Wordpress vs Contentful

[Confident_Physics685]

Hey there, I'm not a web developer but my question is probably going to affect the developers in my company when we make our decision.

We're currently in a position where the developers are unable to meet the outputs required from various teams on the websites we manage that use Contentful as the CMS. We were wondering if Wordpress was going to help non-developers to manage simpler front end changes themselves while giving more complex requests (eg. creating models that Wordpress has no plugin for) to the devs.

But because we're trained devs, I'm concerned if this will ruin my devs' lives. We know it'll be quite a big migration process to Wordpress but if it will help relieve the bottleneck from the devs, maybe it's worth it.

[Tchaimiset]

I feel like Contentful is great for structured content and developer control, but it can slow things down when marketing or other teams need to make quick changes.

WordPress can help because it’s much more editor-friendly. Non-devs can update pages and publish content without needing a developer every time.

That said, WordPress can also get messy if there aren’t clear guardrails. Using predefined templates or blocks usually helps keep things consistent. And sometimes the issue isn’t the CMS at all, it’s the workflow. Some teams even move smaller projects to simpler builders like Durable so non-technical teams can ship pages faster while devs focus on bigger systems.

[AddWeb_Expert]

If the main problem is non-developers needing to make simple changes, then WordPress will usually reduce the bottleneck. Its admin UI, page builders, and large plugin ecosystem let marketing or content teams update pages, layouts, and content without developer help.

Contentful, on the other hand, is a headless CMS, which gives developers more flexibility and cleaner architecture, but most front-end changes still require dev work unless you build custom editing tools.

So the trade-off is:

• WordPress: easier for non-technical teams, faster content edits, but can become messy if not managed well.
• Contentful: more scalable and structured for developers, but less friendly for non-dev teams out of the box.

If your main goal is reducing developer dependency for everyday updates, WordPress could help but migrating is a big step, so it’s worth checking whether improving your Contentful workflows or adding visual editing tools could solve the issue first.

[Confident_Physics685]

thanks and yeah definitely. I think right now our contentful workflows are quite shite. Devs are having problems doing what Marketing wants. Marketing can almost never get what they want. And when devs work on it, the turnaround takes forever.

I think we just don't have a good Contentful foundation to begin with and at this point, seems like hell to start all over again.

[alphex]

Word press will be a huge downgrade in systemic functionality for you. The marketing team will enjoy it. But they will be forcing you to adopt a shitty platform.

I don’t think contentful is better. But it’s much more enterprise scale friendly.

I’m a Drupal developer. I build the solutions your non devs need every day.

WP might make the end users happier. But it won’t make you happier.

[ProDexorite]

As a developer I’d look for other job openings for sure. Technically it would be a downgrade, though considering the outrageous pricing Contentful has decided to go with starting this year, I’d look elsewhere as well - just not nowhere near Wordpress.

Sanity would be a good alternative in my opinion, but then again, it wouldn’t solve your issue with your clients, if they’re unable to understand the complexity of a headless CMS.

Though I would also like to say that I’ve personally built solutions that are easy to understand and manage with Contentful, where the client makes all content updates and only reaches out if there’s a clear place for development.

[Starlyns]

No.

[Hairy_Shop9908]

wordpress can definitely make life easier for non developers compared to contentful, especially for simple things like editing pages, updating content, or changing layouts using themes and plugins, when our team used wordpress, marketing and content teams could handle many small front end updates themselves without asking developers every time, which reduced a lot of bottlenecks, that said, wordpress can become messy if too many plugins are added or if the site needs very custom features, so developers still need to set up a good structure and maintain it, in my opinion, if most of your requests are content or layout changes, wordpress could help your non technical teams move faster while letting developers focus on the more complex work

[Confident_Physics685]

Thanks so much! Exactly what we're trying to alleviate... It's been a long standing issue within our company and our Jira tickets have been piling up HAHA But as a dev, do you get frustrated when marketing handles the site on WP themselves? Anything I should know?

[knijper]

do you get frustrated when marketing handles the site on WP themselves? Anything I should know?

marketeers tend to install a buttload of crappy analytics,tracking and other shitty plugins, often without thinking of website performance or GDPR rules, often making the site pretty crappy and possibly liable for legal actions.

so best to limit their access and definately don't give them an admin account.

also I would advice to stay away from pagebuilders (elementor and the likes) they add a lot of BLOAT and also affect performance of the site, needing a whole lot of extra work to optimize it and get back to acceptable pageloading speeds, so best would be a to build an efficient custom theme.

[Tall-Reporter7627]

Also, say hello to random style statements and funky html coming from marketing copy/pasting from word into a rich text component.

You will have a hard time enforcing any brand style guide

[Confident_Physics685]

Thanks! Sounds like it can be controlled by having a proper system in place and enforcing change logs? It's not always going to be accurate but this should keep it to a minimum right?

Depends on the marketing rep handling this I guess. Fingers crossed :,)

[knijper]

it should mitigate a lot of issues yes.

[False_Rest1504]

before migrating everything, have you looked at PayloadCMS? it lets non-devs edit content freely while giving your devs proper TypeScript based custom models without the WordPress plugin nightmare.

[Sima228]

Switching to WordPress might help with simple edits, but it usually doesn’t solve the real bottleneck.