Ask three agencies for a website and you will usually get two kinds of proposal. One is built on WordPress. The other is "custom", built with a framework by developers who write the code themselves. Both can produce a good website. They are not interchangeable, and the wrong choice shows up a year later as either a site you cannot change or a site that costs more to run than it earns.
This is how we think about the choice when a business asks us.
What each option actually is
WordPress is a content management system. You get an editor for pages and posts, a theme that controls the look, and plugins that add features such as forms, shops, bookings or multiple languages. Thousands of people work on it, which is why so much is available ready-made.
A custom build means developers construct the site for your specific purpose, usually with a framework such as Laravel, with a front end in a library such as React. There is no theme and no plugin directory. Everything on the site exists because someone decided it should and built it.
There is also a middle path: WordPress for the content and a custom-built part for the functionality, connected to each other. More on that below.
Where WordPress is the right answer
- The site is mostly content. Pages, news, case studies, a blog, a team page. WordPress is built for exactly this, and your own staff can publish without a developer.
- You need standard features quickly. Contact forms, a simple shop, event listings, newsletter sign-up, multiple languages. Mature plugins exist for all of these.
- Budget and time are tight. A well-built WordPress site on a quality theme is the fastest route to a professional presence.
- You may change agencies later. Any WordPress developer can pick the site up. That portability has real value.
Where a custom build is the right answer
- The site is really an application. Customer logins, quotes generated from your price rules, a portal where clients see their orders, a booking engine with your particular constraints. Plugins can approximate some of this; the approximations tend to break down as the rules get specific.
- It has to connect to your other systems. Your CRM, accounting package, stock system or a supplier's API. Integrations are where WordPress plugins most often run out, and custom code does what you need rather than what the plugin author imagined.
- Performance and security surface matter. A custom site has only the code it needs. A WordPress site carries its core, a theme and every plugin, each of which needs updating and each of which can be a way in. (The PHP runtime underneath needs updating in both cases; see our PHP articles if that is new to you.)
- The site will live a long time and grow. When you expect to add features for years, a codebase you own and understand is easier to extend than a stack of plugins with their own roadmaps.
The middle path
Many businesses need both: a marketing site that the marketing team edits, plus one or two functional pieces that no plugin covers well. A common pattern is WordPress for the public pages and a custom application for the functional part, with the two sharing a design so visitors never notice the seam. You get the editing convenience where it matters and purpose-built code where it matters.
Five questions that decide it
- Who will edit the content, and how often? Frequent editing by non-technical staff favours WordPress.
- What must the site do beyond showing pages? List it. If the list is short and standard, WordPress. If it contains your business rules, custom.
- Which systems must it talk to? One or two with well-supported plugins, WordPress. Several, or anything unusual, custom.
- How long will this site live? A site for the next two years has different economics from a platform for the next ten.
- Who maintains it? WordPress needs regular plugin, theme and PHP updates. A custom site needs dependency updates and a developer who knows the code. Neither is free of maintenance; the question is who does it.
What it means for the quote
Once you know which kind of site you need, quotes become comparable. A WordPress quote and a custom quote for the same brief are not the same product, so a price difference between them tells you little. Two WordPress quotes, or two custom quotes, against the same brief tell you a lot.
If you are not sure how to write that brief, our guide to writing a project brief covers what to include. And if you would like a second opinion on which route fits, tell us what the site needs to do and who will look after it.