Guide
Wix, WordPress or Custom, and How to Decide
None of the three is better in the abstract. What decides it is who will maintain the site, how often the content changes and what happens the day you want to move. With those three answers, the choice becomes obvious.
«should I use Wix, WordPress or a custom website»
All three options solve the same problem and charge you dearly for different things. The useful comparison isn’t about features —they all make a page with photos and a contact form— but about what each one costs you over three years.
Wix and the closed platforms
What you’re buying: starting today, with nobody technical, everything included in a monthly fee.
What it charges dearly for: the site isn’t portable. The day you move, you start over. And the monthly fee never ends: stop paying and the site goes dark with everything inside it.
Who it suits: a business that needs to be online this week, that won’t change much, and that accepts that dependency in exchange for not depending on anyone else.
WordPress
What you’re buying: flexibility and a huge ecosystem. Almost anything you need exists as a plugin, and almost anybody knows how to edit it.
What it charges dearly for: maintenance. The core, the theme and the plugins are updated separately, and those updates sometimes fight each other. An unmaintained WordPress site is the most common way a small business ends up hacked or broken without the owner noticing.
Who it suits: someone who publishes often and wants to edit everything, with somebody checking the site every month.
Custom, or static
What you’re buying: speed and control. No database, no plugins and no dashboard to maintain; the site is generated ahead of time and delivered as files.
What it charges dearly for: changing the structure requires whoever built it. Editing text, yes; reorganizing the architecture from a dashboard, no.
Who it suits: a business whose site has to load fast and show up on Google, with content that changes now and then rather than every day.
The costs, over three years
This is the exercise that changes the decision, because the first month’s price is misleading:
| Closed platform | WordPress | Static or custom | |
|---|---|---|---|
| To start | Low or zero | Medium | Higher |
| Every month | A fixed fee, forever | Hosting | Hosting, usually low |
| Maintenance | Included | Updates and fixes | Almost none |
| If you stop paying | The site goes dark | The site stays, you have to move it | The files are yours |
| Moving elsewhere | Rebuild it | Portable | Portable |
Over three years a modest monthly fee adds up to more than it seems, and one emergency on an unmaintained WordPress site can cost what two years of savings bought. Neither is a knockout argument: they’re the costs to put on the table next to the starting price.
The three questions that decide it
- Who will update it, and how often? If the answer is «me, every week», you need a comfortable dashboard. If it’s «hardly ever», you’re paying for convenience you won’t use.
- What happens if I want to leave? Ask today how you export the content, the domain and the files. The answer separates a reversible decision from one that ties you down.
- How much of the budget goes to the writing? It’s what decides whether the site shows up on Google, and it’s the one thing no platform solves for you.
What doesn’t change, whatever you choose
- The domain in your name, always.
- The logins in your hands.
- Copy written for your customer, not to fill space.
- A complete Google profile, which is free and doesn’t depend on the site’s technology → how to set it up.
If you’re deciding, the honest conversation starts with your case and not with the tool: we look at it before quoting, and if a platform is enough for you, we’ll say so → what to ask whoever builds your website.
Also worth asking
Can I move from Wix to something else later?
You can rebuild the site somewhere else, but you can't take the one you have: the design and the structure stay on the platform, and what you rescue is the text and the images, by hand. That's the real cost of the model, and it's worth knowing before you start — not once you already have fifty pages.
Is WordPress free?
The software is; the website isn't. You pay for hosting, sometimes for a theme and sometimes for plugins, and above all you have to keep it updated: every plugin is software that ages and one day breaks or turns into a security hole.
Which one ranks better on Google?
None of them, by itself. Google doesn't reward the tool; it rewards what the page delivers: content that answers, a clear structure and speed. What changes between the options is how easy it is for you to do that well.
What about the fifty-dollar templates?
They're fine for getting started if you know how to edit them and you write the text yourself. The trouble comes later: a template ships with extra features that add weight, and it was almost always designed for a business that isn't yours.
What do you use, and why?
Static sites, generated before they're published. They don't send frameworks or libraries to the browser, they load fast on a weak signal and there's no database to go down. The trade-off: a change to the structure is made by whoever built it, not by you from a dashboard.
What happens if whoever built my site disappears?
It depends on one thing only: whether the domain, the hosting and the files are in your name. With that, anyone else can pick up the work. Without it, the technology you chose doesn't matter.
Still have a question the guide doesn't answer?
Write to us and we'll answer it, even if you never hire us. We'd rather you decide well.
We answer the same day, Monday to Saturday. Also at +507 6230-7595.