We’re an Astro JS agency, and the page you’re reading is an Astro build. More agencies now build client sites in Astro. Sometimes that’s because it suits the project: Astro is an excellent tool for fast, content-heavy sites. Sometimes it’s just the developer’s favourite framework. This guide covers what to check before you sign: what an Astro agency should build for you, what you should own at launch, and the questions that separate a good proposal from a vague one.
What an Astro JS Agency Actually Builds
An Astro agency doesn’t only “make websites in Astro”. The work usually falls into five areas:
- Marketing and content sites. Service pages, landing pages, blogs and documentation. Most pages ship as HTML with little or no JavaScript, and this is where Astro is strongest.
- Headless CMS setup. Connecting a CMS so your team can publish without a developer. See Astro CMS options for non-developers.
- Interactive islands. Calculators, filters, forms and booking widgets that load JavaScript only where it’s needed. Astro islands architecture explains how this works.
- Performance work. Image handling, font loading, script budgets and Core Web Vitals monitoring after launch.
- WordPress to Astro migration. Moving content, URLs and rankings from an existing site. This is covered in its own section below.
Hosting is part of the job too. Where the site runs and in whose account matters more than most proposals admit. Astro hosting options compared goes through the platforms.
When Astro Is the Right Call, and When It Isn’t
Astro sites are fast, cheap to host and predictable to maintain. For a site where organic search matters and most pages are content, that’s a real structural advantage. Developers like it too: the component model is clean, deployments are quick, and ten Astro sites behave more consistently than ten WordPress installs with ten different plugin stacks.
Astro vs WordPress for business sites covers the trade-off in detail. Astro is the wrong choice when:
- Your team needs full layout control without ever involving a developer
- The site’s core is complex application logic (client portals, membership systems, a large WooCommerce catalogue)
- There’s no budget for CMS integration, so every content edit would mean editing code in the repository
- You expect to change developers often and want the largest possible hiring pool
In those cases WordPress’s lower technical floor is a real advantage, not a concession. A custom WordPress build with hand-coded templates and no page builder is fast and easy to hand off. If your site leans toward a web application, read Astro vs Next.js for marketing sites.
Proof You Can Check: This Site Runs on Astro
Any agency can say it knows Astro. Here’s what you can check on this site yourself:
- Astro 6, server output. designodin.com is built with Astro 6 in server output mode, not as a static export.
- Cloudflare Workers. It runs on Cloudflare Workers through the official Cloudflare adapter.
- Markdown for agents. Request any page with an
Accept: text/markdownheader and the worker returns a markdown version instead of HTML. Try it on this page:
curl -H "Accept: text/markdown" https://designodin.com/blog/astro-js-agency-websites/That’s a small detail, but it shows the kind of work an Astro build makes easy: the site decides at the edge what to send to a browser and what to send to an AI agent.
How We Run an Astro Build
We use the same four steps on every Astro web development project:
- Scope and architecture. Every page, component and data flow is defined before any code is written. CMS requirements are settled here, not discovered halfway through the build.
- Design integration. We work from your Figma files or design during the build. Islands are identified early: what’s static, what’s interactive, and what triggers JavaScript loading.
- Component development. Every section is written from scratch, with no template kits. Performance testing runs throughout the build, because problems caught early cost less to fix.
- Deploy and handover. We deploy to the infrastructure you choose and hand over the complete source code, architecture documentation and credentials. Nothing is locked to us after launch.
The Code Ownership Question
When a WordPress agency builds your site, most of the assets are universal: PHP files, a database, and plugins with public licences. Another developer can step in and understand it with moderate effort, and competent WordPress developers aren’t hard to find.
Astro has a smaller ecosystem. It’s growing, but it isn’t WordPress-sized. A custom Astro build is the code your developer wrote. There’s no plugin marketplace and no single “standard” way to structure an Astro site, so one developer’s architecture can look quite different from another’s.
This matters if the relationship ever ends and you need a new developer. You’ll be looking for someone who:
- Knows Astro specifically
- Can read another developer’s component architecture
- Has capacity for your project
That pool is smaller than the WordPress one. It isn’t a crisis, but it’s worth knowing before you sign. It’s also why documentation is part of our handover.
Ask before signing: who else could maintain this codebase if your team became unavailable? Expect a realistic answer, not reassurance.
What You Should Own After Launch
Whatever the framework, you should own all of these at launch. If the contract is vague on any of them, clarify it before you sign.
The code repository. Your source code should live in a repository (GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket) that you own. The agency can have collaborator access, but you should be the owner.
The hosting account. Your deployment platform account (Cloudflare, Vercel or Netlify) should be in your name, with the agency added as a team member. Whoever owns the account controls domain configuration, environment variables and billing.
The domain. Register it in your own account, not the agency’s.
CMS access. If the site uses a headless CMS, your team should have admin access. The agency needs developer access for integration changes.
Analytics. Google Analytics and Search Console should be your properties, under your credentials.
That’s five things. An agency should be comfortable handing over all five.
Content Editing for Non-Developers
Without a CMS, every update to an Astro site needs a developer. That suits some clients, such as those with in-house developers or a retainer. It doesn’t suit a marketing team that needs to publish a post on Tuesday without filing a ticket.
If your team will edit content, the proposal should include headless CMS setup as part of the build. If it doesn’t mention one, ask how a non-developer on your team would update a blog post.
