Frontity or Gatsby: Which is easier to get up and running quickly using WordPress as the content management system?

Recently I set up WordPress as a headless CMS. Then I used guides provided by SpinupWP:

• How to use Frontity with SpinupWP
• Headless WordPress: Why Gatsby Should Be Next On Your List of Things to Learn

Following the instructions in the blog posts listed above, I was able to get something working in under two hours for both Frontity and Gatsby.

However, Gatsby is the winner. It turns out that Frontity requires Node.js running on the production server. SpinupWP provides instructions on this in their Frontity article. But I couldn’t seem to get Node.js running as a “perpetual process” on the SpinupWP server. I could only get it running as a “temporary process” logging in via SSH. As soon as I logged out of SSH, my Frontity website started generating a 502 Bad Gateway error.

So if you want to get a site running in two hours or less, I recommend Gatsby.