WordPress, Wix or a custom website: which to choose?

When you build a website, you have, broadly, three paths: a website builder (Wix, Squarespace and the like), WordPress or a custom website or app. Each has convinced fans and equally convinced critics.

The truth is less spectacular: none of them is “the best”. Each fits different needs, a different budget and a different long-term plan. Here is how to tell them apart.

Website builders: quick and simple, but you rent#

You pick a template, change the texts and photos, click “Publish”. Hosting, security and updates are the platform’s job.

What you gain:

• you start within hours, without technical knowledge;
• low initial costs;
• you don’t deal with servers or updates.

What you lose:

• you pay a subscription for as long as you have the website; if you stop, the website disappears;
• the website can’t be moved elsewhere: if you leave, you rebuild it;
• you can only do what the platform allows; a missing feature usually stays missing;
• speed and technical SEO depend on the platform, not on you.

They are a good choice for a small website you want to build yourself, for example for an event, a portfolio or a business just starting out.

WordPress: the platform with the largest ecosystem#

WordPress runs almost 40% of all websites on the internet and more than half of those using a content management system¹. It’s free, open source and can be hosted anywhere.

What you gain:

• an admin panel many people already know;
• tens of thousands of themes and plugins for almost any feature;
• many developers who know it, so you don’t depend on a single company;
• the website is yours: you can move it to another server at any time.

What you should know:

• plugins are also the weak spot. In 2025, over 11,000 new vulnerabilities were found in the WordPress ecosystem, 91% of them in plugins². Every plugin added is one more thing to update;
• updates aren’t optional. A WordPress site left without updates for a year is an easy target;
• “do-everything” themes and visual page builders load a lot of code on every page. The website looks good but moves slowly, especially on phones.

It’s a good choice for content-heavy business websites, blogs, news sites and small to medium online stores (with WooCommerce), especially when you want to change the content often yourself.

A custom website or app: exactly what you need#

A solution built from scratch for you, with no generic platform underneath. The website you are reading this article on is built this way.

What you gain:

• it does exactly what you need, no more, no less;
• it’s fast, because it loads nothing unnecessary;
• it’s harder to attack, because it has no public plugins with known vulnerabilities;
• you don’t pay licenses or subscriptions for a platform;
• it can connect to anything: your invoicing software, ERP, CRM, internal apps.

What you should know:

• the initial cost is higher, because everything is built for you;
• you depend more on whoever built it. You protect yourself by asking for the source code, the documentation and the accounts in your name.

It’s the right choice when you have a specific way of working (bookings, price calculations, customer accounts, internal workflows), when integration with other systems matters or when speed and security are critical.

In short#

How to choose#

• Want a small website, quickly, and you’ll build it yourself? A website builder is enough.
• Lots of content you change often and standard features? WordPress, built properly.
• A specific way of working, integrations or high traffic? A custom solution.
• Not sure yet? Start from what the website has to do in two or three years, not just at launch.

We build custom websites, properly built WordPress websites and online stores on proven platforms. We recommend what fits your business, not what is most convenient for us. And if a website builder is enough for you, we’ll tell you that too.

See how we build business websites

Cover image: Ilya Pavlov, Wikimedia Commons (CC0)