WordPress: what it really is
WordPress is a CMS — a content management system — and it runs somewhere around 43% of the websites in the world. It's a genuinely good piece of software. The trouble is rarely WordPress itself; it's that so many WordPress sites are badly set up, badly used and never maintained.
- Very good for sites whose content changes often: blogs, news sites, anything with a lot of pages.
- Plugins give you a lot of flexibility (WooCommerce, Yoast SEO and thousands more).
- Plenty of themes to start from, and non-technical people can learn the admin quickly.
- It needs updating regularly — plugins, theme, WordPress core. Skip that and you have a security problem waiting to happen.
- It can get slow if it's poorly configured or weighed down with plugins.
- A WordPress site that's actually done properly costs about the same as a simple custom-built one.
A WordPress site set up properly — decent hosting, a paid theme, security plugins, speed work — costs somewhere between €800 and €2,500 to build, before tax, plus €30–€80 a month to keep running. WordPress is free. A WordPress site isn't.
A custom-built site: when it's worth the money
A custom-built site is written from scratch for your business. It can be very simple — plain static HTML and CSS — or very complicated, a full web application with a database behind it.
It's as fast as a website gets
A well-optimised static site loads in under a second. A WordPress site carrying twenty plugins can take four to eight. People do leave while they wait, so the difference tends to show up in your sales.
Fewer ways in
Because WordPress runs so much of the web, it's the first thing automated attacks go looking for. A custom static site has no database and no admin login to break into — there's simply less to attack.
Nothing to keep renewing
No plugin licence running out, no critical update to install every month, no two extensions quietly breaking each other after an upgrade.
The honest comparison table
| What you're comparing | WordPress | Custom-built site |
|---|---|---|
| Build cost, simple site (before tax) | €800–€2,000 | €600–€2,000 |
| Monthly upkeep | €30–€80 a month | Very little |
| Loading speed | Average, and it varies a lot | Excellent |
| Security | Risky if it isn't kept updated | Very good with a static site |
| Changing your own content | Easy, through the admin screen | Usually needs the developer |
| Best suited to | Blogs and sites that need a full CMS | Brochure sites and landing pages |
"The right technology is the one that matches what you actually need — not the one your supplier happens to know best."
The third option: a professional static site
There's a third route that doesn't get talked about much: a static site, built for you, with a light way of editing the text. That's the approach we take at First Day Online.
We build in plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript. No WordPress, no plugins to keep up with. Sites come out fast, there's far less for anyone to attack, and they cost less to look after year on year. If you want to edit your own text we add a simple editor; if you'd rather not, changes are handled for you as part of the care plan.
None of this makes WordPress the wrong choice. If you post several times a week, run a large catalogue, or need a specific plugin that already does the job, WordPress is probably what you want — just budget honestly for the upkeep. If your site is eight pages that change twice a year, you're paying for a machine you'll never really use.
