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.