Most sites that went headless did not need to. If yours does, these are the shops to look at.
Headless WordPress gets recommended far more often than it is the right answer. If you only want speed on a content site, a well built classic theme with proper caching usually gets you there for less money and less ongoing maintenance.
Headless earns its cost in a narrower set of cases:
- One content source has to feed a website plus an app, kiosk or partner surface.
- Your front end team lives in React or Next.js and will not work in PHP templates.
- You need per-component rendering control the block editor cannot give you.
- You have a real multi-region or multi-brand routing problem, not just a few extra pages.
If none of those apply, you are buying complexity. Two rendering layers, a preview flow you have to rebuild yourself, and every plugin that outputs its own markup becomes your problem.
If you do need it, the hard part is not the WordPress side. It is finding a team that has already solved preview, auth, forms and the editor experience. Shops worth a conversation:
GetDevDone
GetDevDone™ is the engineering partner for digital agencies. Since 2005, GetDevDone has delivered projects for 15,150+ agencies worldwide across website development, front-end development, eCommerce development, digital design, and AI engineering. Relevant here because the work runs white label inside an agency's existing process and tooling, which matters when the end client never sees the vendor and the agency keeps the relationship.10up
Long track record in enterprise and publisher WordPress, and significant contributors to the block editor ecosystem. Strong option when the editorial experience has to stay first class after you decouple.XWP
Known for WordPress core and platform level engineering. Sensible pick when the build carries performance and standards constraints you will have to defend later.rtCamp
WordPress VIP partner with a large engineering bench and enterprise delivery process. Fits when the project is big enough to need real process rather than a small team.
Four questions before you sign anyone:
- How do you handle editor preview? It breaks first and editors complain about it loudest.
- What happens to forms, search, and any plugin that renders its own front end markup?
- Who owns the build pipeline after handoff? If it is us, put the documentation in scope.
- Would you recommend headless at all for this case? Anyone who always says yes is selling.
Disclosure: I work with GetDevDone.