What WordPress is genuinely good at
- Publishing. If you are putting out articles weekly, it is built for exactly that and a custom site would have to reinvent it.
- The ecosystem. Almost anything you want to add has been built already, often by several people.
- Familiarity. Enormous numbers of people know it, which matters more than it sounds.
- Portability, in the sense that another developer can pick it up. That is a real argument against hiring us, and it is fair for you to weigh it.
What it costs you
Maintenance is not optional. Core, theme and plugins all update, they update on their own schedules, and updates occasionally break each other. Somebody has to own that, and if nobody does, the site drifts toward being both broken and insecure.
Plugins are also the main way small WordPress sites get compromised. Every one you add is code you did not write running on your domain.
And performance takes work. A fast theme can be made slow by a page builder and six plugins, which is how a site with a modern design ends up loading like it is 2012. That matters for reasons covered in what a small business website needs.
What a hand-built site gives you
No plugin stack, so nothing to update weekly and a much smaller surface for anything to go wrong. Fast by default, because there is nothing loaded that the page does not use. And exactly the features your business needs rather than a general-purpose system configured down to fit.
The trade is honest: adding a genuinely new kind of feature means somebody writes it rather than installs it, and you need whoever built it to still be around. Which is the next question.
The lock-in question, which matters more than the technology
Whichever route you pick, ask the same three things before you sign: is the domain registered in my name, do I get the files if I leave, and is there a contract with a term.
Ours: the domain is registered in your name, you get the files, and the plans are month to month with no cancellation fee. Do you own your website if someone else built it covers what to ask anybody else.
When we will tell you to use WordPress
- You publish articles regularly and intend to keep doing it.
- You already have a site with hundreds of posts, and moving them is a cost with no matching benefit.
- You have somebody in-house who already knows WordPress and will maintain it.
- You need a store with complex product handling, in which case WordPress with WooCommerce or Shopify is a better answer than anything hand-built for you.
- You want the widest possible pool of people who can take it over from whoever built it.
Asked alongside this one.
Is WordPress bad for small businesses?
No. It is a good system used for a lot of sites that would be simpler without it. The question is whether you need what it does, and whether somebody will maintain it, because unmaintained WordPress is where the real problems start.
Is a custom-built website faster than WordPress?
Usually, because it only loads what the page uses. A well-built WordPress site with few plugins can be fast too; it just takes deliberate work rather than being the default.
What happens if my custom site developer disappears?
That is the right question to ask before you hire anybody. Make sure the domain is in your name and that you can get the files, and prefer a month-to-month arrangement over a term contract for exactly this reason.
How much does WordPress maintenance cost?
It varies widely, and the honest range for managed care sits alongside the other options in our guide to what website maintenance costs. The number to watch is not the monthly figure but what is actually included in it.
Where to go next.
Do you own your website if someone else built it is the question that matters more than the platform. What website maintenance costs covers the ongoing number, and Wix versus a freelancer versus an agency covers the wider set of routes, including who should not hire us.
Want this checked on your own business?
Send three lines about what you run and where. We come back with what we would fix first, why, and what it costs. If the honest answer is that you do not need us, that is what you get.