When you’re planning a new website or rebuilding an existing one, the CMS choice usually comes down to
a familiar veteran vs. a newer specialist:
- WordPress, the experienced all-rounder that powers a huge slice of the web.
- Sanity, the developer-focused, headless CMS built for custom, multi-channel experiences.
Both are excellent, but they’re not trying to solve the same problem. WordPress thrives as an open-source,
general-purpose platform with a massive plugin ecosystem and friendly UX. Sanity shines when you need a highly
structured, API-driven content system and you have developers ready to build around it.
TL;DR for Busy Decision-Makers
WordPress
- Open-source, no core license fees, and extremely flexible.
- Dominates CMS market share and powers a huge portion of all websites globally.
- Enormous ecosystem: tens of thousands of plugins and themes, plus a huge talent pool.
- Can be used in a classic “all-in-one” mode or as a headless CMS via REST/GraphQL APIs.
- Maintenance and development are generally cheaper, with very flexible hosting options.
- Proven to scale to large enterprise sites and ecommerce, integrating with countless third-party services.
Sanity
- Developer-first, headless and composable from day one.
- Uses a real-time content database (“Content Lake”) with structured JSON content.
- Highly flexible schemas, real-time collaboration, and powerful APIs (GROQ + GraphQL).
- Excellent for custom design systems, creative agencies and multi-channel experiences.
- Requires more setup and specialist development; pricing scales with API usage and seats.
- Less friendly for non-technical admins; steeper learning curve for small marketing teams.
In short: WordPress is usually the best fit when you want advanced features + ease of use +
reasonable costs. Sanity is ideal when you have strong developers and need deep control over
structured, multi-channel content.
Market Share & Ecosystem
WordPress: The Dominant All-Rounder
WordPress is still the world’s most popular CMS by a huge margin. Recent industry reports show it powering
around 43% of all websites and holding roughly 60%+ of the global CMS market.
Estimates put the total number of WordPress sites in the hundreds of millions, with over
70,000 plugins and tens of thousands of themes available through official
and third-party directories.
Big names using WordPress include news and media outlets, major brands, SaaS companies and public institutions,
showing that it can handle serious traffic, complex content, and demanding workflows.
Sanity: Growing Headless Specialist
Sanity sits at the opposite end of the spectrum: it’s not trying to run the whole web, but to be a
specialized content platform.
Various usage trackers report tens of thousands of live websites and digital products built
on Sanity, with a small but growing share of the overall CMS market and a stronger presence within the
headless CMS category.
You’ll see Sanity most often in design-driven agencies, modern SaaS products, and companies investing in
“composable” architecture for multi-channel experiences.
How They Work: Technology & Architecture
WordPress Technology
Core stack:
- Language: PHP
- Database: MySQL / MariaDB
- Rendering (classic mode): PHP themes generate HTML pages on the server.
- APIs: Built-in REST API for posts, pages, taxonomies, media, users, etc.; GraphQL available via plugins like WPGraphQL.
In traditional mode, WordPress is a monolithic CMS: it manages content and renders the site.
In headless mode, WordPress is used purely as a content backend, the content is served via
REST/GraphQL to front-ends built with React, Next.js, Vue, Gatsby and others.
Sanity Technology
Core stack:
- Sanity Studio: Open-source, single-page React application you can customize in JavaScript/TypeScript.
- Content Lake: Real-time, cloud-hosted datastore that stores content as structured JSON, accessible via APIs.
- APIs: GROQ query language, HTTP APIs, optional GraphQL API generated from your schema.
- Architecture: Purely headless, it never renders the front-end; it only stores, structures, and delivers content.
Sanity treats content as data. Content models (“schema as code”) are written in JavaScript or TypeScript,
versioned in your repo, and deployed to the Content Lake. This is extremely powerful for developers, but assumes
a higher technical baseline than WordPress.
Costs: Licensing, Hosting, Development & Maintenance
WordPress Costs
- Licensing: Core WordPress is free and open-source; you may pay for premium themes, plugins, or support.
- Hosting: Anything from budget shared hosting to high-end managed WordPress and custom cloud setups.
- Development: Many features can be implemented through plugins and page builders, reducing custom dev work.
- Maintenance: Regular updates, backups, security and performance tuning, but you can choose DIY, agency, or managed hosting.
Sanity Costs
- Licensing: Free plan plus paid plans (e.g. Growth) with per-seat pricing and pay-as-you-go overages based on documents, API requests, bandwidth and assets.
- Hosting: Content Lake and API infrastructure are hosted by Sanity; you still host your front-end (e.g. Vercel, Netlify, AWS).
- Development: Almost everything is custom: schemas, Studio configuration, front-end apps, integrations, deployment.
- Maintenance: Ongoing work on schemas, Studio upgrades, API usage optimizations and front-end codebases.
For a typical marketing or corporate site, WordPress will almost always be cheaper to build and maintain.
