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Self-hosted CMS

Moving your website off WordPress

We take what is working on your current site — your branding, content, photos, pages and structure — and rebuild it on a platform that is significantly faster, more secure and far easier to maintain. The WordPress database and plugin dependencies go away, and the maintenance burden goes with them.

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Where you actually stand

Let us be fair to WordPress first, because the honest version of this argument is the more persuasive one. WordPress core is well maintained. In 2025, of 11,334 vulnerabilities disclosed across the WordPress ecosystem, exactly six were in WordPress core. That is a remarkable record for the most widely used CMS in the world.

The problem was never core. It is everything bolted onto it. Ninety-one percent of those 11,334 vulnerabilities were in plugins, and another nine percent were in themes. The typical small-business WordPress site runs somewhere between fifteen and forty plugins, each one written by a different author, each on its own release schedule, each with its own abandonment risk, and each with database write access.

That is the real cost of WordPress: not a flaw in the software, but a standing obligation. Somebody has to watch the update queue, apply the updates, notice when an update breaks the contact form, and keep a backup good enough to roll back when one does. If that somebody is you, it is a tax on your week. If it is nobody, the site is drifting toward an incident.

Ownership is the one thing WordPress gets right

Unlike most of the platforms we migrate people off, self-hosted WordPress genuinely is yours. You have the files, you have the database, you can move hosts whenever you like. We are not going to pretend otherwise.

So the case for moving is not about ownership. It is about what ownership currently costs you. Right now you own a system that needs continuous maintenance to stay safe. After a rebuild you own a system that does not — and you still own it just as completely, with the same assignment in writing.

What this costs you day to day

The update queue never empties

Plugins, themes and core all update on independent schedules. Skip them and the vulnerability window opens. Apply them without testing and something breaks. Neither option is good, and it recurs every month forever.

Plugin conflicts are invisible until they are not

Two plugins that each work fine can break each other after an update. The symptom is usually a form that silently stops sending, and the discovery is usually a customer asking why nobody called them back.

Performance is fighting the architecture

Every page view runs PHP, queries the database, and loads whatever CSS and JavaScript each active plugin insists on. Caching plugins paper over this. They do not remove it.

Page builders lock you in inside WordPress

Divi, Elementor and WPBakery store your layouts in their own shortcode format. Deactivate the builder and your pages turn to markup soup. You own the site, but the content is hostage to a plugin.

Hosting is now a security responsibility

PHP versions, server patches, file permissions, login hardening, malware scanning. On shared hosting most of this is nobody’s explicit job.

How the rebuild works

Six steps, and your involvement is deliberately minimal. We handle the technical side, bring you recommendations, and come to you when a decision or an approval is genuinely needed. You review the finished site before it goes live.

  1. 1

    We audit your current website

    We review your existing site — pages, content, SEO, functionality and structure. We identify what should be improved, updated or dropped, rather than copying over things that were never working.

  2. 2

    We rebuild the site in Next.js

    Your branding and content carry over, but the site is rebuilt from the ground up in Next.js. That removes the database and plugin dependencies behind most performance, security and maintenance problems.

    For WordPress specifically: We pull your posts, pages, media library and menu structure straight out of the WordPress database, so nothing is retyped and nothing is missed. If you are on a page builder, we rebuild those layouts as real components rather than importing shortcodes — which is how the layout survives without the plugin.

  3. 3

    We improve it while we rebuild it

    This is the part people underestimate. We are not handing you a newer version of the same website. We look for real gains in navigation, page layout, calls to action, mobile experience, content and SEO.

  4. 4

    We preserve your SEO

    Existing URLs, page titles, metadata and redirects are all accounted for in the transition. The goal is to move platforms without giving up the search visibility you have already built.

  5. 5

    We test everything before it goes live

    Desktop and mobile, every form, every piece of functionality, all content reviewed — checked and working before we touch anything in production.

  6. 6

    We launch

    Once you approve it, we move the new site into production. From your side the transition should be uneventful, and your visitors should never see an interruption.

What comes with you

  • All pages and posts, with their content intact
  • Your media library, re-optimised to modern formats
  • Menu structure and internal linking
  • Every existing URL, either preserved or 301 redirected
  • Titles, meta descriptions and schema markup
  • Form submissions routed to the same inbox as today

You own what we build. In writing.

Every rebuild is delivered with a Certificate of Ownership and IP Assignment: a signed document assigning you the copyright in the site code and the content we produce for you, and recording the transfer of the repository, the domain and the hosting account into your name. You are not licensing your website from us. If you ever leave, you take the whole thing with you — the code, the content, the domain, the repository and the deployment history.

  • Full copyright assignment in the site code and the content we write for you.
  • The Git repository transferred to an account you control, with its full history.
  • The domain in your name, at a registrar of your choosing.
  • Hosting in your own Vercel account if you want it there — we can manage it, but ownership sits with you.
  • No proprietary page builder, no template licence, and nothing that stops working if you stop paying us.
Read what the certificate covers

Questions people ask about leaving WordPress

Will I lose my Google rankings?
That is the risk we design the whole migration around. Every existing URL is either kept exactly as it is or given a 301 redirect to its new home. Titles, meta descriptions and structured data come across. Search engines see a faster site at the same addresses, which is the outcome you want.
What happens to my WordPress plugins?
Most get replaced by something built into the new site rather than bolted onto it — contact forms, SEO fields, caching, image optimisation, security hardening and backups are all native. For genuine third-party services like a booking system or a CRM, we keep the integration and connect it directly.
Can I still edit my own content?
Yes. You get an editing interface for the content that actually changes — text, images, blog posts, service pages, staff. What you do not get is the ability to accidentally break the site’s layout or install a plugin that takes it offline.
How long does it take?
Most rebuilds run days to a few weeks depending on size. A twenty-page site is typically three to five business days. A fifty-page site is typically seven to ten. Your existing site stays live the entire time.
Is my WordPress site actually at risk right now?
We can tell you specifically rather than guess. Send us the address and we will list the plugins you are running, flag the ones with known vulnerabilities or no recent updates, and show you your current performance scores. No charge.

Sources

Every claim made about WordPress on this page comes from WordPress’s own published documentation. Read them yourself. We would rather you did.

Also worth reading

Start by finding out where you actually are

The free scan tells you what your site is built on, what is slowing it down, what search engines and AI answer engines can currently read, and roughly what a rebuild would cost.

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