Why I Chose Astro for My Blog (And Why You Should Too)

I've built blogs on just about every platform you can think of.

WordPress with various themes and page builders. Gatsby with all its GraphQL complexity. Next.js with its ever-changing app directory. Jekyll for static simplicity. Hugo because everyone said it was fast.

Each one had its strengths. Each one also had things that drove me absolutely crazy.

Then I tried Astro, and something clicked.

It wasn't just that it was fast, though it is. It wasn't just that it had good SEO, though it does. It was more fundamental than that. It felt like someone had actually thought about what building a content site should feel like.

Let me explain why I ended up choosing Astro for this blog, and why I think it might be the right choice for you too.

The Problem With Everything Else

Before I get into why Astro works, let me talk about why other options didn't.

WordPress is the obvious starting point for most people. It's familiar. There are millions of tutorials. You can install a theme and have something running in an hour.

But here's what happens in practice.. you install WordPress, then you need a theme, then you need a page builder because the theme doesn't quite do what you want, then you need caching plugins because the page builder made everything slow, then you need SEO plugins, then security plugins, then image optimization plugins.

Before you know it, you're managing 15 plugins, your site takes four seconds to load, and you spend more time updating and troubleshooting than actually writing.

I've been down that road too many times.

Then there's the modern JavaScript framework route. I built blogs with Next.js and Gatsby thinking that would solve the performance issues.

And they can be fast.. if you configure everything perfectly. But the complexity is wild. You're dealing with server-side rendering, client-side hydration, code splitting, bundle optimization, and a million configuration options.

For a blog. A site that's mostly just text and images.

It felt like using a chainsaw to cut a sandwich.

I'd spend hours figuring out why my build was failing or why certain pages weren't generating correctly, when I should have been writing content.

What I wanted was something that was fast by default, simple to work with, and actually designed for content-focused sites.

That's Astro.

What Makes Astro Different

The core insight behind Astro is pretty simple.. most websites don't need JavaScript on every page.

Think about a blog post. It's mostly just HTML and CSS. Some text, some images, maybe a code block. There's not much interactivity. Why are we shipping hundreds of kilobytes of JavaScript just to display static content?

Astro's answer is to ship zero JavaScript by default.

You write your components, Astro renders them to HTML at build time, and that's what gets sent to the browser. Pure, fast HTML.

If you do need interactivity somewhere, like a comment section or an image gallery, you can add it just to that component using what they call "islands architecture." The rest of the page stays static. Only the interactive bits get JavaScript.

This is brilliant for blogs because 95 percent of your content is static. You don't need React hydrating your entire page just to display a blog post.

The performance difference is massive. I'm talking 40 to 60 percent faster Time to First Byte compared to WordPress. 50 to 70 percent smaller JavaScript bundles compared to typical React setups.

Those aren't small improvements. Those are the kind of gains that actually show up in your analytics as better engagement and lower bounce rates.

The SEO Advantage

Here's something I didn't fully appreciate until I launched my first Astro blog.. the SEO benefits.

Search engines love fast sites with clean HTML. That's exactly what Astro gives you.

Because Astro generates static HTML by default, every page is instantly crawlable. Search engines don't have to execute JavaScript to see your content. It's just right there in the HTML.

This matters more than you'd think. I've seen JavaScript-heavy sites struggle with indexing because Google's crawler had trouble rendering the content properly. With Astro, there's nothing to render. The content is already in the page source.

Plus, all those performance gains directly impact your Core Web Vitals scores. Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, Cumulative Layout Shift.. all the metrics Google uses for ranking are easier to optimize when you're not shipping massive JavaScript bundles.

I launched the Apatero blog on Astro and within a month we hit 75,000 impressions. Was that all because of Astro? No, there were other factors. But the technical foundation absolutely helped.

Fast sites rank better. It's that simple.

The Developer Experience

Okay, this part is more relevant if you're comfortable with code, but even if you're not super technical, hear me out.

Astro just feels good to work with.

You can write components in plain HTML if you want. Or use React, Vue, Svelte, whatever you're comfortable with. Astro doesn't lock you into one framework.

The file structure is intuitive. Routes are based on file names. You want a page at /blog? Create a file at pages/blog.astro. Done.

Markdown and MDX support is built in, which is perfect for blogs. You write your posts in Markdown, add frontmatter for metadata, and Astro handles the rest.

There's no complex build configuration. No webpack configs to maintain. No mysterious errors that take hours to debug.

It just works, and when something doesn't work, the error messages actually make sense.

Coming from Next.js where I'd lose entire afternoons to build issues, this was refreshing.

Real Performance Numbers

Let me give you some concrete comparisons, because "fast" is subjective.

Independent benchmarks show Astro consistently outperforming other frameworks for content sites.

Time to First Byte is 40-60 percent faster than WordPress.

First Contentful Paint is 30-50 percent better than Gatsby.

Largest Contentful Paint is 25-45 percent improved compared to Next.js for static content.

JavaScript bundle sizes are typically 50-70 percent smaller than React-based frameworks.

These aren't cherry-picked numbers. This is what happens when you build a content site the way Astro approaches it.. static by default, JavaScript only when needed.

For reference, this blog template built with Astro has a bundle size of about 184KB total. That includes everything.. the framework, the components, the styling, all of it.

A comparable WordPress site with a decent theme and a few plugins? Easily over 1MB. Sometimes multiple megabytes.

That difference matters on mobile networks. That difference matters for SEO. That difference matters for user experience.

The Content-First Philosophy

Here's what really sold me on Astro.

It's built for content sites. Not e-commerce. Not web apps. Content.

The documentation assumes you're building a blog or a marketing site or a documentation site. The examples are relevant. The features are focused on content needs.

You've got built-in RSS feed generation. Sitemap generation. Image optimization. All the things you need for a content site, just built in.

Other frameworks treat content sites as an afterthought. Astro treats them as the main use case.

That focus makes everything easier. Instead of fighting against the framework to make it work for a blog, you're working with a framework that was designed for exactly what you're doing.

When Astro Might Not Be Right

I don't want to oversell this. Astro isn't perfect for everything.

If you need a lot of client-side interactivity, like a social media feed that updates in real-time or a complex dashboard with tons of state management, you might be better off with a traditional SPA framework.

If you're not comfortable with code at all and need a purely visual editor, WordPress with a page builder might be easier, despite the performance trade-offs.

If you need specific plugins or integrations that only exist in the WordPress ecosystem, that's a valid reason to stay with WordPress.

But for a blog where the primary goal is publishing content and ranking in search engines? Astro is hard to beat.

Why I Keep Coming Back to It

I've built multiple blogs at this point. Every time I start a new project, I consider the options.

Should I use WordPress for the ecosystem? Next.js for the React familiarity? Something else?

And every time, I come back to Astro.

Because I remember what it was like working with other frameworks. The constant troubleshooting. The plugin conflicts. The bundle size anxiety. The build time frustration.

With Astro, I just write content and it works. The builds are fast. The site is fast. The SEO is solid. The developer experience is pleasant.

That's what I want from a blogging platform. I want to spend my time writing, not debugging.

The Bottom Line

If you're starting a blog in 2025, you have a lot of options.

You can go with WordPress and deal with the plugin bloat and performance issues.

You can choose a JavaScript framework and wrestle with the complexity.

Or you can try Astro and get a framework that's actually designed for what you're trying to build.

Fast by default. SEO-friendly by nature. Simple to work with. Content-focused.

That's why I chose it. That's why this template is built with it. And that's why I think you should give it a shot.

You might find, like I did, that it's exactly what you've been looking for.