During the last 15 years I worked with WordPress a lot and built 50+ websites with some custom coding here and there. In the last couple of years my focus is more on building fully custom websites, but I still use WordPress quite a lot. Both paths have their advantages and disadvantages and in this article I'd like to share what I learned so far.

As developers I think we always feel the need to build something from scratch maybe even look down on something like WordPress (PHP? Blasphemy!), but for any business it's not about showing how capable you are, it's about the value you can bring and how fast you can get it done.

Going with WordPress can be sufficient when you consider it's tried and tested, completely open source, and very fast to set up and use. Of course there are a lot of use cases where going custom is a wiser choice.

Important points to consider when making this decision:

1. Scope of the project

This is probably the most important choice. When choosing the tool for the job think about what is the purpose of the website, what kind of functionalities the website should have, and how scalable the website should be.
If you're building a website for a business that'll need a couple of pages, contact form and maybe a map (90% of "features" for most smaller businesses) chances are, that business will not require any complex work in the future, and WordPress is the way to go. But be absolutely sure that is the case. What I saw happening in a lot of cases, people start installing a bunch of plugins because they need more features, website starts to slow down or even break at some point, and then it's a lot of job and frustration to get it into a working order.

Before beginning, it should be clear what is the requirement for the website and if the project has potential to grow into something more serious, if that is the case, just go with custom development. I recommend WordPress only for static informational websites and simple shops. For all the other use cases like LMS sites, job posting sites, directories etc., you'll probably use some custom WP theme and a bunch of plugins, and that is not a wise way to go because of security, performance and SEO, but more on that later on.

2. Design

WordPress has come a long way from 2003 when it was created. Default Gutenberg editor can create some nice pages, but I mainly use Elementor plugin for designing pages from scratch where I converted a lot of websites from Figma to WordPress with almost pixel perfect accuracy. WordPress + Elementor can handle 80% designs from my experience, but for some very custom animations and designs go with custom, that depends on client requirements. Whatever you do, don't go with WordPress themes for some specific use cases (WP theme for restaurants) it will probably come unoptimized with a lot of bugs and bad practices.

3. Performance

WordPress has a bad rep regarding speed, but it's not really the tool, it's more the question of how it's used. Slow hosting plus 10+ plugins, chances are your website will load slow. That's exactly why scope is important. You don't need anything more then Elementor, a caching plugin and security/backup plugin, which will not affect speed that much. If the project requires more then this, go with custom development, adding more plugins will just slow the website down, and doing custom development on WordPress site in my opinion defeats the purpose of this CMS (except in cases where the website scaled into a huge project).

4. Security

This is a big one. One downside of WordPress being so popular is that a lot of people try to hack it by exploiting plugins and themes. You have to track plugins that are on your site to make sure they are always up to date, also PHP version, and make sure to regularly backup your website. Only because of this point, I would go with custom development because I know I have full control of the code and I can fix the bug if something bad happens.

5. Pricing

When making this decision make sure every cost is put on paper. When going with WordPress don't choose the cheapest provider, calculate how many visitors the website might have, but it's pretty straightforward regarding the pricing. You'll only have to think about hosting and domain cost (plus of course the cost of themes and plugins if you are purchasing any). Regarding custom development it can get a lot complicated depending if you need frontend app, backend app, any additional services, storage space, CDN, Database hosting etc so make sure to take everything into consideration.

6. SEO

Finally, SEO is something that is very important, a lot of WordPress themes claim they are SEO optimized but in most scenarios, that is not the case. For this use case I recommend going with custom path because you have full control what you are doing. From my experience, in a lot of situations working with WordPress websites you'll have to go deep in the code, especially when dealing with different plugins, to make some SEO changes and lose a lot of time in the progress. Custom development allows you to implement SEO best practices from the ground up, ensuring that your site structure, metadata, and content are optimized for search engines. This level of control can be crucial for businesses that rely heavily on organic search traffic for their success.

Choosing between WordPress and custom development is not always a straightforward decision. It depends on various factors such as project scope, design requirements, performance needs, security concerns, budget, and SEO goals. While WordPress offers a quick and cost-effective solution for simple websites, custom development provides more flexibility, control, and scalability for complex projects. Whether you need a simple WordPress site or a fully custom web solution, my dev agency, Kodawarians has got you covered. Schedule a call and let's build something amazing together!
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