At XTAND, we’ve been using Astro JS for several years to build client websites, documentation portals and intranets. The acquisition of the Astro team by Cloudflare in January 2026 is great news for the ecosystem and the framework’s long-term viability.
What changes: a team now 100% funded, a framework that remains open source and deployable anywhere - no vendor lock-in.
What doesn’t change: the way we work. Astro continues to do what it does best - ship fast websites with minimal complexity.
Astro 6 in a Nutshell
Version 6, released in March 2026, brings notably:
- A development environment that faithfully mirrors production (no more deployment surprises)
- Automatic web font management and security (CSP)
- “Live” content collections - content updates without rebuilding the entire site
- A faster compiler, currently being rolled out
- And of course Houston, the mascot who watches over the dev server and guides you when something goes wrong (developers will appreciate this)
Why Astro Over Other Solutions?
There are many tools for building websites. Here’s how Astro positions itself against the main alternatives:
Hugo, Eleventy, Jekyll - excellent static site generators, very fast to compile. But they stop there: static HTML, period. As soon as you need an interactive form, real-time search or a filterable table, you have to hack things together. Astro lets you add interactivity where needed without weighing down the rest of the site.
Next.js, Nuxt - powerful frameworks designed for full web applications. But for a corporate website, documentation or intranet, they’re often overkill. You ship an entire JavaScript framework even to display text. Result: heavier pages, more expensive hosting, and technical complexity that adds nothing for these use cases.
Gatsby - long popular, but losing momentum since the Netlify acquisition. The plugin ecosystem is aging and build times are a pain point on larger sites.
WordPress and traditional CMS - still relevant for content editing, but Astro coupled with a headless CMS can offer the best of both worlds: the familiar editing interface AND an ultra-performant site output.
Which Projects Do We Recommend Astro For?
Astro is our default recommendation for corporate websites, enterprise documentation, blogs, intranet portals and landing pages. Sites that load fast, cost little to host, and are easy to maintain.
It’s also a rational choice where we can inject our technical expertise where it matters: HTML structure, microdata, performance optimizations, SEO… You’re no longer dependent on a platform’s technical roadmap or a template’s limitations - you can improve the site at your own pace and according to your own standards.
And of course, for a complex, highly interactive web application, we’ll choose something else. The right tool for the right job!
XTAND is a web agency based in Bordeaux, France. We build e-commerce sites on Magento with Hyvä, corporate websites on WordPress, and high-performance static sites with Astro JS.