WordPress, Shopify, or a custom website: which should you use?

The right platform is the one built for the main job your website does. Features matter less than they seem, because all three can show pages, take a contact form, and look good. They differ in how they handle selling, stock, and connections to other systems.

Two questions sort out most businesses. How do customers buy from you? And where does the work happen once they do?

• If customers call, email, or fill out a form, and the work happens in person, the site's job is to explain what you do and bring in inquiries. That points to WordPress or a simple custom site. If you'd rather build and run it yourself, a website builder like Squarespace or Wix also fits this job.
• If customers pick products and pay online, the site's job is to sell. With lots of products, stock levels, and variants, that points to Shopify.
• If the site has to show or update information that lives in another system, like dealer inventory, schedules, quotes, or orders, the site's job is to connect. That points to a custom build, or a custom connector between the site and that system.

Many businesses are somewhere in between. A service business that sells a few products can add a small store to WordPress, and a Shopify store can carry regular pages and a blog. The goal is a platform that handles your main job well and has room for the rest.

Our own website projects start the same way. In discovery we look at how the business works and who the site needs to reach, and the platform follows from that.

Each platform does one kind of job well, and each has its own trade-offs.

WordPress

WordPress is free, open-source software that runs on hosting you choose. It's good at content. If you publish often, have lots of pages, and want to edit them yourself, it's a strong choice, and a lot of developers know it well.

Most features come from plugins, which are add-ons made by other developers. There are plugins for forms, search settings, backups, and online stores, including WooCommerce, a free store plugin. The trade-off is upkeep. Each plugin is its own piece of software, their quality varies, and they all need updating. WordPress installs its own security releases automatically on most sites, but automatic updates for plugins and themes are off until someone turns them on. WordPress's own documentation says to back up the site before updating plugins, because updates can cause problems.

Shopify

Shopify is a hosted platform built for selling products. Hosting, the security certificate, platform updates, and checkout are handled for you. Shopify Payments lets you accept the major payment methods without setting up a separate payment provider, and Shopify can calculate most common sales taxes at checkout.

So you're not paying to build the parts every store needs. The trade-off is that you work inside Shopify's structure. Extra features come from apps, the store runs on Shopify's system, and charging the right tax is still your responsibility, so check the tax setup with your accountant.

A custom build

A custom build is written for your business, so it only does what you need. It makes sense when your process doesn't fit either platform. Usually that means the website has to work with a system you already run on, like a dealer inventory, a scheduling tool, or your own software.

Custom doesn't have to mean the whole site. Sometimes the custom part is one connector. For Mahindra Parts Direct, there was no connector between the dealership's inventory system and selling online. We built one, so the dealership now sells parts online.

The trade-off is that changes to how it works need a developer, and you can only edit the parts that were built to be edited. Decide which parts you'll change yourself while the site is being planned.

Each option has running costs after launch, and they're made up of different things. WordPress software is free, but a WordPress site still costs money to run.

• WordPress: hosting, the domain, any paid themes or plugins, and someone's time to apply updates and fix anything an update breaks.
• Shopify: the monthly plan, payment processing fees on each sale, any paid apps, and extra transaction fees if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments. Paid apps can add their own monthly charges to the Shopify bill.
• Custom: hosting, support for the code, and any fees charged by the services it connects to.

Compare them with everything you need turned on, because a platform can look inexpensive until the apps or plugins you need are added. Ask for the monthly cost in writing, with those add-ons included, before you decide.

For the build itself, our post on what a website costs walks through what moves the price.

All three can be set up so you edit your own text and photos. What differs is how much you can change without help, and who controls the accounts the site runs on.

Editing

• WordPress: pages and posts are edited in its built-in editor, and staff can have their own logins with limited roles. An Editor can publish and manage everyone's posts, and an Author can publish only their own.
• Shopify: products, pages, and blog posts are edited in the Shopify admin, and staff accounts can be limited to the permissions each person needs.
• Custom: you can edit whatever the build includes an editor for. Ask which parts that covers before the work starts.

Whichever you choose, ask to see the editing screen before you commit. If a routine change like a new photo or updated hours needs a developer, you'll pay for that help every time. On the sites we build, we can set things up so you edit text and images yourself, and we can also make updates for you.

Ownership

Ownership comes down to accounts: the domain, the hosting or platform account, and any paid plugins or apps. Some providers set these up in your business's name, and others hold them as part of managing the site. Either way, know who holds each one, and get it in writing that they transfer to you if you leave. For a custom build, also ask who owns the code and where it's stored.

WordPress is open-source, so the software isn't tied to one company and the site can move to another host. A Shopify store runs on Shopify, so the account itself is what has to move to you if you ever leave.

The wrong platform usually shows up as work someone does by hand every week, or as a long list of plugins added to make it do something it wasn't built for. These are the usual signs.

• Orders, stock, or customer details get copied by hand between the website and another system.
• Prices or inventory have to be updated in two places.
• Updates get put off because nobody is sure what they'll break.
• Routine changes wait on a developer.
• You're paying for a store, apps, or features you barely use.

That cost is easy to miss at first, and it adds up every week the workaround stays. Before you pick, look at where your time goes each week, and choose the platform that handles the most of that work for you.

If the manual work is bigger than the website, the real fix may be software. Our post on when to build custom software covers that decision.

You can move off any of the three, and your content moves more easily than the design and features. Here's what comes with you.

• WordPress: the built-in export creates a file with your posts, pages, comments, categories, tags, and users, which another WordPress site can import. The design and plugins aren't in that file.
• Shopify: products, customers, and orders can each be exported as spreadsheet files. The design is a Shopify theme, so it doesn't carry over to another platform.
• Custom: it depends on how it was built. Ask up front how you'd get your data out, and in what format.

The part that needs the most care is the page addresses. When a site moves, the addresses of its pages usually change, while search engines and old bookmarks still point to the old ones. Google's guidance for a move is to map each old address to its new one and set up permanent redirects, and to expect rankings to shift for a while as it recrawls the site.

We move businesses off platforms they've outgrown as part of our website work. The new site is built separately while the current one stays online, and we switch over once you approve it.

1. 01What is the website's main job: explaining, selling, or connecting to another system?
2. 02Which systems does the site need to share information with?
3. 03Who can edit the site once it's live, and do routine changes need a developer?
4. 04What does it cost every month once the add-ons I need are turned on?
5. 05Whose name are the domain, hosting, and platform accounts in?
6. 06How would I export my content and customer data, and in what format?
7. 07What would moving away involve, including redirects for the old page addresses?
8. 08Does this fix the work that takes the most time, or only the part that's easiest to see?

Once the site is up, our post on getting found in Google and AI search covers how people find it. Our website design page shows the kinds of sites we build, and you can tell us what you're working with if you'd like a second opinion on the platform.