When you’re planning a new website or digital product, it’s easy to feel like you’re choosing sides:
the veteran WordPress that seems to power half the internet, or newer headless tools like
Strapi that promise total control and clean, API-first architecture.
A useful way to think about it:
- WordPress is the experienced all-rounder, open-source, familiar, and packed with features and plugins.
- Strapi is the control-oriented specialist, self-hostable, headless, and designed for developers who want to own everything.
Both are powerful. The real question is: which one matches your team, budget, and roadmap?
High-Level Snapshot
WordPress at a Glance
- Powers roughly over 40% of all websites and more than half of all sites using a CMS.
- Open-source, no core license fees, enormous ecosystem of plugins and themes.
- Can run as a classic “all-in-one” CMS or as a headless backend via REST and GraphQL APIs.
- Known for its balance of advanced features + ease of use for non-technical teams.
- Flexible hosting options, from low-cost shared plans to fully managed enterprise infrastructure.
Strapi at a Glance
- Open-source, headless CMS built with Node.js.
- Self-hostable or available as Strapi Cloud; you keep control over data and infrastructure.
- Focused on API-driven, omnichannel experiences, React, Next.js, mobile apps, and more.
- Developer-first: very flexible, but requires programming skills and setup.
- Smaller market share and ecosystem compared to WordPress, but popular in modern JavaScript stacks.
How Big Are They Really?
WordPress Market Share
By any measure, WordPress is still the dominant CMS:
- It powers around 43–44% of all websites on the internet.
- It holds roughly 62%+ of the CMS market, far ahead of any competitor.
- We’re talking about hundreds of millions of WordPress sites worldwide.
That scale comes with real benefits: lots of tutorials, agencies, freelancers, plugins, themes, and integrations.
If you want something done in WordPress, chances are someone has already solved it.
Strapi Usage
Strapi is much more niche, but growing quickly in the headless world:
- W3Techs puts Strapi at under 0.1% of all websites with a detectable CMS.
- BuiltWith tracks around 11,000+ live sites using Strapi, plus many more historically.
- There are a few thousand documented companies using Strapi across SaaS, agencies, media and ecommerce.
In other words, Strapi is a specialist tool used by teams that deliberately chose a
headless, Node.js-based CMS, while WordPress is the default for the broader web.
Technology & Architecture
WordPress Technology Stack
Core components:
- Language: PHP
- Database: MySQL / MariaDB
- Rendering (classic mode): PHP themes generate HTML on the server.
- APIs: Built-in REST API for posts, pages, media, taxonomies, users, etc.; optional GraphQL via plugins (e.g. WPGraphQL).
Traditionally, WordPress is a monolithic CMS: it stores content and renders pages.
But thanks to the REST API and GraphQL options, it can also be used as a headless backend,
feeding content into modern frontends built with React, Next.js, Vue, Svelte, native mobile apps, and more.
Strapi Technology Stack
Core components:
- Language: JavaScript / TypeScript on Node.js.
- Framework: Based on Koa (a Node.js framework) under the hood.
- Databases: Supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite and others.
- APIs: Auto-generated REST and optional GraphQL APIs for all content types.
- Deployment: Self-host (Docker, VPS, Kubernetes, etc.) or use Strapi Cloud for managed hosting.
Strapi is headless-only. It never renders the front-end; it’s designed purely to expose content via APIs.
You build the presentation layer yourself (React, Next.js, Vue, native apps, IoT devices, etc.).
Costs: Licensing, Hosting, Development & Maintenance
WordPress Costs
- Licensing: Core WordPress is free and open-source (no per-site CMS subscription).
- Hosting: Ranges from a few dollars per month for small sites to higher-end managed WordPress and custom cloud setups for enterprise.
- Plugins & Themes: Many high-quality free options; premium tools typically run from tens to a few hundred dollars per year.
- Development: Often cheaper because you can lean on plugins, themes, and a huge talent pool instead of building everything from scratch.
- Maintenance: Includes updating core, plugins, and themes, plus backups and security; this can be automated or handled by a managed host or agency.
Strapi Costs
- Licensing: Community edition is open-source; enterprise features and support require a commercial license.
- Hosting: You can self-host (paying only for infrastructure) or subscribe to Strapi Cloud, where pricing is project-based and scales with resources and environments.
- Development: Generally higher, because almost everything is custom-built, content types, permissions, plugins, integrations, and front-ends.
- Maintenance: Includes updating Strapi itself, Node.js runtime, databases, infrastructure, and custom code, plus monitoring and security hardening.
