WordPress, Next.js or a site builder: choosing the stack
Everyone has a favourite. We build on all of them and the honest answer is that the right choice depends on four things about your business, not on what is fashionable. Here is how we decide, with the trade-offs nobody puts on the sales page.
Ask five developers what to build your site on and you will get five confident answers, each one the tool that developer likes. We build on WordPress, on Next.js with Node, on Laravel, and we have moved plenty of sites off site builders. So this is not a pitch for one of them. It is how we actually decide.
The four questions
- Who will edit it, and how often? If your team will change content weekly, the editing experience matters more than anything technical. If the site changes twice a year, it barely matters.
- Is it a website or an application? Pages people read, versus something people log into and use. The line is blurry, but if you have accounts, dashboards, data per user or complex logic, you are building an application.
- How much will it need to grow? A five-page site and a five-hundred-page site with a shop and three languages are different jobs.
- Who will look after it? Every option needs maintenance. Some need a developer on hand. Some need a monthly care routine. Some need nothing and charge you for the privilege.
WordPress
Runs a large part of the web for good reasons: your team can edit it, every feature has an existing plugin, any developer can work on it, and you own it outright with no platform fee. Built well, with a light theme, few plugins and proper hosting, it is fast and secure. Built badly, with a heavy page builder and forty plugins, it is slow and a security risk, which is where its reputation problems come from.
Right for: most business sites, content-heavy sites, shops via WooCommerce, anything where the team edits regularly. Needs: a monthly care routine of updates, backups and checks.
Next.js, Node and a headless content system
The site is code, built in React, served fast, with content living in a separate system your team edits. It is the right tool when the site is really an application, when speed at scale matters, or when the design needs things a template cannot do. It is also what most people mean when they say “custom”.
Right for: applications, product sites with complex interfaces, high-traffic sites, anything that will integrate deeply with other systems. Needs: a developer for structural changes, and hosting with more moving parts. Costs more to build and more to change.
Laravel
The PHP framework for applications: client portals, booking platforms, internal tools, anything with real business logic and a database at the centre. Mature, secure by default, and easy to find developers for. The website part of a Laravel project is usually the smaller part.
Right for: applications where the logic is the product. Not the first choice for a marketing site on its own.
Site builders
Wix, Squarespace, Framer, Webflow. Fast to start, no maintenance, and the monthly fee covers hosting. The limits arrive later: speed you cannot fix, SEO controls you do not have, features the platform does not offer, and a site you cannot take with you when you leave.
Right for: a first site, a small site that will stay small, a landing page. Wrong for: a business that has outgrown it, which tends to be around the time the site starts producing real leads.
What we usually recommend
For a business website where the team edits content: WordPress, built lean, with a care plan. For an application, or a site where the interface is the product: Next.js with a headless content system, or Laravel if the logic is the heart of it. For a first site with a small budget: a builder, with the plan to move off it in a year or two, and the addresses chosen so that the move is painless.
Whatever the answer, the site should be yours: your domain, your hosting account, your content in a format you can export. That is the one thing we will not compromise on, on any stack.
See where your own site stands.
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