WordPress, Shopify or a Custom Website: How to Choose the Right Technology

Your technology choice shapes your site's speed, how easy it is to update, what it costs to maintain and how far it can grow. Rather than following trends, start from three questions: what must the site do, who will update it, and how do you want it to evolve?

WordPress: versatility

WordPress is the most widely used CMS in the world. Its plugin ecosystem can do almost anything, and many people already know how to use it.

• Best for: content-rich brochure sites, blogs, multilingual sites, and e-commerce with WooCommerce when content and products live together.
• Watch out for: too many plugins slow the site down and increase security risk. Regular maintenance is essential.

Shopify: e-commerce out of the box

Shopify handles hosting, security and checkout, so you can focus on products and marketing.

• Best for: online stores that want to launch fast and sell reliably, with simple order management.
• Watch out for: monthly subscription and transaction fees depending on payment method; advanced customisation needs a developer.

Webflow and Framer: visual, no-code

These tools let a marketing team build and edit pages visually with a polished result. They suit brochure sites and landing pages well, and projects with heavy business logic less so.

Custom with Next.js: performance and freedom

A site built with a modern framework such as Next.js, often connected to a headless CMS, delivers very fast pages, excellent SEO and complete freedom over features.

• Best for: conversion-critical sites, platforms with client portals, complex integrations and projects that will grow.
• Watch out for: higher upfront investment and the need for a technical team for structural changes.

Our decision guide

1. You mainly sell products and want to launch fast: Shopify.
2. You publish lots of content on a controlled budget: WordPress.
3. Your marketing team wants to manage everything visually: Webflow.
4. Performance, SEO and specific features come first: custom (Next.js).

We work with all of these and recommend what serves your goals, not our habits. See the technologies we use or explore our website development service.