[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":597},["ShallowReactive",2],{"blog-/en/neleto-vs-wordpress":3,"blog-related-/en/neleto-vs-wordpress":362},{"id":4,"title":5,"author":6,"body":7,"date":348,"description":349,"extension":350,"image":351,"meta":352,"navigation":353,"path":354,"seo":355,"stem":356,"tags":357,"__hash__":361},"blog/en/neleto-vs-wordpress.md","Neleto vs WordPress: What You Give Up, and What You Stop Maintaining","Martin Swoboda",{"type":8,"value":9,"toc":335},"minimark",[10,14,19,22,25,34,38,41,57,60,64,67,70,73,81,85,88,91,102,105,109,119,122,130,133,146,149,153,156,260,263,267,270,273,281,284,288,291,294,297,300,303,307,310,313,321,324],[11,12,13],"p",{},"Most \"WordPress alternative\" posts are written by people who need WordPress to look bad. WordPress runs a huge share of the web for good reasons, and leaving it costs you things you currently take for granted. So this post asks a narrower question: which sites are paying WordPress's maintenance bill without getting WordPress's benefits?",[15,16,18],"h2",{"id":17},"what-are-neleto-and-wordpress-in-one-sentence-each","What are Neleto and WordPress, in one sentence each?",[11,20,21],{},"WordPress is a free, open-source PHP CMS that you extend with plugins from an ecosystem of tens of thousands, installed and maintained by you or your agency.",[11,23,24],{},"Neleto is an all-in-one CMS with a Rust backend. Rendering, hosting, the page builder, image scaling, redirects, translations, events and a native MCP server are built in, and it runs as managed hosting in EU regions.",[11,26,27,28,33],{},"The usual third option is a headless CMS, which stores content while you build and host a separate frontend application. Neleto renders the site itself, so there's no second stack to staff. We wrote about that trade-off in ",[29,30,32],"a",{"href":31},"/blog/full-cms-vs-headless","full CMS vs headless",".",[15,35,37],{"id":36},"should-you-leave-wordpress-at-all","Should you leave WordPress at all?",[11,39,40],{},"For a large share of sites, no. If WordPress is working, keep it. Switching CMS is a real project with real risk, and \"the architecture is more elegant\" doesn't pay for it. WordPress stops being the right answer for a specific profile:",[42,43,44,48,51,54],"ul",{},[45,46,47],"li",{},"A content and marketing site (pages, blog, events, files) with no e-commerce and no plugin-based business logic.",[45,49,50],{},"Nobody in-house is a WordPress developer, so every plugin conflict becomes an outside invoice.",[45,52,53],{},"Maintenance hours or retainer fees cost more than the site gains from being on WordPress specifically.",[45,55,56],{},"You want an agent workflow (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf) against the CMS without building and maintaining the glue.",[11,58,59],{},"If two or more of these describe you, keep reading. If none do, stay where you are.",[15,61,63],{"id":62},"what-do-you-give-up-by-leaving-wordpress","What do you give up by leaving WordPress?",[11,65,66],{},"Three things, and none of them are small.",[11,68,69],{},"The first is the plugin ecosystem. For most feature requests, a plugin already exists. If your business depends on WooCommerce, a specific booking or membership plugin, or a niche integration with your industry's scheduling system, leaving WordPress means rebuilding or replacing that. It's a real cost, and often the whole reason to stay.",[11,71,72],{},"The second is the people. WordPress has the largest pool of people who can work on a website, at every price point and in every country. Any freelancer can pick it up, and if your web person leaves, finding a replacement is easy. No smaller CMS matches that, Neleto included.",[11,74,75,76,80],{},"The third is themes. Thousands of ready-made themes mean a site can look finished on day one for a small fee. Elsewhere, you're designing, although AI design tools plus an MCP server have made that much cheaper than it used to be. We argued in ",[29,77,79],{"href":78},"/blog/templates-are-dead","Templates Are Dead"," that starting from your own idea now beats