When a founder asks us to build a website, the second question is usually the same: should it be WordPress, or should we code it from scratch? We build both, so we have no reason to push one. Our own site runs on WordPress, and some of our clients’ sites run on code written just for them. This guide is the answer I give on those calls, plus the research I checked to make sure I wasn’t just repeating old habits.
The short version is that the right choice depends less on the technology and more on two things: who will change the site after launch, and whether the website markets your product or is the product.
What you’re actually choosing between
WordPress is free software for running websites. WordPress.org’s about page says it plainly: “WordPress is open source software,” released under the GPL license, so anyone can use it, study how it works and change it. It also runs a large share of the web: as of October 2026, W3Techs counts WordPress on 39.6% of all websites, and on 58.4% of the sites where it can tell which system is running.
A custom website is code written for one business. A developer builds the pages, the features and the admin area (if there is one) to fit exactly what that business needs, usually on a web framework instead of a ready-made system. Nothing is there that you didn’t ask for. That’s its biggest strength, and later in this guide you’ll see why it’s also its biggest cost.
When WordPress is the better fit
WordPress shines when a site is mostly words and pictures that change often: service pages, a blog, case studies, a team page, landing pages for campaigns. The block editor documentation describes how you “can add blocks for paragraphs, images, headings, lists, videos, galleries, and more,” and the project says people with “a limited tech experience can use it ‘out of the box’.” In plain terms, you can fix a typo on a Sunday without paying anyone.
Tuason Hauswartung, a property care firm near Zürich, is a good example. We designed their site in Figma and built it on WordPress. It has seven services, each with its own section, a separate landing page for winter snow clearing, and a quote form that asks what a caretaker needs to know before pricing a building. All of that is content the company will keep adding to, so a system made for editing content was the natural home for it. The case study shows how the Tuason site came together.
WordPress is also the easier choice if you plan to publish for search every week. Writing a new article or a new service page is a normal Tuesday in WordPress. On a custom site, it depends entirely on whether someone built a good way to do it.
When custom code is the better fit
Custom code earns its price when the website is the product, or when the most important thing on the page is something no plugin does well.
Virtual Ring Try AI is a clear case. You upload a photo of your hand, choose a ring, and a few seconds later you see it on your finger. That tool sits right below the headline, because trying a ring is the reason people visit. The site runs as a custom web application, which makes sense for a product built around one specific AI feature. Our part was the logo, the design in Figma, every word on the site and the SEO articles that keep it growing. The case study walks through how we designed Virtual Ring Try AI.
Other good reasons to go custom include accounts with their own rules, booking or pricing logic that only your business uses, connections to your own systems, or a design so unusual that bending a theme to fit it would cost more than building it. If you catch yourself listing five plugins to make WordPress do one core job, take that as a sign.
The upkeep that rarely comes up on the sales call
Every website needs care after launch. What changes is the kind of care.
WordPress handles part of it for you. Its upgrade documentation says “existing installations receive minor core updates by default,” so security fixes to WordPress itself arrive on their own. Plugins and themes work differently. They update automatically only in “special cases” unless the owner switches it on one by one, and the guide to auto-updates is direct about why that matters: “To keep your WordPress site secure, you should always update your plugins and themes to the latest version.”
That’s where the real risk sits. Patchstack, a security company that tracks WordPress flaws, counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in 2025 in its State of WordPress Security report. Of those, 91% were in plugins and 9% in themes. WordPress core had six, all low priority. The number that made me sit up was this one: 46% “did not receive a fix from the developer in time for public disclosure.” So a plugin you install today could have a publicly known hole before any fix exists.
The protection is boring, and it works. Use fewer plugins, choose ones that are actively maintained, delete what you don’t use and keep backups. WordPress’s own hardening guide says, “if you are not using a specific plugin, delete it from the system.” The same guide makes a point that surprises a lot of owners: your hosting company isn’t responsible for the software you install on your site. That part is yours.
A custom site skips the plugin problem, since there’s no plugin store to go wrong. It has its own upkeep, though. The code relies on other software that needs updating too, and almost every change, even a new section on the homepage, needs a developer. You’re also tied to whoever wrote it. If they move on and nothing is documented, the next developer starts by reading someone else’s work, and you pay for that reading time.
Speed depends on the build more than the platform
Founders often hear that custom sites are fast and WordPress is slow. The data is more mixed than that. The HTTP Archive measures millions of real websites every year, and in its 2025 Web Almanac chapter on content management systems, 45% of WordPress sites passed Google’s Core Web Vitals on mobile. Across all websites, the performance chapter puts that pass rate at 48%. WordPress sits a little below the web as a whole. Wix, for comparison, jumped from 55% to 74% in a single year, which shows how much a platform’s own defaults can move the numbers.
Google’s targets are public. The Web Vitals guide says the largest piece of content “should occur within 2.5 seconds of when the page first starts loading,” and that a page should react to a tap within 200 milliseconds. A WordPress site with a heavy theme and thirty plugins will struggle to hit those. A lean WordPress build can pass them comfortably, and a carelessly written custom site can fail them.
Keep speed in proportion, too. Google’s page experience guidance confirms that “Core Web Vitals are used by our ranking systems,” and in the same breath says Google “always seeks to show the most relevant content, even if the page experience is sub-par.” A fast site helps. A useful site matters more.
The middle option: WordPress with a custom theme
The choice isn’t always one or the other. Our own site is WordPress underneath, so writing and publishing stay easy, but the design layer on top is a theme we coded ourselves, with no page builder. We get the editing comfort of WordPress with the control of a custom build.
There’s a trade-off, and you should hear it before paying for it. WordPress’s newer Site Editor, which lets you redesign headers and footers with blocks, “is only available when you install and activate a Block theme,” according to the Site Editor documentation. A hand-coded classic theme like ours doesn’t get it. You can still edit every page and post, but changing the layout itself becomes a job for a developer.
Five questions to settle it
If you’re deciding this week, answer these before you talk to anyone who builds websites, us included:
- Who will edit the pages once they go live, and how often? Regular edits by your own team point to WordPress.
- Does the website market your product, or is it the product? If it’s the product, lean toward custom code.
- How many plugins would WordPress need for your main feature? More than a couple for one job points to custom.
- Who will run updates and backups every month? If the answer is nobody, budget for a care plan either way.
- What will the next change cost? Ask the builder what adding one new section would involve, and listen for a clear answer.
In our experience, service businesses that publish often tend to suit WordPress, and products built around one special feature tend to suit custom code. Plenty of projects land in the middle. If you’d like a second opinion on yours, that’s what our first call is for. Tell us about the project on our contact form, and we’ll tell you which way we’d go and why, even when the answer is the cheaper option.
