Custom website or WordPress: which to choose?

If you are thinking about creating a new website or updating your existing one, you have probably done a lot of research on different website creation platforms. You have likely come across Wix, Canva, GoDaddy, Squarespace, or the very popular WordPress.

You may have also encountered agencies that offered to develop your website entirely from scratch, without using any page builder.

In this article, we will explore this topic in depth to help you make an informed decision. To do so, I will share our experience with WordPress sites as well as our experience developing custom websites with Next.js and Claude Code.

Over the past few months, we have built several WordPress websites for our clients.

Let me take a recent project as an example. To be fully transparent, our experience was not ideal. I often felt like WordPress's interface was several years behind. Simply loading the editor or navigating between pages could take a significant amount of time. As a result, the development experience was not always pleasant and the site's performance required additional optimization.

When it came time to edit a page, it was sometimes difficult to move a section or change text without affecting the rest of the layout. For more advanced features, I also had to install multiple plugins, which increases the complexity of the project and requires more rigorous maintenance and security monitoring.

If you want to integrate more advanced features, such as a custom CRM, a web application, or a marketplace, things can get quite complex. While it is possible with WordPress, it is not always the most flexible or scalable solution.

In my opinion, WordPress remains an excellent solution for showcase sites, blogs, or relatively simple projects. However, when a business needs a more performant, scalable, secure platform that is fully tailored to its business needs, custom development often becomes a better investment.

Let me now share the example of building our own website at Oriana Solutions.

We started by working with a photographer to get professional images. Then, a graphic designer helped us create our visual identity.

Once those elements were ready, a developer built the initial site structure with Next.js. After that, I completed the majority of the content myself.

The result was impressive.

In just a few weeks, as someone who is not a programmer, I was able to create close to twenty pages on my own. I built pages showcasing our services, a blog section, a custom software price calculator, an interactive quiz, a website audit tool, multiple FAQs, and many articles.

All of this simply by having a conversation with Claude Code.

Of course, I was supported by experienced developers who set up the technical foundation at the start. Once that base was in place, creating new pages or adding features became extremely simple.

I felt free to create almost anything I could imagine. I could let my ideas flow without feeling like I was fighting against the limitations of a page builder.

I rediscovered the joy of building a website.

A few years ago, when I was building sites with WordPress, I often felt like I was wasting enormous amounts of time solving technical problems. Today, with Next.js and Claude Code, my way of working has completely changed.

Since we own all of the code and do not depend on a multitude of plugins, our site is extremely fast and performant.

It is also much easier to optimize each page for search engine optimization (SEO), both in terms of performance and content structure.

This is exactly the approach we took with our client Laval en Folie.

We developed a fully custom website for their festival.

We also built them a custom administration interface (CMS) that allows them to easily add new pages, update their content, and manage their site — just like they could with WordPress, but with a solution tailored precisely to their needs.

They were very happy with the result.

WordPress remains an excellent platform for many types of projects. However, it is important to understand that it has certain limitations when needs become more complex.

As an entrepreneur, my priority is saving time. I constantly have a long list of tasks to accomplish and I do not want to spend hours working around the limitations of a tool.

Today, I simply prefer to explain what I want to an AI like Claude Code and watch the result appear quickly.

If you are debating between WordPress and custom development with Next.js, do not hesitate to reach out. We will take the time to analyze your project and recommend the solution best suited to your goals, your budget, and your growth.