Headless WordPress Development

Keep the editor your team already knows. Put a modern frontend in front of it and stop paying the theme tax.

Typically from: $35,000
Typical timeline: 8 to 20 weeks

Headless is the right answer less often than the internet suggests, and exactly right when it is. It fits when you have a strong in-house frontend team, when the site is one surface among several sharing content, or when performance requirements have outgrown what a themed frontend can deliver.

We keep WordPress as the editorial backend, because that is what it is genuinely good at, and expose content through WPGraphQL or the REST API to a Next.js frontend. Editors keep the interface they know, including previews, which is the part most headless builds get wrong.

The engineering that matters is in the boring layer: incremental static regeneration so publishing feels instant without rebuilding the world, a preview pipeline authenticated against WordPress, cache invalidation triggered by post save, and a sitemap that reflects the content model rather than the route file.

What the engagement includes

Next.js or Nuxt frontend

App Router, server components and streaming, with a component library mapped to your Gutenberg blocks.

WPGraphQL or REST content layer

A typed content API with schema tests, so a field rename never silently blanks a page.

Working editorial preview

Authenticated draft preview from inside WordPress, the feature most headless builds skip.

Incremental regeneration

Publishing triggers a targeted revalidation instead of a full rebuild.

SEO parity

Canonicals, structured data, redirects and sitemaps carried across so a replatform does not cost you rankings.

What you receive

Every engagement ends with artefacts you own, not a login to something we control.

Frontend application in your repository
Content API schema and type definitions
Preview and revalidation pipeline
Hosting and deployment configuration
Core Web Vitals baseline and post-launch report
30-day post-launch warranty

Headless WordPress: common questions

Should we go headless?

Only if you have a reason beyond speed. A well-built theme can hit the same Core Web Vitals scores for far less money. Headless earns its cost when content feeds several surfaces, when you already run a frontend team, or when you need rendering behaviour a theme cannot give you.

Will our editors lose preview?

Not with us. Authenticated draft preview is part of the build, not a phase-two promise. It is the most common complaint about headless projects and it is entirely avoidable.

What does it cost to run?

You host two things instead of one: WordPress, which can now be small and private, and the frontend. For most mid-market sites the frontend hosting is modest, and the WordPress bill usually drops because it no longer serves public traffic.

Need headless wordpress done properly?

Book a free 30-minute technical consultation. We will tell you what the work actually involves and what it should cost, whether or not you build it with us.

Start a project Book a call (307) 454-0600