Rethinking Magento Frontend Costs: Why More Merchants Are Choosing Hyvä

Magento has long been a go-to platform for serious eCommerce players. But its default Luma frontend? Not so much. Slow, outdated, and heavy on maintenance — Luma is becoming a bottleneck for merchants who want a fast, flexible store.

That’s why more and more companies are moving to Hyvä. And not just for speed, but for something that matters even more: cutting frontend development and maintenance costs.

What Is Hyvä?

Hyvä is a completely new frontend theme for Magento 2. It ditches legacy technologies like RequireJS, Knockout.js, and UI components, replacing them with a clean stack: Alpine.js and Tailwind CSS.

The result? A much faster, simpler, and more affordable way to build and maintain Magento frontends.

Where Traditional Magento Frontends Fall Short

If you’re running a Magento 2 store with the default Luma theme or a heavily customized version of it, you’ve probably seen some of these issues:

Slow load times due to bloated JavaScript and CSS
Hard-to-maintain templates with endless XML configurations
Expensive updates every time Magento releases a new version
Poor Core Web Vitals, hurting SEO and user experience

These are more than technical annoyances — they translate into lost revenue, higher dev costs, and lower conversion rates.

How Hyvä Helps You Cut Costs

Switching to Hyvä isn’t just about building a nicer frontend. It’s about building smarter:

Faster time-to-market: Clean structure and simplified logic mean you can build new features faster.
Lower development costs: Developers don’t waste time untangling Magento legacy code.
Better performance: Out-of-the-box scores of 90+ in Google Lighthouse, reducing bounce rates.
Simplified maintenance: Updating Hyvä-based sites is easier, which cuts ongoing costs.

And that’s not just theory — real-world projects back it up.

Real-World Hyvä Case Studies

PostNL Verpakkingen

The Dutch logistics company PostNL rebuilt their Magento 2 storefront using Hyvä for both the theme and checkout. The full migration took under 12 weeks. The result: a faster, cleaner interface and a frontend their team could iterate on with ease.

Läderach Chocolatier

Premium chocolate brand Läderach needed a mobile-first site that lived up to the elegance of their product. With Hyvä, they achieved not just a sleek UI but also Core Web Vitals scores in the 90+ range. Site speed matched their premium brand expectations.

Hajduk Split FC

Football club Hajduk Split rebuilt their store with Hyvä to ensure fans could browse and buy from mobile quickly and smoothly. The new store saw major gains in page speed and usability, critical for time-sensitive traffic around matches and merchandise drops.

When Should You Consider Switching?

Migrating to Hyvä makes sense if:

You’re planning a frontend redesign anyway
You’re facing SEO or UX issues tied to performance
Your dev team struggles to maintain or update your current theme
You want to reduce long-term development and maintenance costs

But keep in mind:

If you rely on extensions that don’t yet support Hyvä, you’ll need to assess integration effort
Projects with extremely custom checkout flows may need additional adjustments

Not Just a Technical Move — A Business One

Too many Magento stores delay frontend upgrades because of cost concerns. Ironically, sticking with legacy themes often increases costs in the long run. Slower pages. Lower conversions. Higher bounce. More bugs. Longer development cycles.

Hyvä flips that equation. It gives merchants a way to future-proof their frontend, deliver great UX, and spend less doing it.

Thinking About Making the Switch?

We help companies migrate to Hyvä with minimal friction. Whether you’re planning a redesign or just want a faster, leaner setup, we’ll help you weigh the pros and cons for your specific case.