The web development landscape has evolved dramatically over the past few years. On one side, we have traditional CMS platforms like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla that have powered the web for decades. On the other, there's the JAMStack architecture that promises better performance, security, and developer experience. But which should you choose for your next project?
The truth is, it's not a binary decision. Both approaches have their place, and understanding when to use each—or when to combine them—will make you a better developer and help you make smarter recommendations to clients. In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore both architectures, their strengths and weaknesses, and how to deploy projects using either approach.
Understanding Traditional CMS Architecture
Traditional CMS platforms follow a monolithic architecture where the frontend, backend, database, and content management are all tightly coupled. When a visitor requests a page, the server:
- Receives the request
- Queries the database for content
- Executes PHP (or another server-side language)
- Renders HTML dynamically
- Serves the page to the visitor
Popular traditional CMS platforms:
- WordPress: Powers 43% of all websites, with an enormous ecosystem of themes and plugins
- Drupal: Enterprise-focused, highly customizable, better security model
- Joomla: Strikes a middle ground between WordPress simplicity and Drupal complexity
- Craft CMS: Modern take on traditional CMS with better developer experience
Strengths of Traditional CMS
1. Familiar Editing Experience
Content editors love traditional CMS platforms because they can see changes immediately. Hit "Publish" and the content is live—no build process, no waiting, no technical barriers. The WYSIWYG editors feel natural for people coming from Word or Google Docs.
2. Extensive Plugin Ecosystems
Need a contact form? There's a plugin. Want to add e-commerce? There's a plugin. Membership system? SEO tools? Social media integration? All available as plugins. WordPress alone has over 60,000 plugins covering virtually every use case imaginable.
3. Real-Time Content Updates
When content needs to be published immediately—breaking news, flash sales, urgent announcements—traditional CMS platforms shine. There's no build process waiting, no CDN cache invalidation delays. Content goes live instantly.
4. Dynamic Content by Default
User-generated content, comments, search functionality, personalized experiences—these all work seamlessly in traditional CMS architectures because the server generates pages on demand with access to the full database.
5. Mature, Battle-Tested Technology
WordPress has been around since 2003. Drupal since 2001. These platforms have solved countless edge cases, have extensive documentation, and large communities providing support.
Challenges of Traditional CMS
1. Server Maintenance and Security
Every traditional CMS requires constant maintenance: security patches, PHP updates, database optimization, backup management. A WordPress site is only as secure as its weakest plugin, and with thousands of plugins out there, vulnerabilities are common.
2. Performance Optimization Complexity
Getting good performance from a traditional CMS requires significant effort: caching layers (page cache, object cache, database cache), CDN configuration, database optimization, query optimization, and more. Even then, dynamic page generation will never match static file serving speed.
3. Scaling Challenges
When traffic spikes, traditional CMS platforms struggle. You need more server resources, load balancers, database read replicas, and sophisticated caching strategies. This complexity translates directly to higher hosting costs.
4. Hosting Costs
A traditional CMS requires a proper server environment—not just static file hosting. Shared hosting is cheap but slow and insecure. Quality managed WordPress hosting starts at $25-50/month per site, with costs rising quickly as traffic grows.
Deployment Considerations for Traditional CMS
Deploying traditional CMS platforms involves several moving pieces:
File synchronization: Your theme files, plugins, and uploads need to be transferred to the server. This might happen via FTP, SFTP, or Git deployment.
Database migrations: Content lives in the database, so you need a strategy for moving database changes between environments. This is complex because databases on different environments (local, staging, production) diverge over time.
Caching strategies: After deployment, you need to clear various caches—page cache, object cache, CDN cache—to ensure visitors see the latest version.
Downtime considerations: Traditional deployments often require brief periods where the site is updating, potentially causing errors for visitors during the deployment window.
