CentriWebWordPress vs a custom website comes down to who changes the site after launch and what the site has to do. For most businesses whose website is there to explain the business and bring in enquiries, WordPress is the practical choice because staff can edit it themselves and any WordPress developer can pick it up, while a custom-coded website suits a site that is really an application, built and changed by a developer you will keep on hand.
A disclosure first: CentriWeb builds websites on WordPress and also builds custom software, so we work on both sides of this choice. Weigh our view with that in mind.
What “custom-coded” means
People use the phrase for three different things, and quotes are hard to compare until you know which one you are being offered.
- Fully custom: a developer writes the site from scratch or on a programming framework. There is no ready-made admin area unless one is built or added.
- Custom design on WordPress: a theme designed and coded for your business, running on WordPress. Many web companies call this a custom website.
- Headless: a content system, sometimes WordPress, holds the words and images, and a separately coded front end displays them. Two parts to host and maintain.
Ask anyone quoting which of these they mean, and how your staff will change a page.
WordPress vs custom website at a glance
| WordPress | Custom-coded website | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Free, open-source software with a theme and plugins | Code written for your business alone |
| How it charges | Build cost, hosting, any paid plugins, and upkeep | Build cost, hosting, and developer time for most changes |
| Who maintains it | You, your host or any WordPress developer | The developer who wrote it, or one who can read their code |
| Who it suits | Marketing and enquiry sites edited by staff | Sites that behave like software: logins, calculators, heavy data, unusual features |
Editing after launch
This is where the two differ most in daily life.
WordPress comes with an admin area and built-in user roles. An Administrator controls everything, an Editor can publish and manage everyone’s posts, an Author can publish their own, and a Contributor can write posts but not publish them. An office manager can change prices, add a staff profile or post a project update without touching code.
On a fully custom site, every text or image change may need a developer unless an editing area was built in. That is fine for a site that rarely changes. It becomes slow and costly for a business that adds projects, staff, specials or articles each month, because each change waits in a developer’s queue.
Speed
Google measures page experience through the Core Web Vitals. A good result is the largest content on the page loading within 2.5 seconds, the page responding to a tap within 200 milliseconds, and a layout shift score of 0.1 or less, measured across real visits on mobile and desktop.
A lean custom site can be very fast, because it carries only the code it needs. A WordPress site can also be fast when built with a light theme, few plugins and good hosting, and slow when it is not. The build matters more than the platform. Test any example site you are shown in Google’s free PageSpeed Insights, and see our guide to Core Web Vitals for what the numbers mean.
Security
WordPress publishes its security fixes openly. Its security hardening guide says that once a fix is released, details of the flaw are usually public, which makes sites that have not updated easier to attack. It also says every plugin and theme adds code that can contain vulnerabilities, so remove the ones you do not use, keep the rest updated and keep tested backups. The documentation says minor core updates, the maintenance and security releases, install automatically by default, but plugins and themes update automatically only in special cases unless you turn that on. The risks are well known and so are the fixes.
A custom site has no public plugins for attackers to scan for, which helps. Its security depends on one developer’s code and on them updating the frameworks and libraries it uses. There is no wider community finding and patching problems for you, so ask who will check and update it each year, and what that costs.
Cost over three years
Compare the full three years, not the build quote. Use your own figures; these are placeholders to show the sum.
- Build: the quote for each option.
- Hosting: three years for each. A WordPress host must meet WordPress’s requirements; a custom site needs whatever its developer specifies.
- Upkeep: a WordPress care plan or your own hours for updates and backups, against the developer’s yearly charge for checking and updating a custom site.
- Content changes: on a custom site without an editing area, count them. Say you make four small changes a month at half an hour each and your developer charges $120 an hour. That is 24 hours, or $2,880, a year, or $8,640 over three years. On WordPress, staff make most of those changes themselves.
- New features: a booking form or quote calculator may be a plugin and some setup on WordPress, or a small project on a custom site.
Our guide to software maintenance cost covers what ongoing developer time usually includes.
Ownership and changing developers
WordPress’s about page says it is open-source software under the GPLv2 or later, so you are free to run it, change it and move it. Any WordPress developer can open your site and carry on.
A custom site is only as portable as its code and documentation. Make sure your contract says you own the code, that it sits in a repository in your business’s name, and that it is documented well enough for another developer to take over. Our guide on who owns the code covers the contract terms.
Questions to ask before you sign
- Which kind of custom is this: fully custom, a custom theme on WordPress, or headless?
- Show me how my staff will change a price, add a page and swap a photo.
- Which changes will need a developer, and what will each one cost?
- What will the Core Web Vitals look like on mobile, and can I see a live site you built that passes?
- Who updates the software, plugins or libraries each year, and what does that cost?
- Where is the code kept, who owns it, and could another developer take it over next year?
- What does the three-year cost come to, including hosting, upkeep and changes?
A clear answer to each, in writing, is worth more than a lower build quote. For a builder or trade business that adds projects and service pages every month, question two usually decides it.
What each does well
- WordPress gives staff a familiar editing area, lets you add features through plugins, has a large pool of developers and moves freely between hosts. It suits most marketing and enquiry sites, including builders and trades with many project and service pages.
- Custom code gives complete control, can be very lean and fast, and can do things no plugin does. It suits a site that is really software, such as a customer portal, a complex calculator or a tool working with live data.
When a site built and looked after for you fits better
Many businesses need both: a WordPress site for pages staff can edit, with one custom piece, such as a quote calculator or client portal, connected to it. That keeps everyday editing cheap and puts custom code only where it earns its keep.
Our website design and build service builds on WordPress and looks after the site afterwards, and adds custom software where a plugin will not do the job.
It does not suit everyone. If your site is a few pages that rarely change and you already have a developer you trust, a simple custom site or a standard builder may be all you need. Our Wix vs WordPress comparison covers that end of the choice.