There's no universally "best" website platform. The right choice depends on what your site actually needs to do, who's going to maintain it, and what happens when something breaks. Most expensive rebuilds happen because someone picked a platform based on a recommendation from a mate, a blog post from 2019, or whatever the agency was most comfortable selling.
Here's a structured way to make the decision properly — the same framework we use with clients across Wakefield and West Yorkshire before writing a single line of code.
Weighted decision framework
Score each platform option against these 5 criteria. The weightings reflect what actually matters long-term for small business sites:
Goal alignment (30%)
What's the site's primary job? Lead generation, direct bookings, portfolio showcase, or ecommerce? A platform that's perfect for one is often wrong for another. WordPress handles a blog well but makes a 10-page service site slower and more complex than it needs to be. A hand-coded site gives you speed and control but won't work if your team needs to publish daily articles without developer involvement.
Performance and security (25%)
How fast can each option realistically load? What's the attack surface? A hand-coded HTML/PHP site has no database to inject, no plugin vulnerabilities, and ships minimal JavaScript. WordPress out of the box scores well, but the moment you add a theme, 5 plugins, and a page builder, you're looking at 500KB+ of JavaScript and a database exposed to the internet. Score this based on the realistic build, not the theoretical best case.
Editing workflow (20%)
Who'll update the site day-to-day? If it's a marketing team making weekly content changes, they need a visual editor or CMS. If it's quarterly text updates handled by a developer, a code-based workflow is simpler and more reliable. Be honest about this — the gap between "we want to edit it ourselves" and "we actually will edit it ourselves" is enormous.
3-year cost model (15%)
Don't compare day-one costs. Compare total cost over 3 years including hosting, plugin licences, security updates, developer time for fixes, and the rebuild you'll need when the theme gets abandoned. A hand-coded site costs more upfront but typically saves £1,500–£3,000 over 3 years in avoided maintenance, plugin renewals, and emergency fixes.
Lock-in risk (10%)
Can you leave this platform without losing your content, your SEO equity, or your design? Wix and Squarespace own your hosting — you can't take the site elsewhere. WordPress is portable in theory but theme-dependent in practice (try moving an Elementor site to a new theme). Hand-coded HTML is yours completely — take it to any host, any time.
Red flags in platform selection
Watch out for these patterns — they almost always lead to regret:
- •"We might need a blog someday" — Building for might is expensive. Build for what you'll actually do in the next 12 months. You can always add a blog layer later.
- •"The agency recommended it" — Agencies recommend what they know. If they only build WordPress, they'll recommend WordPress regardless of whether it fits your use case.
- •"It's free / really cheap" — Free platforms monetise through lock-in, upsells, or forced branding. The real cost appears in year 2 when you need features they charge premium rates for.
- •"Everyone uses it" — Popularity isn't a technical argument. Everyone used Flash in 2008. Evaluate based on your specific requirements, not market share.
3 common scenarios and what fits
Scenario 1: Growth-focused brochure site
A physiotherapy practice in Wakefield with 8 service pages, a contact form, and content that changes once a quarter. They want to rank locally and convert visitors into bookings. WordPress adds complexity they don't need — a database, login security, weekly updates, plugin compatibility checks. A hand-coded site loads in under 1.5 seconds, costs nothing to maintain month-to-month, and ranks well because the foundations are clean. This is the hand-coded route.
Scenario 2: Editorial-heavy business
A recruitment agency publishing 3 job posts and 2 blog articles per week. Their marketing team needs to create, edit, and schedule content without a developer. This genuinely requires a CMS with an editing interface. A lightweight headless CMS (like Craft or Statamic) paired with a hand-coded front-end gives them the editing workflow without the page builder overhead. WordPress is the fallback if budget is tight — but strip it back to a minimal theme.
Scenario 3: Hybrid requirements
A training company with 15 static pages and a dynamic course listings section that staff update regularly. The static pages benefit from hand-coded performance. The course listings need a simple admin interface. The solution: build the marketing pages as static HTML and add a small PHP-backed admin panel for the dynamic content. No full CMS, no page builder — just the editing capability where it's genuinely needed. Our Cloud Nine build followed a similar approach.
Related service: Website Platform Decision Support · See the approach: Harvey T Ross