Understanding JAMStack Architecture
JAMStack (JavaScript, APIs, and Markup) represents a fundamental architectural shift. Instead of generating pages on-demand, everything is pre-built into static files and served from a CDN. When you need dynamic functionality, you use JavaScript to call APIs.
The JAMStack approach:
- Developer writes code using a static site generator (Next.js, Gatsby, Hugo, etc.)
- During build time, the generator fetches content from APIs/CMS
- Static HTML/CSS/JS files are generated for every page
- These files are deployed to a CDN
- Visitors receive pre-built pages instantly from the nearest edge location
Popular JAMStack frameworks:
- Next.js: React-based, incredibly flexible, supports both static and server-side rendering
- Gatsby: React-based, GraphQL-powered, excellent for content-heavy sites
- Hugo: Go-based, blazingly fast, great for documentation and blogs
- Eleventy: JavaScript-based, minimal and flexible, template-agnostic
- Nuxt.js: Vue-based alternative to Next.js
Strengths of JAMStack
1. Superior Performance
Static files served from a CDN are as fast as the web gets. No database queries, no server-side processing, no compute time. First Contentful Paint and Time to Interactive metrics that would require significant optimization in traditional CMS come for free with JAMStack.
2. Enhanced Security
No server-side code execution means no server to hack. No database means no SQL injection. No admin login page to brute force. The attack surface is dramatically reduced—you're serving read-only files from a CDN.
3. Lower Hosting Costs
Static files are cheap to serve. Many JAMStack hosting platforms offer generous free tiers, and even high-traffic sites cost a fraction of traditional hosting. A site serving millions of page views might cost $20-50/month versus hundreds or thousands for equivalent traditional CMS hosting.
4. Scalability by Default
CDNs are built to handle traffic spikes. When your article goes viral, there's no scrambling to add server resources—the CDN automatically handles the load. This scalability is baked into the architecture.
5. Better Developer Experience
Modern JavaScript frameworks provide hot reloading, component-based architecture, and excellent tooling. Developers can work locally with full feature parity, use version control effectively, and deploy with confidence.
Challenges of JAMStack
1. Build Times for Large Sites
A site with 10,000 pages might take 10-20 minutes to build completely. While techniques like incremental builds help, this is still a fundamental limitation compared to traditional CMS platforms where there's no build step.
2. Content Editor Experience
Non-technical editors find JAMStack less intuitive. They often need to work in a headless CMS, preview deploys can take minutes, and the immediate feedback loop of traditional CMS is lost. This is a people problem as much as a technical one.
3. Real-Time Content Limitations
Publishing new content requires a rebuild and redeploy. While webhooks can trigger automatic builds, there's still a 2-10 minute delay between hitting "publish" and content going live. For breaking news or time-sensitive content, this is problematic.
4. Complex Builds for Some Use Cases
Forms, comments, user authentication, search, and personalized content all require additional services and APIs. What's built-in with traditional CMS becomes integration work with JAMStack.
Deployment Considerations for JAMStack
JAMStack deployment is fundamentally different:
Build process requirements: You need a deployment platform that can execute Node.js (or Go, Ruby, etc.), run your build commands, and handle dependencies.
CDN distribution: Your built files need to be distributed to a CDN. This might be automatic (Netlify, Vercel) or require additional configuration (AWS S3 + CloudFront).
Atomic deployments: One of JAMStack's advantages is atomic deployments—either the new version is fully deployed or the old version remains. No half-broken states.
Environment management: Different builds for development, staging, and production are crucial, with environment-specific API endpoints and configuration.
Decision Framework: When to Choose What
Let's get practical. Here's how to decide which architecture suits your project:
Choose Traditional CMS When:
Non-technical editors need immediate publishing control
If your client's marketing team needs to publish blog posts, update pages, and make changes throughout the day—and they need those changes live immediately—traditional CMS wins. The instant feedback and simple workflow matter more than performance gains.
Example: Local news website, corporate blog with multiple daily updates, time-sensitive promotional campaigns.