starting from someone else's theme. WordPress is also the safe institutional choice. Nobody gets criticised for picking it.",[15,82,84],{"id":83},"what-do-you-stop-maintaining","What do you stop maintaining?",[11,86,87],{},"Mostly, the update treadmill. On WordPress, core, themes and every installed plugin update on their own schedules, and each update has a small chance of breaking the site. On managed Neleto the platform updates underneath you, and what you maintain is your own content and layouts.",[11,89,90],{},"A few related jobs go away with it:",[42,92,93,96,99],{},[45,94,95],{},"Plugin conflicts. Two plugins work fine alone and stop working together after one ships a release. Diagnosing that is billable time that produces nothing new.",[45,97,98],{},"Performance work that compensates for the architecture. Caching plugins, object caches, CDN tuning and image optimisation plugins mostly exist to undo the cost of assembling each page from PHP and a plugin stack at request time.",[45,100,101],{},"The \"who updated this and broke it\" problem. With several people and automatic updates, the answer is often unclear.",[11,103,104],{},"None of this makes WordPress bad. It makes WordPress a system with an operating cost. That's fine if someone is budgeted to pay it and expensive if nobody is.",[15,106,108],{"id":107},"is-wordpress-insecure","Is WordPress insecure?",[11,110,111,112,118],{},"WordPress core isn't the weak point. Plugins are, and the data on that is consistent. Patchstack's ",[29,113,117],{"href":114,"rel":115},"https://patchstack.com/whitepaper/state-of-wordpress-security-in-2026/",[116],"nofollow","State of WordPress Security in 2026"," report, covering 2025, counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem, 42% more than the year before. 91% were in plugins, 9% in themes, and WordPress core had six, all low priority.",[11,120,121],{},"Two more numbers from the same report matter for anyone who maintains a site once a month:",[42,123,124,127],{},[45,125,126],{},"46% of those vulnerabilities had no patch available when they were disclosed. Updating promptly doesn't help if there's nothing to update to yet.",[45,128,129],{},"For heavily targeted vulnerabilities, the weighted median time from disclosure to first exploitation was five hours. About half of the high-impact ones were exploited within 24 hours.",[11,131,132],{},"So your exposure grows with the number of plugins you run and how fast each one gets patched. A lean, promptly updated install is fine. A site with 30 plugins, three of them abandoned, is a different risk, and a monthly maintenance visit can't keep up with a five-hour exploitation window.",[11,134,135,136,140,141,145],{},"There's also the layer underneath. WordPress runs on PHP, and on October 20 the PHP security team announced ",[29,137,139],{"href":138},"/blog/php-vulnerabilities-dont-affect-neleto","two critical CVEs"," (CVSS 9.2) affecting every PHP version since 5.0. A WordPress site with zero plugins still needed that interpreter patch, because the bug sat in the runtime and not in anything the site owner installed. Neleto's backend is ",[29,142,144],{"href":143},"/blog/why-neleto-runs-on-rust","compiled Rust",", so there was no PHP interpreter on our serving path to patch.",[11,147,148],{},"We're not claiming Neleto can't have security bugs. Our claim is narrower. Features that would be plugins elsewhere live in one codebase that we patch centrally, and there's no shared interpreter underneath it, so the third-party surface is smaller by design.",[15,150,152],{"id":151},"what-is-built-in-and-what-needs-a-plugin","What is built in, and what needs a plugin?",[11,154,155],{},"WordPress can do all of this. The difference is what you install, license and maintain to get there.",[157,158,159,175],"table",{},[160,161,162],"thead",{},[163,164,165,169,172],"tr",{},[166,167,168],"th",{},"Capability",[166,170,171],{},"WordPress",[166,173,174],{},"Neleto",[176,177,178,190,201,212,223,234,245],"tbody",{},[163,179,180,184,187],{},[181,182,183],"td",{},"Page building",[181,185,186],{},"Block