WordPress vs custom website, and what each costs you later

Why so many businesses pick WordPress

WordPress runs a huge share of the websites you visit, and for good reasons. The software is free and open source. Thousands of themes and plugins exist for almost anything you can think of, from booking forms to multi-currency shops. Developers who know it are easy to find in Dubai and everywhere else.

It also comes with a dashboard. If you want to log in and publish a blog post at 11pm without asking anyone, WordPress lets you.

So this isn't a guide arguing that WordPress is bad. It's a guide to the upkeep it brings, which is the part a quote for a WordPress build rarely spells out.

Plugins and the update treadmill

A typical small-business WordPress site has three layers that all need updating: the WordPress core, the theme, and every plugin. Each plugin is written by a different developer, on their own schedule.

Updates arrive often. Most go through without trouble. Then one day a plugin update clashes with the theme and the contact form vanishes, or the homepage turns into a white screen, usually when nobody's at a desk to notice.

Skipping updates is worse. Outdated plugins are one of the most common ways small WordPress sites get hacked, along with weak admin passwords. And plugins get abandoned. The slider you installed in 2022 may not have had a security fix in years.

Then there's the licence cost. Many of the better plugins are paid, with yearly renewals, and a site with five premium plugins has five renewal dates. Let one lapse and the plugin often keeps running but stops getting security fixes.

None of this is hard for someone who does it every month. The trouble is that on many small sites, nobody does.

Page builders and the weight they add

Drag-and-drop page builders made WordPress far easier to design with. They also made a lot of sites heavier.

To let you move any block anywhere, a page builder wraps your content in layer after layer of code and loads its own styles and scripts across the site. A three-section page can end up with far more code underneath than it needs. On office Wi-Fi it feels fine. On a phone on mobile data, outside a client's villa in Arabian Ranches, it drags.

Add a few plugins that each load their own files on every page and the effect stacks. A good developer can trim a lot of it with caching and careful plugin choice, but it's work against the grain. Our guide on what makes a website slow goes through the usual culprits.

Hosting a WordPress site properly

WordPress needs a server running PHP and a database. Almost every host offers that, which is part of the appeal.

But the cheapest shared plans struggle once a site has a page builder, a dozen plugins and a growing database. You'll want caching and regular backups stored somewhere other than the same server. Ideally there's also a staging copy, so updates are tested before they reach the live site. Those are often extras on cheaper plans.

PHP itself needs updating too. Hosts retire old PHP versions every so often, and an older theme or plugin that hasn't kept up can stop working when they do. That's usually the moment people discover nobody knows how the site was built.

Location matters a little as well. If your customers are in the UAE, a host with servers in the region or a content delivery network in front of the site cuts the wait on every page.

It adds up to an ongoing job. Somebody has to own it.

What a custom-coded site gives up

A custom-coded site is lean by default. There's no plugin library, so there's no plugin update cycle and far less third-party code for anyone to attack. Pages carry only what they use, which is why our builds load quickly on phones without much tuning afterwards.

This is where the WordPress vs custom website trade-off shows. There's no dashboard for you to edit pages yourself. Changes go through a developer.

That's exactly how our Care & support add-on works. For AED 399 a month you send us text, photo or price changes on WhatsApp and we make them, and the plan also covers backups, security checks and priority WhatsApp support. For most service businesses that change a few things a month, it's quicker than learning an editor.

Here's the caveat. If you plan to publish several articles a week yourself, or your marketing team wants to build landing pages on the fly, a custom-coded site will feel slow to work with. WordPress suits that kind of business better.

Choosing WordPress vs custom website for your business

The WordPress vs custom website question gets much easier once you're specific about the year after launch. If you can't name the person who'll run updates, the cheaper WordPress quote may not stay cheaper for long. If you want to write and publish your own pages every week, a custom site with changes made by a developer will frustrate you.

Answer these before you compare quotes:

• Who will make changes, and how often in a normal month?
• Who will run updates and backups, and is that in writing?
• Will you publish content yourself, or send changes to someone?
• How much do you want to spend each year after launch?
• If the person who built it disappears, who can take over?

If you already have a WordPress site

Don't rebuild a site that works. If your WordPress site loads quickly, gets updated and brings in enquiries, keep it.

A rebuild makes sense when the problems keep coming back: a slow homepage nobody can fix, or updates that break something every few months. Our website redesign page explains how we move existing content and URLs across so you don't lose what's already working.

Not sure which camp you're in? Send us the address and we'll tell you what we see. Call or WhatsApp us on +971 52 292 3875.

Questions people ask