Why I build small business websites with Astro
Wix is easier. WordPress is more familiar. Squarespace looks fine out of the box. So why does every site I build use Astro? Because the tradeoffs aren't what they look like on the surface.
Most small business owners hire whoever can build them the website they need at a price they can afford. They don’t care what tools we use, and frankly they shouldn’t have to. But the tools we choose change what their site can do — for better or worse — long after the project ships.
I build with Astro. Here’s why, in language a non-developer can use to evaluate whether their next site should be built with it too.
Astro builds plain HTML files. That’s the whole trick.
When someone visits a Wix or WordPress site, the server has to assemble the page from a database every single time. Plugins run, queries fire, code executes — then the page gets sent to the visitor’s browser.
Astro skips all of that. It builds your site once, into static HTML files, and serves them directly. There’s no database query when a visitor lands on the page. There’s no PHP code running. There are no plugins waking up to check if they need to do anything.
The result: pages that load in well under a second, on every device, every time. Often 10–20× faster than a typical WordPress equivalent.
Why this matters for small businesses
It’s not just about speed for speed’s sake. Static sites have downstream effects that compound:
Google ranks them higher. Page speed is a ranking factor. A faster site competes more effectively in local search results.
They cost less to host. A static Astro site can be hosted on Netlify, Cloudflare Pages, or Vercel for free or under $20/month. WordPress hosting that handles real traffic costs $30–$100/month minimum.
They never need security updates. No database, no PHP, no admin login. There’s nothing to hack. Compare that to WordPress, which has roughly 90,000 plugin vulnerabilities reported in the last decade.
They don’t break unexpectedly. A WordPress site can break on a Wednesday afternoon when one plugin auto-updates and conflicts with another. A static site you built last year still works exactly the same way today.
The trade-offs (because they’re real)
Astro isn’t right for every project. Honest version of the trade-offs:
You can’t easily edit pages from a browser. WordPress and Wix let non-technical owners log in and update content. With Astro, content updates either go through a developer (me) or use a separate “headless CMS” service that adds a small monthly fee. For most small businesses with quarterly updates, this is fine. For a business that updates the site daily, it’s a constraint.
E-commerce is different. If you’re selling 500 products with complex inventory, Shopify is probably still the right call. Astro can handle e-commerce, but the use case where it shines is small businesses with services, portfolios, and brochure-style content — which is most of my clients.
Fewer “drag and drop” moments. No page builder means design changes require code changes. Most small businesses don’t make many design changes after launch, but if you wanted to constantly tweak layouts yourself, this isn’t the setup for you.
What this means for you
If you’re building a website for a service business — landscaping, contracting, food service, professional services, anything where the site’s job is to bring in leads and tell your story — Astro is probably the right tool. Faster, cheaper to host, more durable, and easier to rank in search.
If you’re building Etsy, run Shopify. If you’re building Wikipedia, run WordPress. If you’re building a website that needs to convince people in Burlington that you’re the right contractor for their kitchen renovation: Astro every time.
Worth noting: this isn’t about Astro being trendy. The same principles applied to plain HTML in 2005 — fast static sites just work. Astro is a modern way to build them that’s still readable, maintainable, and easy to update. We came back around to the right answer.
