Wagtail agency in France, open source CMS experts since 2016
You want a site that lasts over time, that copes with the load the day your traffic takes off, and that your teams can maintain without depending forever on a vendor? Ask around: most answers will start with "WordPress, but…".
At KERN-IT, we chose Wagtail back in 2016, a bet at the time. Today it's the obvious choice for organisations that see their site as a durable asset, not a disposable project.
Businesses, editorial publishers, institutions, NGOs: we support, across France, those who do not want to redo their site in three years. Bespoke creation, WordPress migration, integration with your business tools, and long-term application maintenance.
Wagtail, a mature standard
Since 2016
Our first Wagtail site in production is still running. Never rewritten, never migrated in panic.
Tens of thousands
of organisations worldwide now run on Wagtail. What was confidential has become a quiet standard.
200+ contributors
An active global community. Wagtail is the most deployed Django CMS, twice its direct competitor.
45M visits/month
The British NHS on Wagtail, with 1.2 billion visits in 12 months during the pandemic. Proven at large scale.
Those who already chose wrong once choose Wagtail
Google picked Wagtail for several of its publications, including blog.google: the publicly stated reason is that Wagtail is the only CMS that meets their security standards. Alongside them: NASA (Jet Propulsion Lab), Mozilla, MIT, NBC, BMW and the Red Cross.
And, in France, the State itself: the DINUM chose Wagtail as the foundation of its open source public CMS Sites Conformes, already running around fifty State websites. When the buyer most demanding on security and accessibility picks Wagtail, the technology risk is lifted for everyone.
What Wagtail brings together (that no alternative does as clearly)
Open source sovereignty
BSD licence, full code in your hands. No locked "premium" features, no pricing surprises, no dependency on a vendor that changes terms overnight.
Django-level security
SQL injection, XSS and CSRF protections built in by default, not enabled plugin by plugin. Centralised security updates.
Headless-ready architecture
Native content API. Monolith, headless (React, Vue, mobile) or hybrid: no architectural commitment frozen in advance.
Native accessibility
Admin meets WCAG 2.2 AA, with a checker built into the editor. Valuable for any organisation under the European Accessibility Act (June 2025).
Native multilingual
Wagtail Localize handles editorial multilingual without third-party extensions or extra cost. Translation workflow built into the admin.
Performance & scale
YouGov consolidates 20,000 articles across 30 sites in 40 languages headless. A CMS that does not break under load.
A CMS that lasts because it weighs less
This is an angle no commercial CMS will mention, because none of them measure it. Wagtail publishes a yearly collective carbon footprint of the sites built on the platform: in 2025, around 12 tCO2e per site on average, and only 1.37 tCO2e for charities.
On features: native AVIF / WEBP support, automatic image variant generation, dark mode. On governance: alignment with the UN Sustainable Development Goals, GHG Protocol compliance, and exploration of grid-aware sites that adjust consumption to the grid's carbon intensity. For an ESG strategy, the argument speaks for itself.
They trust us
A Wagtail agency covering France
We work across the whole of France, remotely with occasional on-site visits: same language, same time zone, no geographical surcharge.
And we are competitive over time. The initial investment is higher than a generic WordPress theme, because we build bespoke software aligned to your business. But the five-year TCO is usually lower: no paid plugins to renew, no third-party extensions that die, no painful migration every three years, no accumulated technical debt.
To maintain a Wagtail site, you need a Python/Django developer: a market that is vast, well trained, and more available than a truly competent senior WordPress developer.
How we help
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1. Bespoke creation
Design and development of your Wagtail site: page types, business StreamField blocks, integrated design, accessibility and SEO verified before go-live.
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2. WordPress → Wagtail migration
One of our specialties. We preserve content history, canonical URLs and accumulated SEO, and take the opportunity to rationalise what should be.
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3. Business integration
Connection to your existing tools: CRM, ERP, marketing automation, payment. A coherent digital ecosystem, not an isolated site.
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4. Long-term maintenance
Monitoring, security updates, feature evolution. A site built to last 5 to 10 years, looked after by a team that has practised Wagtail since 2016.
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Frequently asked questions
Yes. Wagtail scales down as well as it scales up. A small NGO, foundation or SME can run on modest hosting for a few tens of euros per month, with all enterprise features turned on. The only difference with a large group is the infrastructure behind the scenes, not the CMS itself.
The initial investment is higher than a generic WordPress theme, because we build bespoke software aligned to your business. But the TCO over five years is usually lower: no paid plugins to renew, no maintenance of third-party extensions that get dropped, no painful migration every three years.
Yes, this is one of our specialties. The migration preserves content history, canonical URLs and accumulated SEO, and it's the opportunity to rationalise what should be.
Yes, through Wagtail Localize: a single installed system, several languages, translation workflow built into the admin. No third-party extension, no extra cost.
Google (blog.google), NASA (JPL), the British NHS, Mozilla, MIT, Oxfam, WWF… and, in France, the State itself through its open source public CMS Sites Conformes, built on Wagtail.
A Python/Django developer with experience. The Python market is vast, well trained, and more available than a competent senior WordPress developer. Technical debt on a Python/Django stack is also easier to anticipate and manage.
Let's build a site that outlives your next redesign
Creation, WordPress migration or maintenance takeover. Let's talk about your Wagtail project, anywhere in France, with a team that has practised the stack daily since 2016.