Sanity tends to make more sense when you’re investing heavily in a multi-channel product experience and already have
a dedicated engineering team.
| CMS | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress |
Massive global adoption and community; open-source with no core license fees; huge ecosystem of plugins and themes; easy-to-use admin for non-technical editors; supports both classic and headless architectures; flexible hosting from low-cost shared plans to enterprise infrastructure; integrates with thousands of third-party tools (ecommerce, CRM, marketing automation, analytics, payments); large pool of affordable developers and agencies. |
Requires regular updates and security hardening; plugin bloat and poor configuration can impact performance; highly customized builds still need strong engineering practices; traditional, theme-based sites are less “purely headless” than specialist platforms; multi-channel architectures can become complex without a solid technical strategy. |
| Sanity |
Developer-focused, headless architecture from day one; schema-as-code and structured JSON content via Content Lake; powerful GROQ and GraphQL APIs; real-time collaboration and live previews; highly customizable React-based Studio; strong fit for custom design systems, multi-channel and composable architectures; clean separation between content and presentation for long-term flexibility. |
Steeper learning curve for marketers and non-technical admins; requires specialized developer expertise to set up and evolve; no built-in front-end, everything must be built and maintained as custom code; pricing scales with seats and API usage; overkill for simple marketing sites; integrating lots of custom features can become expensive at enterprise scale. |
WordPress + Headless API: The Hybrid Sweet Spot
WordPress is often seen as a “traditional” CMS, but it’s increasingly used as a headless backend.
With the REST API (and optional GraphQL via plugins), you can use WordPress purely for content and run your
front-end on frameworks like Next.js, React, Vue, Gatsby or others.
Advantages of a WordPress + Headless setup:
- Familiar editing experience: editors stay in the block editor, use SEO plugins, forms, reusable blocks, etc.
- Modern front-end performance: static generation or server-side rendering with CDNs for very fast sites.
- Multi-channel content: the same WordPress backend can feed websites, apps, and other experiences via APIs.
- Gradual modernization: you can migrate parts of your site to headless front-ends without rewriting everything at once.
- Cost-effective: you get headless flexibility without paying a separate content-platform subscription.
For many organizations, this hybrid approach offers 80–90% of the benefits of a specialist headless CMS like
Sanity, while preserving WordPress’s ease of use and ecosystem.
Scalability & Integrations
Scaling WordPress for Enterprise & Ecommerce
Because of its popularity, WordPress has been battle-tested at almost every scale:
- High-traffic content sites powered by robust caching, CDNs, and optimized hosting.
- Large ecommerce using WooCommerce or headless commerce integrations.
- Complex integrations with CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce), marketing platforms (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign),
analytics (Google Analytics, Tag Manager), payment providers (Stripe, PayPal, Braintree), and more via plugins and APIs.
With the right architecture (caching layers, CDN, autoscaling infrastructure) WordPress can support millions of visitors
and large product catalogs, while still giving marketing teams a familiar admin.
Scaling Sanity for Multi-Channel Content
Sanity, by design, is built for structured, multi-channel content:
- Content Lake handles structured JSON content and scales automatically with demand.
- Real-time APIs and live queries support dynamic interfaces and complex applications.
- Because content models live as code, it’s easier for developers to keep front-end and content structures in sync.
It’s an excellent choice when you’re building a custom design system, multi-surface product, or a “content platform”
that will feed many different front-end experiences.
When Sanity Makes Sense
Despite the extra setup and cost, Sanity can be the right choice when:
- You’re a creative or digital product agency building highly custom, component-based experiences.
- Your content needs to power multiple channels (web app, marketing site, in-product UI, kiosks, etc.).
- You have a strong internal development team and want content schemas in code, alongside the app.
- You’re comfortable with a developer-centric workflow and a less “out-of-the-box” admin for marketers.
When WordPress Is the Better Choice
WordPress is usually the right starting point when:
- Your primary goal is a website, blog, content hub, or ecommerce site.
- You need advanced features (SEO, forms, memberships, bookings, ecommerce) without a huge dev budget.
- You want flexible hosting, from low-cost to fully managed enterprise infrastructure.
- You care about total cost of ownership and don’t want to pay per-seat CMS subscriptions.
- You want the option to go headless later using the REST or GraphQL APIs, without changing CMS.
| CMS | Best For | Typical Projects | Primary Target Users |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress |
Best overall when you need advanced website features plus ease of use, low ownership costs, and a huge plugin/theme ecosystem. |
Corporate and startup marketing sites, blogs, content hubs, large ecommerce with WooCommerce or headless commerce, membership and community sites, news and media, headless WordPress builds using React/Next.js. |
Marketing leaders, founders, and content teams who want a powerful but user-friendly CMS, flexible hosting, and access to a large pool of developers and agencies. |
| Sanity |
Best for highly custom, developer-centric, headless architectures where content is treated as structured data and pushed to many channels. |
Design-heavy marketing experiences, custom web and mobile apps, product UIs with embedded content, multi-channel or composable digital platforms run by skilled engineering teams. |
Technical founders, product and engineering leaders, and creative agencies that want schema-as-code, real-time structured content, and are comfortable investing in custom development. |
Conclusion: All-Rounder vs Specialist
If we personify them, WordPress is the reliable all-rounder who has “seen it all”, from blogs
and small business sites to massive media brands and enterprise ecommerce. It offers open-source freedom,
huge extensibility, and a user-friendly experience that non-technical teams can actually enjoy.
Sanity is the modern specialist: a headless CMS that gives developers incredible control over
structured content and shines in complex, multi-channel scenarios. It’s powerful and elegant, but demands more
engineering investment and is less forgiving for small or non-technical teams.
For most marketing-driven websites and many enterprise sites, WordPress (optionally with a headless
front-end) will offer the best balance of power, cost, and usability. Sanity is a great fit when your
organization is ready to treat content like code, and you have the developers to match.