Glossary
What is Astro?
Astro is an open-source web framework for building fast, content-focused websites that sends pages to the browser as HTML and adds JavaScript only to the parts of a page that need to be interactive.
Also called Astro framework
How it works
Astro builds pages from components into plain HTML, either ahead of time or on the server. By default it ships no JavaScript to the browser. When a part of a page needs interactivity, such as a pricing toggle or a search box, it is loaded as an “island”: a single component that hydrates on its own while the rest of the page stays static.
Islands can be written in Astro’s own syntax or in React, Vue, Svelte or other frameworks. Content can come from Markdown, JSON files or a headless CMS. Astro’s first stable version, 1.0, was released in 2022.
Why it matters for B2B websites
B2B marketing sites are mostly content: service pages, case studies, guides, documentation. Astro’s HTML-first approach makes those pages fast and fully readable by search engines and AI crawlers, with little risk of content hidden behind JavaScript.
Like any coded framework, changes need developers or a connected CMS, so it fits teams that are comfortable working in code or that want full ownership of the site.
Good fit and poor fit
- Good fit: content-heavy marketing sites, docs, blogs and glossaries
- Good fit: sites with hundreds of pages generated from data
- Poor fit: highly interactive apps where nearly every screen is dynamic
- Poor fit: teams that need a visual editor for layout changes
Example
pentaclay.com is built with Astro. Every page, including this glossary, is generated from data files into static HTML, and the sitemap is built from the same list of pages, so a new term appears in the sitemap automatically.
How we handle it
We use Astro for content-heavy sites where speed and crawlability matter most and the team is happy to edit through code or a CMS. For app-like features we use Next.js. Our custom development page explains how we choose.
Last updated 15 November 2026
