The decision between a custom website and WordPress is not a technical preference question. It is a business decision. Both platforms are legitimate choices for service businesses, and the wrong answer is usually the one made without considering what actually matters for your specific situation.
Here is an honest breakdown of where each option wins, where it loses, and how to figure out which one is right for you.
What WordPress actually is (and is not)
WordPress powers approximately 43% of all websites on the internet. It is mature, well-documented, and has an enormous ecosystem of themes, plugins, and developers. For most small business owners, this is genuinely useful: you can find a theme, customize it with a page builder, add contact forms and SEO plugins, and have a functional site live in a weekend.
The tradeoffs are real, though. WordPress sites require ongoing maintenance: core updates, theme updates, plugin updates, security monitoring, backups. This is not theoretical. Unpatched WordPress sites are the most commonly exploited websites on the internet. If you are not actively maintaining the site yourself or paying someone to do it, you are accumulating technical debt and security exposure.
Performance is also a legitimate concern. A well-configured WordPress site with caching, image optimization, and a CDN can be fast. But the baseline (a standard WordPress install with a popular page builder theme) is typically slower than a custom-built site, often significantly. If your audience is mobile-heavy and latency-sensitive, this matters.
What a custom website actually is
A custom website is built from scratch using a modern framework. In our case, Next.js with React. There are no themes, no page builders, no plugins. Every component is written specifically for your site. The result is a site that does exactly what you need and nothing it does not.
Custom sites have structural performance advantages. Next.js generates static HTML at build time, so pages are served from a CDN edge node with no database queries on load. Core Web Vitals scores are typically excellent. There is no PHP runtime, no plugin execution overhead, no theme framework loading.
The tradeoffs are time and cost at the front end, and flexibility at the back end. Making content changes requires either a developer or a headless CMS integration. Adding a new blog post, changing a pricing page, or updating team member photos is not something a non-technical user can do by logging into a dashboard, unless you build that capability in explicitly.
Comparing the real costs
WordPress has a low barrier to entry: free software, $15–30/month for shared hosting, $50–300 for a premium theme. Initial cost can be under $500.
Custom development has a higher upfront cost (typically $3,000–15,000+ for a professional build) and then lower ongoing costs. There is no plugin subscription stack, no theme renewal fees, no hosting plan upsells. Deployed to a small AWS ECS container, a custom site runs $20–40/month indefinitely.
The break-even point depends on how you count maintenance. A WordPress site that needs a developer for updates, security patches, and the occasional plugin conflict costs $100–300/month over time. Over two to three years, the total cost of ownership often converges.
When WordPress is the right choice
WordPress is genuinely better in certain situations. If you need to publish content frequently and your team is not technical, WordPress's admin dashboard is purpose-built for this. A marketing team can update copy, manage a blog, and add landing pages without touching code.
If you need an e-commerce store with product management, inventory tracking, and payment processing, WooCommerce is a mature and capable platform. Building equivalent functionality from scratch would cost significantly more than a WooCommerce setup.
If timeline is the primary constraint and budget is limited, a well-configured WordPress site on a quality theme is faster to launch than a custom build. For a business that needs a web presence this week and plans to invest more heavily in a year, starting with WordPress is reasonable.
When a custom build is the right choice
If performance is a genuine priority, particularly for mobile users or for a site where Google Ads landing page quality scores affect cost per click, a custom site pays for itself in ad spend efficiency.
If the site needs to do something specific (custom animations, complex integrations with internal systems, a portal for client logins, or an interactive calculator), WordPress becomes a constraint. Every custom requirement ends up as a custom plugin, and plugin interactions introduce fragility.
If you are building a long-term brand presence and plan to use the site for 3–5 years, the performance, security, and maintenance advantages of a custom build compound over time. You are not accumulating plugin debt or dealing with breaking changes between theme updates.
The question we ask clients
Before recommending either option, we ask: who is going to maintain this site and what will they need to change?
If the answer is "a non-technical marketing person needs to update copy and add blog posts weekly," that is a strong argument for WordPress or a custom build with a headless CMS.
If the answer is "the site will be mostly static, we will rarely change content, and we care about performance and security," that is a strong argument for a custom build.
Most service businesses fall into the second category. Their sites primarily exist to convert paid traffic and organic search visitors into consultation requests. The page content changes a few times per year. In that scenario, the performance and security advantages of a custom site outweigh the convenience of a WordPress dashboard that rarely gets used.