Common CMS options for Astro sites:
- Contentful. Enterprise-grade and well documented.
- Sanity. Flexible, with a developer-friendly schema.
- Storyblok. A visual editor that works well for non-technical teams.
- Decap (formerly Netlify CMS). Free, Git-based, with a simpler interface.
If the answer is “we use Markdown files in the repository”, that’s an answer for a technical team: every content edit goes through Git. A small business without developers would need one for every headline change. See Astro CMS options for non-developers for what day-to-day use of each option looks like.
Moving From WordPress to Astro Without Losing Rankings
Most Astro projects replace an existing site, and losing rankings during a migration is almost always avoidable. A proper migration covers:
- A URL map. Every indexed URL on the old site is listed and matched to its new address before launch. Search Console’s page report and a crawl of the old site are the starting points.
- 301 redirects. Every old URL that changes gets a permanent redirect to the closest equivalent page, not a blanket redirect to the homepage.
- On-page parity. Titles, meta descriptions, headings and internal links are carried over or deliberately improved, never lost by accident.
- Search Console checks after launch. Submit the new sitemap, inspect the key URLs, and watch the indexing and 404 reports for the first few weeks.
If a proposal for a migration doesn’t mention URL mapping and redirects, ask about them. Astro and SEO covers the technical side.
Maintenance After Launch
WordPress maintenance has a bad reputation, sometimes deservedly: plugin updates that break layouts, monthly security patches, backups that need watching.
Astro sites have different overhead, not zero overhead. Here’s what typically needs a developer:
Dependency updates. Astro releases new versions regularly, and outdated dependencies build up security risk. Updates should be reviewed and applied every few months.
CMS integration maintenance. If your CMS provider changes its API or authentication, the integration may need updating. It’s rare, but it happens.
Component changes. Any visual or structural change needs a developer. Unlike WordPress, you can’t drag and drop layout changes in Astro. Every new section or redesigned block is code.
Build and deploy monitoring. If a build fails, usually because of a broken dependency or a CMS connection that’s down, the content update doesn’t publish. Someone needs to notice and fix it.
The maintenance load is lower than a plugin-heavy WordPress site, but it needs a developer who knows Astro. Astro maintenance costs vs WordPress breaks it down.
Questions to Ask an Astro Agency
Take these into any Astro proposal review, ours included:
Which CMS, and who can edit what? If your team needs to update content, the proposal should name the CMS and say who gets which access level.
Whose account holds the repository? It should be yours, with the agency as a collaborator.
Which host, and in whose account? “We deploy to the cloud” isn’t an answer. Ask for the platform by name and confirm the account is in your name.
How are redirects handled? For any migration, ask for the URL mapping and redirect plan.
What’s the performance target, and how is it measured? “We’ll make it fast” can’t be checked. Ask which metrics they target on mobile, how they’re measured at launch, and what happens if the site misses them.
What happens after launch? Ask what’s covered during the support period and what’s excluded, such as new features, content updates or CMS training.
FAQ
Can I hand an Astro site to a different developer if I change agencies? Yes, with caveats. An Astro codebase is portable and will run for any developer who knows the framework. The challenge is finding someone who knows Astro and can follow the architecture decisions the original agency made. It takes more effort than handing off a standard WordPress site, but it isn’t a major project if the code is well organised and documented.
Is Astro more expensive to build than WordPress? Developer rates don’t depend on the framework. Total effort can be similar or slightly higher for Astro, because CMS integration is more hands-on than installing WordPress plugins. A custom WordPress site with no page builder takes about as long as a well-built Astro site with a CMS. Page-builder WordPress is cheaper to build and harder to own.
What happens when Astro releases a major new version? You don’t have to update straight away. Your site keeps working on the version it launched with. Updates matter when you want features that need a newer version, or when security issues turn up in dependencies. A developer can audit and update an Astro site on a regular cycle without it turning into a project.
Can Astro handle e-commerce? Basic e-commerce works with cart overlays or a headless commerce backend behind an Astro storefront. If e-commerce is the core of the business, a dedicated platform such as WooCommerce or Medusa.js usually does that job better, with Astro used only for the content side, if at all.
Astro vs Next.js for a marketing site? For a site that’s mostly content (service pages, a blog, landing pages), Astro usually ships less JavaScript and is simpler to maintain. Next.js makes more sense when the site is really an application, with logged-in dashboards and heavy client-side state. Astro vs Next.js for marketing sites compares them in depth.
Can you migrate my WordPress site to Astro? Yes. We map every indexed URL, set up 301 redirects, carry over titles and meta, and connect a headless CMS if your team edits content. If Astro isn’t the right fit for your site, we’ll tell you, and a custom WordPress build may be the better path.
Is Astro good for SEO? Astro gives search engines fast, server-rendered HTML with very little JavaScript, which is a strong technical base. Rankings still depend on content, internal linking and a clean migration. Astro SEO capabilities covers the details.
How do I know if an agency actually knows Astro?
Start with their own site. Ask what it’s built on and how it’s hosted, then ask to see two or three Astro sites they’ve launched for clients. Ask which version of Astro they’re building in now and what changed in recent major releases. You can check ours from the section above: this site is Astro 6 on Cloudflare Workers, and the curl command shows it working.
Whatever framework you choose, ownership matters more than the tool. If you own the code, the hosting and the domain, you can switch later. Tell us what you’re building and we’ll tell you whether Astro is the right foundation: Scope an Astro build.