When NOT to migrate a client off WordPress — the honest counter-cases Candid Creative will refuse
Candid Creative will recommend NOT migrating in these cases:
The site is fine; the client just heard "WordPress is slow" on a podcast. Diagnose. Often the fix is $50/mo of better hosting + WP Rocket. Ben Ryan's headless-WordPress agency review: "If your WordPress site is slow, fix the hosting, enable caching, and optimise images. Going headless to solve a performance problem you could fix for $50/month is expensive overkill."
Client edits daily with 5+ non-technical editors. WordPress's Gutenberg editor is genuinely best-in-class for this profile.
Working WooCommerce store with >50 active SKUs and integrations. Migration cost will dwarf performance gains.
Critical functionality depends on a niche plugin with no clear equivalent — LearnDash courses, BuddyPress communities, advanced Gravity Forms with conditional logic and a CRM webhook.
Client budget assumes "free updates forever from the developer." Headless setups need ongoing developer involvement that WordPress often doesn't.
The client is on a "no-developer-ever-again" budget after launch — they should stay on WordPress with a maintenance contract.
FatLab's honest framing (we should echo this): "For most of our clients, headless is the wrong choice."
The audit's job is to tell the truth. If migration is the wrong project, the audit says so and refers the client to a WordPress maintenance shop. That credibility is worth more than the one engagement.