Custom build or WordPress
A custom web applicationor WordPress
Most businesses are told to pick one before anybody has asked what the site actually has to do. The answer depends on whether you are publishing content or running a process.
The verdict
The short answer
If the site mainly publishes content that people read, WordPress is very likely the right choice and paying for a custom build would be wasting money. If the site has to run a process, logins, roles, calculations, bookings, dashboards or anything you would describe as a workflow, WordPress starts cheap and gets expensive, because every one of those things becomes a plugin you did not write and cannot fix.
WordPress
A publishing system with a very large plugin ecosystem.
Where it wins
- Live in days rather than weeks, at a much lower starting cost
- Anybody on your team can edit pages without calling a developer
- A plugin exists for almost any common requirement
- Easy to find somebody to work on it later, almost anywhere
Where it stops
- Every plugin is code you did not write, on a site you are responsible for
- Plugins conflict, and the more you add the slower and more fragile it gets
- Anything genuinely custom fights the system rather than using it
Custom web application
Software built for your process, with nothing in it you did not ask for.
Where it wins
- The workflow works the way your business already works
- Only the code you need, so pages stay fast as the site grows
- Integrations with your own systems rather than whatever a plugin allows
- Nothing to update every week, and a far smaller surface to attack
Where it stops
- Costs more up front and takes longer before anything is live
- Content editing has to be built rather than assumed
- Overkill for a site that is mostly pages of text and images
Side by side
WordPress against Custom web application
| WordPress | Custom web application | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first launch | Days to a few weeks | Four to twelve weeks depending on scope |
| Starting cost | Low | Higher, and quoted before we start |
| Editing content | Built in, anybody can do it | Built to fit, or wired to a headless editor |
| Custom workflows | Possible through plugins, awkward past the basics | The reason you would build it |
| Speed on a phone | Degrades as plugins accumulate | Controlled, and measurable against a budget |
| Security work | Ongoing, and driven by other people release schedules | Smaller surface, and on your own timetable |
| Cost over three years | Low then rising, as plugins and fixes accumulate | Higher then flat |
| What you own | Your content, inside somebody else framework | All of it, including the code |
Which one is yours
Tick what sounds like you, and watch it decide
Same statements as any comparison list, except this one answers back. Nothing is sent anywhere and nothing is stored.
Tick whichever statements sound like you
Nothing selected yet. The meter moves as you go.
Choose WordPress when
0/4Choose a custom build when
0/4Zyfrr
Where we come in
We build the custom side, and we will still tell you when WordPress is the better answer. Losing a project we should not have taken is cheaper for both of us than delivering something you did not need.
- A fixed price and a fixed date, agreed before any code is written
- You own the code, the accounts and the hosting from day one
- Built against real performance budgets, tested on a mid range Android phone
Questions
Questions people actually ask
Not sure which side you are on?
Tell us what the site has to do rather than what it should be built with, and we will tell you honestly which of the two you need.