Complex user roles and permissions are required
When you need granular control over who can edit what, with approval workflows and role-based access, traditional CMS platforms have sophisticated built-in systems. Replicating this in JAMStack requires significant custom development.
Example: Enterprise intranets, large editorial organizations, multi-author publications with complex workflows.
Extensive custom functionality via plugins
If your project needs 10+ specialized features—advanced SEO, multiple third-party integrations, complex forms, booking systems, learning management—the traditional CMS plugin ecosystem saves months of development time.
Example: Educational institutions, membership organizations, event management platforms.
E-commerce with real-time inventory
While headless e-commerce exists, traditional platforms like WooCommerce or Magento provide complete e-commerce solutions with inventory management, complex product variations, and customer accounts built-in.
Example: Online stores with large inventories, B2B e-commerce with custom pricing, dropshipping businesses.
Membership sites with user-generated content
Forums, social networks, review sites, and anywhere users create and interact with content in real-time are natural fits for traditional CMS architecture.
Example: Community forums, review platforms, social learning sites, member directories.
Choose JAMStack When:
Performance is absolutely critical
When every millisecond counts—perhaps you're in e-commerce where conversion rates are directly tied to load times, or you're running marketing campaigns where bounce rates hurt ROI—JAMStack's performance advantage is worth the trade-offs.
Example: High-converting landing pages, marketing websites, e-commerce product pages.
Traffic is unpredictable or very high
If you're likely to experience massive traffic spikes (going viral, getting featured, launch days) or consistently high traffic, JAMStack's built-in scalability and lower costs make it the clear winner.
Example: Product launches, viral marketing campaigns, popular blogs, documentation sites.
Security is a top concern
For sites handling sensitive information, or organizations that are frequent targets of attacks, JAMStack's reduced attack surface provides peace of mind.
Example: Government websites, healthcare portals, financial services sites, political campaigns.
Content updates are planned and scheduled
If content updates happen on a predictable schedule (weekly blog posts, monthly updates) rather than constantly throughout the day, JAMStack's build time becomes a non-issue.
Example: Company blogs, portfolio sites, documentation, personal websites.
Marketing sites, documentation, and portfolios
These are JAMStack's sweet spot—content that changes occasionally, needs to be blazingly fast, and doesn't require complex dynamic functionality.
Example: Agency websites, SaaS marketing sites, personal portfolios, API documentation.
Consider Hybrid Approaches:
You don't have to choose one or the other. Some of the most powerful architectures combine both:
Headless CMS + JAMStack frontend
Use WordPress, Contentful, Sanity, or another headless CMS for content management, but serve a JAMStack frontend to visitors. You get the content editing experience editors love with the performance and security of JAMStack.
Example: Publishing sites that need both editorial workflow and performance, e-commerce with JAMStack product pages and traditional backend.
JAMStack for public, traditional for authenticated
Serve your public marketing site as JAMStack for performance and security, but use a traditional CMS for logged-in user experiences where real-time functionality matters more.
Example: SaaS companies with marketing site + app, membership sites with public and private content.
Progressive enhancement
Start with JAMStack for the core experience, then progressively add dynamic features via APIs and serverless functions as needed.
Example: Mostly static sites that need some interactive features like comments, forms, or personalization.
Deploying Both with DeployHQ
Here's where things get interesting: many agencies and development teams manage both traditional CMS sites and JAMStack projects. Managing deployments across different architectures can be complex, but DeployHQ handles both seamlessly from a single platform.