editor in core; many sites add a page builder (Elementor, Divi, WPBakery)",[181,188,189],{},"Page builder built in",[163,191,192,195,198],{},[181,193,194],{},"Image scaling",[181,196,197],{},"Core generates image sizes; most sites add an optimisation/WebP plugin",[181,199,200],{},"Built in",[163,202,203,206,209],{},[181,204,205],{},"Multilingual / translations",[181,207,208],{},"Plugin (WPML, Polylang, TranslatePress)",[181,210,211],{},"Translations built in",[163,213,214,217,220],{},[181,215,216],{},"Redirects",[181,218,219],{},"Plugin (Redirection, Rank Math, Yoast Premium)",[181,221,222],{},"Redirects built in",[163,224,225,228,231],{},[181,226,227],{},"Events",[181,229,230],{},"Plugin (The Events Calendar and similar)",[181,232,233],{},"Events built in as a content type",[163,235,236,239,242],{},[181,237,238],{},"Roles",[181,240,241],{},"Core roles; granular control usually via plugin",[181,243,244],{},"Admin / Developer / Editor / Author built in",[163,246,247,250,253],{},[181,248,249],{},"AI / agent workflow",[181,251,252],{},"REST API plus a third-party wrapper or custom glue",[181,254,255,259],{},[29,256,258],{"href":257},"/blog/native-mcp-vs-wrapper","Native MCP server",", part of the CMS rather than a wrapper around an API",[11,261,262],{},"One limitation on the Neleto side: the built-in content types are what you get. Arbitrary user-defined types aren't shipped yet, and WordPress's custom post types are more flexible today.",[15,264,266],{"id":265},"what-does-each-one-cost","What does each one cost?",[11,268,269],{},"WordPress software is free and stays free. You pay for everything around it: hosting, plugin licences and maintenance hours.",[11,271,272],{},"Hosting runs from a few euros a month on shared hosting up to managed WordPress plans. WP Engine's entry Startup plan is listed from $30/month billed annually (list price when we wrote this). Plugin licences are recurring and usually per site. WP Rocket lists at $59/year for one site, and premium SEO, multilingual and backup plugins are priced separately. Maintenance hours are usually the largest line and the one nobody budgets, whether they come out of your evenings or an agency retainer.",[11,274,275,276,280],{},"Neleto isn't free above the Free plan either. ",[29,277,279],{"href":278},"/pricing","Solo is €19/month"," (€190 a year on annual billing) and Business is €39/month, with hosting, updates and the built-in features included. Comparing €19 against €0 misses the point. Compare it against hosting plus licences plus the hours.",[11,282,283],{},"If you self-host on cheap hosting and do the updates yourself without counting your time, WordPress is cheaper in cash and more expensive in hours.",[15,285,287],{"id":286},"when-to-stay-on-wordpress","When to stay on WordPress",[11,289,290],{},"In four situations, switching is the wrong call.",[11,292,293],{},"You depend on WooCommerce. Neleto has no e-commerce, so if your store is your business, that ends the discussion.",[11,295,296],{},"You have deep plugin investment: a booking system, a membership tier, a CRM integration, a directory, anything where a plugin holds business logic rather than content. Content migrates well. Functionality that lives in plugins doesn't.",[11,298,299],{},"You have an in-house WordPress team. You already pay the maintenance cost as salary, and you have the expertise that makes WordPress fast to work with. Switching throws that away.",[11,301,302],{},"It's a hobby blog. A lean self-hosted install or WordPress.com's free tier is fine. Don't pay €19/month for a site with no revenue attached.",[15,304,306],{"id":305},"how-much-work-is-migrating","How much work is migrating?",[11,308,309],{},"Neleto imports WordPress's standard export file (WXR), so pages, posts and media come across without retyping.",[11,311,312],{},"The import doesn't bring plugin-dependent features with it. If your site is content plus a contact form, migration is an import followed by a layout rebuild, and the rebuild is where most of the time goes, because a WordPress theme and a Neleto layout are different things. If