Custom or WordPress: a straight answer

When WordPress is the honest call

Choose WordPress when the publishing rhythm is the product. News, a large service catalogue, a team of editors who will never open a terminal. A well-built theme, a short plugin list, and backups you have restored at least once. That is a professional WordPress site. A page builder with forty add-ons is not.

The stack that survives the Tuesday test is the right stack. The rest is taste, and taste is cheaper than a rebuild.

When custom earns its keep

Choose a custom build when the site is closer to software. Unusual motion, a design system that has to hold, connections that would fight a plugin pile, speed you can feel on a phone in Pärnu. Next.js (or the right equivalent) earns its keep here because pages stay quick. The editor story has to be designed, not hoped for.

Shops sit in the middle

E-commerce sits in the middle. Shopify is often the honest shop. WooCommerce is honest when WordPress is already home and the catalogue is modest. A fully custom cart is honest when checkout is the product. We will not sell you a custom cart because it photographs well in a case study.

Budget is still a split

Budget is not the only split, but it is a split. A serious custom site in our market does not start at the same floor as a tight WordPress marketing site. If the number has to be the WordPress number, we should not pretend the outcome will be the custom outcome.

Bring the Tuesday test

Bring us the Tuesday test. Who publishes, who owns hosting, who answers when a form dies on Friday night. The stack that survives that test is the right stack. The rest is taste, and taste is cheaper than a rebuild.