At SZ, we’ve made the decision to no longer build new client websites using WordPress. This wasn’t a decision we took lightly—WordPress has served us and many of our clients well over the years. However, the web has evolved, and so have the needs of our clients. We’ve moved to Sanity as our CMS of choice for several key reasons.

Why We Moved Away from WordPress

1. Security & Maintenance Overhead

WordPress sites are often targeted by bots and bad actors due to their popularity. Keeping sites secure requires constant plugin updates, theme updates, and vulnerability patching—often resulting in unexpected breakages or costs for clients.

2. Plugin Bloat & Performance Issues

WordPress relies heavily on third-party plugins for extended functionality. While this offers flexibility, it also creates risks. Many plugins are poorly maintained or contain vulnerabilities that can be exploited by attackers. The more plugins you add, the higher the chances of conflicts, performance issues, and security breaches. Keeping them updated becomes a constant maintenance task—and if one plugin breaks, it can take your whole site down.

3. Rigid Content Structure

While WordPress is flexible to a point, its interface is still rooted in a page-and-post paradigm. For content-heavy or more customized applications, it becomes limiting without heavy customization.

4. Not Developer-First

Custom development on WordPress can be slow and frustrating compared to modern tools. Managing themes, hooks, and PHP-based logic often slows down innovation and introduces bugs.

Why We Chose Sanity

1. Structured Content, Fully Customizable

Sanity treats content as structured data, which means it can be reused across pages, apps, and platforms. It gives us complete freedom to design both the backend content model and the frontend experience.

2. Best-in-Class Editor Experience

Sanity Studio is a real-time, collaborative editor that is highly customizable. We can tailor it to your team’s workflow—no more confusing backends or bloated dashboards.

3. Headless and Future-Proof

Sanity is a headless CMS, which means your content is not locked into a theme or frontend. It can power websites, mobile apps, digital displays, and more. As your needs grow, your CMS scales with you.

4. Performance and SEO

Sanity allows us to build blazing-fast frontend experiences using modern frameworks like Next.js. This leads to better SEO, improved performance scores, and ultimately, a better user experience.

5. Developer-Friendly = Faster Innovation

Our development team can work faster, test better, and iterate more cleanly using Sanity and modern tools. This saves time and budget, especially for clients who need ongoing updates or custom features.

6. Powerful Pro Features, Including Built-In AI Tools

With Sanity’s Growth plan, we get access to advanced features like role-based access control, audit logs, and content versioning—capabilities typically found in enterprise-level systems. On top of that, Sanity includes a built-in AI Assistant that can help generate, edit, and translate content directly within the editor. This allows content teams to move faster, maintain consistency, and reduce manual workload—all without relying on external plugins or tools.

7. Best-in-Class Security and Modern Authentication

Sanity is built with security at its core. It offers fine-grained access controls, audit trails, and SOC 2 Type II compliance—meaning your content is protected to the highest standards. For teams and clients, Sanity supports modern authentication methods like Single Sign-On (SSO) via SAML and OAuth, making access management seamless and secure across organizations of any size. You stay in control of who sees what—without compromising ease of use.

What This Means for You

If you’re an existing WordPress client, we’re still here to support your site for now. But for new builds, migrations, or larger projects, we’ll be using Sanity to deliver a faster, more scalable, and more future-proof solution.

Have questions about migrating your site or working with Sanity? We’re happy to walk you through the benefits for your specific use case.