Performance, Woo + WP vs Magento + Hyvä?

Out-of-the-box Woo wins; with proper engineering, Magento + Hyvä wins.

• WordPress + WooCommerce + Astra/Kadence theme + WP Rocket: LCP ~1.6-2.2s, CLS ~0.05, INP ~150-200ms. Lighthouse mobile ~80-90. Achievable in days.
• Magento + Luma (default): LCP ~3.8s, CLS ~0.12, INP ~280ms. Lighthouse mobile ~45. Painful out of the box.
• Magento + Hyvä theme: LCP ~1.0-1.4s, CLS ~0.02, INP ~70-90ms. Lighthouse mobile ~95+. Takes 4-8 weeks to stand up but stable for years.

The hidden Woo issue: WP plugin sprawl. A typical mid-market Woo store accumulates 25-40 plugins over 2 years. Each adds JS, CSS, and DB queries. By year 3, LCP often drifts to 3-4s and Lighthouse drops to 50-70. Removing plugins to fix performance breaks features.

The hidden Magento issue: if you build on Luma without theme work, you’ll never beat 70 Lighthouse without buying perf-optimization plugins of dubious quality. Hyvä is the right call for any new Magento build.