In practice, for a typical marketing or ecommerce site, WordPress is usually significantly cheaper
to build and maintain over several years. Strapi makes more sense when you already have a development team and
a roadmap that needs a truly headless, API-first platform.
| CMS | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress |
Massive share of the web and CMS market; open-source with no core license cost; extremely rich ecosystem of plugins, themes and integrations; user-friendly admin interface for non-technical teams; can be used in traditional or headless architectures; flexible hosting from low-cost shared plans to enterprise-grade setups; integrates with countless third-party tools (WooCommerce, Shopify headless, Stripe, PayPal, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Salesforce, Google Analytics, and more). |
Needs regular updates and security hardening; poorly chosen themes/plugins can hurt performance and stability; truly custom functionality still requires coding or agency support; monolithic builds can be less clean than pure API-first architectures if you need many channels and apps. |
| Strapi |
Headless and API-first by design; built with Node.js and easy to extend with custom plugins, middleware and components; self-hostable, so you fully own the data and infrastructure; works beautifully with modern front-end frameworks like React, Next.js, Nuxt and mobile apps; strong fit for omnichannel, multi-platform content; great when you need a custom app backend or content service for multiple products. |
More developer-oriented with a steeper learning curve; requires programming knowledge even for basic projects; no concept of themes or one-click site templates, everything is built by developers; fewer ready-made plugins and a smaller community compared to WordPress; ongoing development and maintenance costs are higher, especially for teams without in-house JavaScript/Node expertise. |
WordPress + Headless API: Not Just a “Blog Engine” Anymore
One important nuance: picking WordPress doesn’t lock you into old-school page templates.
With the WordPress REST API (and GraphQL, if you want it), you can use WordPress as the
content brain behind a modern headless stack.
What this looks like:
- Marketing and content teams keep using
/wp-admin, the block editor, SEO plugins, forms, and reusable patterns. - Developers build the front-end in Next.js, React, Vue, SvelteKit or similar, fetching content via REST/GraphQL.
- Content can be reused across multiple sites or apps, not just one theme.
- Performance can be excellent thanks to static generation, edge rendering and CDNs.
For many organisations, this “hybrid” approach delivers much of what they like about Strapi-style headless systems,
while keeping WordPress’s friendly UX and lower costs.
Scaling & Integrations
Scaling WordPress
Because WordPress powers so many large sites, there’s a well-understood playbook for scaling:
- Enterprise hosting with caching layers (Varnish, Redis), autoscaling and CDN integration.
- Large ecommerce via WooCommerce or headless commerce integrations (BigCommerce, Shopify, CommerceTools).
- Deep integrations with marketing automation (HubSpot, Marketo, Mailchimp), CRM (Salesforce, Pipedrive),
analytics (GA4, GTM, Mixpanel), search (Algolia, ElasticPress), and identity/payment providers (Auth0, Stripe, PayPal). - Custom plugins and themes for business-specific logic, all backed by WordPress’s plugin architecture and hooks.
Scaling Strapi
Strapi’s sweet spot is acting as the content and configuration backend for custom applications:
- Modern deployments using Docker, Kubernetes or managed Strapi Cloud.
- API-first design makes it straightforward to serve web, mobile, in-store, and partner integrations from a single backend.
- Custom plugins, policies and middleware let engineering teams model complex domain logic directly in the CMS.
For a product team building multiple apps or services around a shared content model, Strapi can be a great fit,
as long as you’re comfortable investing in Node.js developers to build and maintain it.
Who Each Platform Really Serves
Looking beyond features, it helps to ask: who feels “at home” in each system?
WordPress: Broad, Mixed Teams
- Marketing and content teams that want to create and update pages without calling a developer.
- Founders and small companies that need a lot of functionality quickly: blogs, landing pages, ecommerce, memberships, events.
- Enterprises running big public websites or content hubs, where WordPress is part of a wider stack (SSO, CDNs, DAM, etc.).
- Organisations that care about budget predictability and not being tied into per-seat CMS licensing.
Strapi: Developer-Heavy Organisations
- Product and engineering teams building custom web or mobile apps that need a flexible content backend.
- Companies that want full ownership of data and infrastructure, with self-hosting and no vendor lock-in.
- Teams already invested in Node.js / TypeScript / React / Next.js and comfortable with API-first design.
- Projects where content must be reused across many touchpoints and devices, and where clean architecture matters more than convenience.
| CMS | Best For | Typical Projects | Primary Target Users |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress |
Best overall for combining advanced website features with ease of use, lower total cost of ownership, and a huge ecosystem of plugins, themes and hosting options. |
Corporate and startup marketing sites, blogs, content hubs, large WooCommerce stores, membership and community sites, publications and media brands, plus headless WordPress builds with React/Next.js. |
Marketing leaders, founders, and content teams who want power without sacrificing usability, along with CTOs who value open-source flexibility and predictable costs. |
| Strapi | Best for teams that prioritise control, data ownership and a fully headless, API-first architecture across multiple apps and platforms. |
Custom web and mobile applications, internal tools, SaaS products, omnichannel content platforms, and situations where a Node.js CMS needs to plug directly into an existing microservices or cloud-native architecture. |
Technical founders, product and engineering leaders, and agencies with strong JavaScript/TypeScript skills who are ready to invest in custom development rather than off-the-shelf themes and plugins. |
Bringing It Together
If you want a CMS that lets your team publish quickly, supports a broad range of features out of the box,
and keeps long-term costs under control, WordPress is usually the safest and most efficient choice.
It can grow from a simple marketing site into a large-scale, headless, enterprise-grade platform as your needs evolve.
If your organisation is building multiple custom apps, has a strong JavaScript/Node engineering culture,
and cares deeply about owning its infrastructure and data, Strapi can be an excellent fit,
just be prepared for higher development and maintenance investment.
Put simply:
- WordPress delivers an all-inclusive, user-friendly experience with enormous flexibility and a vast support network.
- Strapi offers tight control and a clean, headless architecture, tailored to teams who live in code every day.