Tilda, WordPress or Next.js: what to build a website on

“What should we build the site on” is really the question “what should the site do”. A one-year business card site and a store with Kaspi and 1C are different tasks with different answers. We build on Next.js, but we regularly run SEO and advertising for sites on Tilda and WordPress and know the strengths of each.

Tilda and other site builders

Pros. Fast: a landing page in a day or two. Cheap to build: ₸100,000–300,000. You can edit it yourself. Hosting included.

Cons. A subscription from ₸20,000 a month, forever. Speed: 3–6 seconds on mobile, PageSpeed 40–60 — that means losses in advertising and SEO. Integrations: Kaspi, 1C, CRM — through workarounds or not at all. Multi-page sites with hundreds of pages are awkward and slow. The design is recognisable: “a Tilda site”.

When it makes sense. Testing an idea in a week. An event page. A business card site that will not be promoted. A budget under ₸200,000 and no plans to grow.

WordPress

Pros. Flexibility: thousands of plugins and themes. A large community, plenty of contractors. A good admin panel for content. A free engine.

Cons. Speed depends on the theme and plugins — often poor. Security: the most attacked engine in the world, requiring constant updates. Plugins conflict and break on updates. Heavy themes with page builders (Elementor) make the site slow.

When it makes sense. Content sites: blogs, media, article catalogues. When there is someone to keep up with updates. When you need WooCommerce and the budget is limited.

Next.js (and the like)

Pros. Speed: pages are pre-built, PageSpeed 90+, opening within a second. SEO: full control over markup, URLs, hreflang. Integrations: Kaspi, 1C, CRM, anything — it is code. Security: no admin panel with plugins to break into. Scale: thousands of pages with no loss of speed. Hosting: cheap, on your own server.

Cons. You need a developer — you cannot “tweak a block” yourself without an admin panel (one can be added). More expensive at the start: from ₸250,000 for a landing page. Fewer contractors on the market than for WordPress.

When it makes sense. The site is a working tool: enquiries, sales, SEO. You need Kaspi and 1C integrations. You plan advertising with a large budget — speed pays for itself. Stores and services. Anything that should live and grow for years.

Comparison

Why speed decides

Half of mobile users leave if a page takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Google ranks fast sites higher. Advertising to a slow site costs more: you pay for clicks that never waited for the page. The difference between PageSpeed 50 and 95 is a 20–40% difference in cost per enquiry on the same budget. Over a year that is more than the difference in development cost.

Migrating from Tilda and WordPress

If the site already exists and brings traffic, we move it to Next.js keeping the page URLs (or with redirects), meta tags and structure. Rankings are not lost, and speed goes up. If the site brings no traffic, it is simpler to build a new one with an SEO structure.

The bottom line

A one-year business card site with no promotion — Tilda. A content project with an editor and a limited budget — WordPress. A working business tool with enquiries, integrations and SEO — Next.js. Our sites are built on Next.js; more under website development.