Managing Different Project Types
DeployHQ recognizes that modern web teams need flexibility:
For Traditional CMS deployments:
- File syncing: Push WordPress themes, plugins, and code changes to your server via SFTP, FTP, or SSH
- Database operations: Run database migrations or execute SQL queries during deployment
- Server deployment: Deploy to shared hosting, VPS, or dedicated servers
- Selective deployment: Deploy only changed files to minimize transfer time
- Configuration management: Handle environment-specific wp-config.php or settings files
For JAMStack deployments:
- Build execution: Run your Next.js, Gatsby, or Hugo build process
- Static file deployment: Deploy built files to CDN, S3, or static hosting
- Environment variables: Manage API keys and configuration per environment
- CDN distribution: Automatic deployment to Netlify, Vercel, or custom CDNs
- Build caching: Speed up subsequent builds with automatic caching
Unified Dashboard for All Projects
Instead of juggling multiple deployment tools—maybe Capistrano for WordPress, Netlify for JAMStack projects, and custom scripts for everything else—DeployHQ provides a single interface:
- All projects in one place: View deployment status across your entire portfolio
- Consistent workflow: Whether deploying WordPress or Next.js, the process is familiar
- Centralized team management: Give team members appropriate access across all projects
- Unified notifications: Get Slack or email alerts for all deployments in one stream
- Combined analytics: See deployment frequency, success rates, and build times across all projects
This is particularly valuable for agencies juggling dozens of client projects with different technical stacks.
Real-World Agency Scenario
Let's look at how a typical agency uses DeployHQ to manage mixed portfolios:
Agency Profile:
- 30 active client projects
- 18 WordPress sites (various hosting providers)
- 8 Gatsby/Next.js sites (static hosting)
- 4 hybrid projects (headless WordPress + JAMStack frontend)
DeployHQ Setup:
- All 30 projects configured in DeployHQ
- Automatic deployments for staging environments
- Manual approval for production deployments
- Team members have project-specific access
- Slack channel receives all deployment notifications
Traditional CMS Workflow:
- Developer pushes WordPress theme changes to GitHub
- DeployHQ automatically deploys to staging server via SFTP
- Client reviews changes on staging
- Developer clicks "Deploy to Production" in DeployHQ
- Files sync to production server
- Deployment notification appears in Slack
JAMStack Workflow:
- Developer pushes Next.js changes to GitHub
- DeployHQ executes build process (npm install, next build)
- Built files deploy to staging CDN automatically
- Client reviews preview URL
- Developer approves production deployment
- Built files deploy to production CDN
- Cache automatically invalidated
Hybrid Project Workflow:
- WordPress backend runs traditionally (content updates don't require deployments)
- Frontend Next.js app connected to WordPress API
- When WordPress content changes, webhook triggers DeployHQ build
- Next.js fetches latest content and rebuilds
- New static site deploys to CDN with fresh content
Why Agencies Choose DeployHQ for Mixed Portfolios
1. Reduced Tool Sprawl
Instead of maintaining separate deployment systems, everything runs through DeployHQ. This means less context-switching, fewer logins to remember, and a single place to check deployment status.
2. Consistent Team Training
New team members learn one deployment system, not five different ones. Whether they're working on WordPress or JAMStack projects, the deployment process is familiar.
3. Standardized Workflow
Every project follows the same general workflow: connect repository, configure build/deployment, set up environments, enable automatic or manual deployments. This standardization reduces errors and speeds up project setup.
4. Better Visibility
Project managers and clients can see deployment activity without needing technical knowledge. The dashboard shows what was deployed, when, and by whom—crucial for agencies managing complex client relationships.
5. Cost Efficiency
One DeployHQ account can manage unlimited projects, versus paying for separate services for different deployment needs. The pricing scales with your team, not your project count.
Case Study: Managing 50+ WordPress and JAMStack Sites Through DeployHQ
The Agency: Digital Horizons, a 12-person agency specializing in marketing websites and content platforms.
The Challenge:
Digital Horizons had grown to manage 50+ client websites with mixed technology stacks. Deployments were chaotic—some via FTP, others through Netlify, some using custom scripts. New team members took weeks to learn all the different systems. Deployment errors were common, and tracking who deployed what was nearly impossible.
