Planday's growth team found themselves held back by an outdated and time-consuming WordPress implementation. Fred, the Director of Growth, visited us in Warsaw to discuss the challenges that led him to search for a technical partner and share the results of migrating to a modern headless stack with Blazity.
Director of Growth, Planday
Co-Founder, Blazity
Jakob is co-founder of Blazity, specializing in Next.js development, performance optimization, and headless architecture consulting.
LinkedIn ProfileDramatic improvement in page load speeds and Core Web Vitals
Content editors can now work efficiently with visual editing tools
From 10+ minutes to instant deployments with modern CI/CD
Marketing team can now manage content without developer dependencies
Title: Blazity & Planday | A scalable foundation for rapid growth
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55W1y2CV0vc
Jakub: The partnership we've had with Planday has been going on for over a year now. Hi Fred, hello, how are you?
Fred: I'm great, thank you. How are you?
Jakub: I'm good. My name is Jakub, I'm the co‑founder of Blazity. I'm joined today by Fred Lyford, Director of Growth at Planday, one of our longtime clients and partners. Fred, could you introduce yourself in a few words?
Fred: Sure. My name is Fred Lyford, I'm the Director of Growth at Planday. Planday is a B2B workforce management platform that helps companies with scheduling and time & attendance. My role sits in the marketing department, which is also responsible for the website, and that's why I'm here today.
Jakub: So you're a B2B SaaS company. What are the most crucial aspects of your website and working with it?
Fred: Two things: having a reliable partner and a scalable, future‑proof technical setup. At Planday, we were lacking both.
Jakub: What challenges drove you to seek change and look for partners?
Fred: Planday went through a lot of change. We were acquired in 2020 by Xero, a major payroll platform. After the acquisition, there was turbulence and a lot of technical debt, especially on the website. It was under‑invested in, and we had big problems with SEO and organic traffic. Our content editors couldn't work with the backend, it was slow, things broke often, and publishing took too long.
We're now focusing on serving smaller customers, so SEO and organic growth are crucial. The website is our storefront, it's where revenue starts. We needed to ensure it worked, evolved, and performed, so changing the setup became a top priority.
Jakub: What improvements were you looking for when changing the website?
Fred: Speed. In growth, everything is about cycles. The faster you can run the loop, the faster you see results. That means fast deployments and fast development. Apart from the framework and CMS, hosting is a big enabler. Many hosting providers don't focus on speed and agility like Vercel does, which is what we're using. Vercel allows us to deploy at scale very quickly, and developers work faster. Hosting should just work, and that's what we get with Vercel.
Jakub: Exactly. That's what Vercel is about, no need for complex AWS setups or Kubernetes clusters. Just one button to deploy, and it works. Great to hear this was important in your decision. Fred, I know you're using Next.js on the frontend of your headless setup. What role does that play?
Fred: Next.js is unique because it was built with SEO and organic traffic in mind. For us, that's critical.
Jakub: We agree. That's why we use Next.js for many of our headless implementations. Let's talk about CMS choices. Your old website was on WordPress, but now you're using Builder.io. Why Builder?
Fred: When we started, we defined requirements together with Blazity. Builder.io fit well because it offers A/B testing, personalized experiences, and a true visual editor. What you see in the CMS is exactly what goes live on the website. With WordPress and Gutenberg, it looked completely different, and deployments were slow, about 10 minutes per publish, and each country had its own site. Builder is faster, multilingual, and has built‑in analytics close to conversion points.
Most importantly, content editors love it. They can build templates and layouts visually, save them, and update globally without developers. For us, content is the fuel of growth, so this was a big win.
Jakub: I remember your old site had a complex integration layer with third‑party systems.
Fred: Yes, it was bloated. We had built an unnecessary API and database layer. With Blazity's help, we cut 90% of it. Now the tech is nimble, future‑proof, and simple.
Jakub: What's changed compared to your old site?
Fred: Our speed has improved fourfold. We can publish and develop much faster. The technical setup and team skill set have set us up for the future. We can actually work with the site again, and we're excited to take Planday.com to the next level. Honestly, Blazity feels like an extension of our team.
Jakub: That's great to hear. Why did you choose Blazity as your partner?
Fred: When choosing a tech partner, you need more than an agency, you need a growth partner who's equally invested. I've worked with many vendors, and what stands out about Blazity is your mix of technical skill and commercial understanding. You don't just code, you help me and my team become better. When problems hit, and they always do, you've been there, solving them with us. That's the difference between a supplier and a partner.
Jakub: Thank you, Fred. We try to be both technical experts and trusted advisors. Let's touch on migrations. This wasn't your first headless migration, right?
Fred: No, Planday migrated from WordPress to a headless WordPress plus Gatsby setup before. It wasn't the right choice, it was slow, incomplete, and hard to work with. That migration took forever, but when we moved away from it with Blazity, we did it in about three months. We had 900 pages, many of them legacy. It was a huge, intense effort with plenty of surprises. But Blazity dug in with us, and together we delivered.
Jakub: It was a challenge, and a great collaboration. Another thing you mentioned earlier is that you value partners who speak their mind.
Fred: Yes. Many developers just follow specs without thinking beyond the code. The best partners think critically: is this really what the client needs? Your team has often challenged us constructively, suggested better approaches, and thought about scalability and the future. That's exactly the mindset I want in a partner.
Jakub: That's one of our core values, thinking Client First, which sometimes means challenging ideas to make sure we deliver the best long‑term outcome.
Fred: And it shows. It's better to be challenged early and have a happy client later.
Jakub: Last question, would you recommend Blazity to others?
Fred: Absolutely. Especially for complex projects and migrations where SEO and organic traffic are critical. I'd recommend Blazity any day.
Jakub: Thank you, Fred. It's been great talking with you today.
Fred: Thanks for having me.
This Planday case study showcases several key areas of Blazity's expertise in modern web development and client partnership:
Case Study published: 2024-03-08 | Last Updated: 2025-08-31 | Published by Alcepto Team