your site has a booking flow, a members area or a shop, plan it as a project, not an afternoon.",[11,314,315,316,320],{},"Plan redirects separately. Keeping your existing URLs alive protects the rankings you already have. Our ",[29,317,319],{"href":318},"/blog/wordpress-migration-walkthrough","40-page WordPress migration walkthrough"," covers the import, the redirect map and the parts that took longer than expected.",[322,323],"hr",{},[11,325,326,330,331,334],{},[327,328,329],"strong",{},"Try it on one site first."," Import a WordPress site into a ",[29,332,333],{"href":278},"free Neleto project"," and rebuild a single page. Within an hour you'll know whether your site is mostly content, which moves easily, or mostly plugins, which doesn't.",{"title":336,"searchDepth":337,"depth":337,"links":338},"",2,[339,340,341,342,343,344,345,346,347],{"id":17,"depth":337,"text":18},{"id":36,"depth":337,"text":37},{"id":62,"depth":337,"text":63},{"id":83,"depth":337,"text":84},{"id":107,"depth":337,"text":108},{"id":151,"depth":337,"text":152},{"id":265,"depth":337,"text":266},{"id":286,"depth":337,"text":287},{"id":305,"depth":337,"text":306},"2026-10-26","WordPress is the right answer for a large share of the web. Here is the specific kind of site where it stops being one, what you lose by leaving, and what you stop maintaining.","md","/img/blog/neleto-vs-wordpress.svg",{},true,"/en/neleto-vs-wordpress",{"title":5,"description":349},"en/neleto-vs-wordpress",[171,358,359,360,174],"CMS Comparison","Migration","Security","ZY5l4v8OmoQDOe3ofLA9vTl-s2c9hKLmDa_ZsZ1H2WQ",[363,365,377,387,397,407,419,430,441,450,459,466,477,485,495,504,511,518,527,537,546,554,564,572,582,589],{"path":354,"title":5,"description":349,"date":348,"author":6,"image":351,"tags":364},[171,358,359,360,174],{"path":366,"title":367,"description":368,"date":369,"author":370,"image":371,"tags":372},"/en/php-vulnerabilities-dont-affect-neleto","PHP Just Got Two Critical CVEs. Neleto Never Had to Patch.","On October 20, the PHP security team flagged two critical vulnerabilities (CVSS 9.2) affecting every PHP version since 5.0. Here's why Neleto's stack was never in the blast radius, and what it says about interpreted versus compiled backends.","2026-10-21","Marc Zinser","/img/blog/php-vulnerabilities-dont-affect-neleto.svg",[373,360,374,375,376,174],"PHP","CVE","Rust","CMS",{"path":378,"title":379,"description":380,"date":381,"author":6,"image":382,"tags":383},"/en/story-of-neleto","The Story of Neleto","Six years of real customer websites before we ever called it a product. Here's how a tool we built for our own client work became a CMS you can start for free.","2026-10-19","/img/blog/story-of-neleto.svg",[174,384,385,386,376],"Build in Public","Story","Triple-A Soft",{"path":388,"title":79,"description":389,"date":390,"author":6,"image":391,"tags":392},"/en/templates-are-dead","Every CMS starts by asking you to pick a template. Now that AI generates real designs and a native MCP server places them straight into your CMS, you can start from your own idea instead of someone else's theme.","2026-10-07","/img/blog/templates-are-dead.svg",[376,393,394,395,396,174],"AI","MCP","Web Design","Templates",{"path":398,"title":399,"description":400,"date":401,"author":6,"image":402,"tags":403},"/en/best-cms-for-agencies","Best CMS for Agencies Managing 10+ Client Sites (And What to Check Before You Commit)","The four things that actually decide it, the per-site maths at 10 and 25 sites, and an honest look at where each option falls apart.","2026-10-05","/img/blog/best-cms-for-agencies.svg",[404,358,405,406,394,174],"Agencies","Pricing","Client Sites",{"path":408,"title":409,"description":410,"date":411,"author":6,"image":412,"tags":413},"/en/host-without-us-cloud","How to Host a Website Without US Cloud Providers (And What Actually Counts as 'EU')","An EU data centre is not the same thing as being outside US legal reach. Here is the difference, layer by layer.","2026-09-28","/img/blog/host-without-us-cloud.svg",[414,415,416,417,418,174],"GDPR","EU Hosting","Digital Sovereignty","CLOUD