.
  It’s generally easier and cheaper to hire WordPress developers and content editors than headless/Contentful specialists.

So… Which One Should You Pick?

If you’re a marketing team, founder, or decision-maker planning a new site today:

Choose WordPress if:

• Your primary need is a website or content hub.
• You want advanced features but an interface non-technical people can use confidently.
• You care about flexible hosting, a huge ecosystem, and lower long-term costs.
• You like the option to go headless later without rewriting your entire CMS.

Choose Contentful if:

• Content needs to power many channels (web + apps + devices) from day one.
• You have the budget and engineering resources to build and maintain an API-first platform.
• You need enterprise-grade governance and want to align with a composable DXP strategy.

For a lot of organisations, a smart path is:

Start with a well-architected WordPress build, then move to a hybrid/headless setup as your digital footprint grows.