The Solution:
The agency migrated all projects to DeployHQ over a two-month period: - Existing WordPress sites connected with SFTP/SSH deployment - New projects started as JAMStack (Next.js and Gatsby) - Hybrid projects set up with separate frontend/backend deployments - Staging and production environments configured for all projects - Team permissions aligned with project responsibilities
The Results:
- Setup time: New project deployment configuration dropped from 2-3 hours to 15-20 minutes
- Deployment errors: Reduced by 85% (no more manual FTP mistakes)
- Team onboarding: New developers productive with deployments on day one
- Client confidence: Clients can see deployment history and status anytime
- Development velocity: Team ships features 30% faster with automated deployments
Specific Wins:
For WordPress sites:
- Automatic staging deployments let clients review changes before production
- Database backup hooks ensure data safety before major updates
- Deployment logs help troubleshoot issues quickly
For JAMStack sites:
- Build caching reduced average build time from 8 minutes to 3 minutes
- Automatic CDN cache invalidation eliminated "stale content" complaints
- Preview deployments from pull requests improved client collaboration
For hybrid projects:
- WordPress webhook integration triggers frontend rebuilds automatically
- Content editors work in familiar WordPress while site benefits from JAMStack performance
- Separate deployment pipelines for backend and frontend provide flexibility
Migration Paths and Future-Proofing
One question we hear frequently: "We're currently on WordPress—should we migrate to JAMStack?"
The answer depends on your specific situation, but here are some considerations:
Incremental Migration Strategy:
You don't have to migrate everything at once. Consider: 1. Start with your marketing pages (homepage, about, services) as JAMStack 2. Keep blog and frequently-updated content in WordPress temporarily 3. Gradually move blog content to headless WordPress + JAMStack frontend 4. Maintain complex functionality (members area, forum) in traditional architecture if needed
When Migration Makes Sense:
- Performance is causing measurable business impact (conversions, bounce rate)
- Security incidents are costing time and money
- Hosting costs are growing unsustainably
- Your team has modern JavaScript skills
- Content updates follow a predictable schedule
When to Stay Put:
- Current performance is acceptable for your goals
- Content editors are happy with the current workflow
- Plugin ecosystem provides needed functionality at low cost
- Team lacks JAMStack experience and training budget is limited
- Real-time publishing is a core business requirement
Conclusion: There's No Wrong Choice, Only Wrong Context
The JAMStack vs. Traditional CMS debate isn't about picking a winner—it's about matching technology to context. Traditional CMS platforms remain excellent choices for content-heavy sites with non-technical editors and complex functional requirements. JAMStack shines for performance-critical marketing sites, documentation, and projects where security and scalability matter most. And hybrid approaches often provide the best of both worlds.
The key is understanding your project's specific needs:
- Who will manage content, and what's their technical level?
- How frequently does content need to be published?
- What's your performance requirement and target audience?
- What's your team's technical expertise?
- What's your budget for hosting and maintenance?
- How critical are security and scalability?
Whatever you choose, modern deployment tools like DeployHQ make managing both architectures straightforward. You're no longer locked into one approach across your entire portfolio—you can choose the right tool for each job while maintaining a consistent deployment workflow.
Ready to streamline your deployments—whether traditional CMS, JAMStack, or both? Try DeployHQ free for 14 days and experience how easy managing mixed portfolios can be.
Key Questions to Ask Before Deciding:
- How often will content be updated? (Daily = traditional, Weekly = either, Monthly = JAMStack)
- Who will manage content? (Non-technical = traditional, Developers = JAMStack, Mixed = hybrid)
- What's your traffic profile? (High/spiky = JAMStack, Moderate/steady = either)
- What's your performance requirement? (Critical = JAMStack, Important = either)
- What's your security risk profile? (High risk = JAMStack, Moderate = either)
- What's your technical team's skill set? (PHP = traditional, JavaScript = JAMStack, Both = either)
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