Act","Data Compliance",{"path":420,"title":421,"description":422,"date":423,"author":6,"image":424,"tags":425},"/en/native-mcp-vs-wrapper","Native MCP vs an MCP Wrapper: Why the Difference Shows Up in Production","Both speak the same protocol. The gap opens in what they can reach, who they act as, and how many round-trips one instruction costs.","2026-09-21","/img/blog/native-mcp-vs-wrapper.svg",[394,426,376,427,428,429,174],"AI Agents","Integration","Claude Code","Permissions",{"path":431,"title":432,"description":433,"date":434,"author":6,"image":435,"tags":436},"/en/jimdo-to-neleto-migration","Jimdo to Neleto: A Real Migration Story","We rebuilt a live Jimdo one-pager on Neleto with Claude. The first pass hurt accessibility; two prompts later Lighthouse showed 99/100/100/100.","2026-09-14","/img/blog/jimdo-to-neleto-migration.svg",[437,359,438,439,440,394,174],"Case Study","Jimdo","Accessibility","Lighthouse",{"path":442,"title":443,"description":444,"date":445,"author":6,"image":446,"tags":447},"/en/mcp-server-faster-image-ingest","The same AI build went from 30 minutes to 4 — here's what we changed in our MCP server","Image uploads were the slowest part of building a site with an AI agent. What we changed in Neleto's MCP server, with before-and-after numbers.","2026-09-07","/img/blog/mcp-server-faster-image-ingest.svg",[174,394,393,448,384,449],"Agents","Performance",{"path":451,"title":452,"description":453,"date":454,"author":6,"image":455,"tags":456},"/en/full-cms-vs-headless","Full CMS vs Headless: Why All-in-One Wins for Most of the Web","Headless earned its reputation for real reasons. Here's the honest trade-off — and why, for most sites, a complete CMS is the better deal.","2026-08-31","/img/blog/full-cms-vs-headless.svg",[457,376,458,394,415,174],"Comparison","Headless",{"path":460,"title":461,"description":462,"date":463,"author":6,"image":464,"tags":465},"/en/self-verifying-ai","The AI That Checks Its Own Work","Most AI-plus-CMS setups write content and hope it rendered. Neleto checks three ways: structured output, LSP checks and a look at the live page.","2026-08-24","/img/blog/self-verifying-ai.svg",[174,393,394,448,384,376],{"path":467,"title":468,"description":469,"date":470,"author":6,"image":471,"tags":472},"/en/five-plugins-built-in","Five New Neleto Plugins — Built In, Not Bolted On","Search, comments, Google reviews, SEO and accessibility audits, and galleries: five plugins that run inside your Neleto instance, no third-party scripts.","2026-08-17","/img/blog/five-plugins-built-in.svg",[174,473,376,384,474,475,476],"Plugins","SEO","Search","DSGVO",{"path":478,"title":479,"description":480,"date":481,"author":6,"image":482,"tags":483},"/en/why-neleto-runs-on-rust","Why Neleto Runs on Rust (And the Benchmarks to Prove It)","Why Neleto runs on Rust: real benchmarks (11 ms TTFB, ~9,400 req/s, 78 MB RAM) and what it cost us in dev speed, hiring and young libraries.","2026-08-10","/img/blog/why-neleto-runs-on-rust.svg",[174,375,449,484,384],"Benchmarks",{"path":486,"title":487,"description":488,"date":489,"author":6,"image":490,"tags":491},"/en/page-builder-walkthrough","Building a Landing Page in Neleto: A Real Walkthrough (Mouse and Prompt)","I built the same landing page twice, by hand in the visual builder and by prompting Claude, and timed both. Including the parts that were slower.","2026-07-27","/img/blog/page-builder-walkthrough.svg",[174,492,376,394,493,494],"Page Builder","AI CMS","No-Code",{"path":496,"title":497,"description":498,"date":499,"author":6,"image":500,"tags":501},"/en/mcp-connectors","Connect Neleto to Anything: The Native MCP Server and Connector Ecosystem","Your CMS shouldn't be an island. Here's how Claude, Cursor, and Windsurf talk to your content directly — and where it goes next.","2026-07-20","/img/blog/mcp-connectors.svg",[394,502,393,428,503,174,376],"Connectors","Cursor",{"path":505,"title":506,"description":507,"date":508,"author":6,"image":509,"tags":510},"/en/wordpress-migration-walkthrough","40-Page WordPress Migration: Honest Walkthrough","The content migration took under an