“What should we build the website on?” is a question that easily attracts ideological answers. WordPress fans see it as the solution to everything; its critics, as the source of every problem. After years of working with both approaches we think the question itself is wrong. A better one: who will use this website, and how, over the next five years?
What we honestly like WordPress for
WordPress powers a large share of the web for good reasons:
- Independent content editing - the marketing team publishes without a developer.
- Ecosystem - a store (WooCommerce), forms, SEO, multilingual support: most typical needs have a proven solution.
- Availability of specialists - many vendors can help with WordPress; you are not hostage to one technology or one person.
- Cost of entry - for a company website with a blog and service pages there is usually no faster path to a good result.
For most company websites and many stores it is a rational choice - on one condition: someone has to take care of it. Plugin updates, backups, security - a neglected WordPress ages faster than almost anything else.
When WordPress starts to pinch
Signals that it is worth considering something else:
- the website is in practice an application: client portals, custom processes, extensive integrations with company systems,
- content changes rarely while speed and security matter most - then a static website (generated from files, served from a CDN) becomes an interesting option,
- the plugin count keeps growing, and each new one patches a problem created by the previous one,
- performance or security requirements go beyond what shared hosting can reasonably deliver.
A custom build (e.g. a Laravel application) or a static one (e.g. Astro - which is, incidentally, how this very website works) gives full control over code, performance and security. You pay for it differently: content changes more often require the technical team, and the pool of people able to take the project over is smaller.
Questions more important than technology
Before deciding, answer five questions:
- Who will edit content, and how often?
- Which integrations are needed today, and which realistically within 2-3 years?
- Who will handle maintenance - and what happens when that person disappears?
- What traffic, and what traffic spikes, must the website handle?
- What does an hour of downtime or a data loss cost you?
The answers usually point to the technology by themselves. And the recent change is that AI tools have lowered the maintenance cost of both paths - including custom builds, once reserved for bigger budgets. Here is how we use this in practice.
Our rule
We recommend technology to fit the situation, not the other way around. Sometimes that means WordPress with a short, well-chosen plugin set. Sometimes a static website with a form and analytics. Sometimes a custom application. It always means one thing: a website that can be maintained after launch - because that is where its real cost and value are decided.
If you are facing this decision, describe your case to us - in 30 minutes we will sort the options together with their maintenance consequences.