hour. The full cutover (domain, DNS, redirects, forms, QA) took most of a day. Every step, every gotcha.","2026-07-13","/img/blog/wordpress-migration-walkthrough.svg",[171,359,376,414,415,174],{"path":512,"title":513,"description":514,"date":515,"author":6,"image":516,"tags":517},"/en/html-to-editable-cms","Turn a Static HTML Site into an Editable CMS","Web designers lose days rebuilding finished designs as a CMS. With Neleto's MCP server it takes one prompt, animations and custom cursor included.","2026-07-06","/img/blog/html-to-editable-cms.svg",[394,426,395,428,376,174],{"path":519,"title":520,"description":521,"date":522,"author":6,"image":523,"tags":524},"/en/console-launch-free-tier","Neleto Console Is Live — and the Free Tier Is Open","Sign up at console.neleto.io, get a real CMS, and pay us nothing. Here's why we built it that way.","2026-06-29","/img/blog/console-launch-free-tier.svg",[384,174,525,526,415,376],"Free Tier","Self-Serve",{"path":528,"title":529,"description":530,"date":531,"author":6,"image":532,"tags":533},"/en/mcp-server-explained","MCP Server Explained: The Deep Dive","How the Model Context Protocol enables secure, native AI agent interaction with your applications — and why native implementation matters.","2026-06-22","/img/blog/mcp-server-explained.svg",[394,534,535,426,536],"MCP Server","Model Context Protocol","AI Integration",{"path":538,"title":539,"description":540,"date":541,"author":6,"image":542,"tags":543},"/en/neleto-vs-contentful","Neleto vs Contentful: Which CMS Should You Choose in 2026?","A practical comparison for developers, agencies, and growing businesses — covering pricing, performance, AI integration, editor experience, and EU compliance.","2026-06-16","/img/blog/neleto-vs-contentful.svg",[174,544,545,358,493],"Contentful","Headless CMS",{"path":547,"title":548,"description":549,"date":550,"author":6,"image":551,"tags":552},"/en/agentic-traffic-surpassed-humans","Bots Just Out-Numbered Us: What the Agentic Web Means for Your CMS","Cloudflare says AI agents now drive the majority of web traffic — 18 months early. Here's why that changes how you publish content, and what to do about it.","2026-06-08","/img/blog/agentic-traffic-surpassed-humans.svg",[553,426,394,376,174],"Agentic Web",{"path":555,"title":556,"description":557,"date":558,"author":6,"image":559,"tags":560},"/en/glw-gmbh-case-study","Modernizing a 40-Year Family Business: GLW GmbH's New Website with Neleto","How we delivered a fast, multilingual, and CRM-integrated website for a leading German cable processing specialist — in close collaboration with agency Inhalt.","2026-06-05","/img/blog/glw-gmbh-case-study.svg",[437,561,174,562,563],"Customer Story","CRM Integration","Custom Plugin",{"path":565,"title":566,"description":567,"date":568,"author":6,"image":569,"tags":570},"/en/eu-hosting-compliance","Why EU Hosting Compliance Matters for Your Website","Data sovereignty, GDPR, and choosing the right infrastructure in 2026","2026-06-01","/img/blog/eu-hosting-compliance.svg",[414,415,418,571,174],"Privacy",{"path":573,"title":574,"description":575,"date":576,"author":6,"image":577,"tags":578},"/en/buergerstiftung-ravensburg","Bürgerstiftung Ravensburg: A Modern Website for Community Impact with Neleto","How we built a clear, fast, and emotionally engaging website for a regional community foundation using Neleto CMS — in close collaboration with agency Inhalt.","2026-05-29","/img/blog/buergerstiftung-ravensburg.svg",[437,579,580,174,581],"Nonprofit","Foundation","Website",{"path":583,"title":584,"description":585,"date":586,"author":6,"image":587,"tags":588},"/en/what-is-mcp","What is the Model Context Protocol (MCP)?","The new standard connecting AI agents to your tools and data","2026-05-25","/img/blog/what-is-mcp.svg",[394,393,535,426,376],{"path":590,"title":591,"description":592,"date":593,"author":6,"image":594,"tags":595},"/en/why-neleto-exists","Why Neleto Exists","The CMS Built for Speed, Simplicity, and the AI Era","2026-05-18","/img/blog/why-neleto-exists.svg",[376,393,596,449,174],"Web Development",1793093102922]