A confession first: I write code, so it would suit me to tell you a site built from scratch is always the right answer. It is not. For many businesses an off-the-shelf platform is the more honest choice, cheaper at the start and easier to look after.
Instead of a comparison grid full of ticks and stars, below are five questions. Answer them honestly and the choice almost makes itself.
The three options, briefly
WordPress is a content management system, free in itself. You pay for hosting, perhaps a theme and some plugins. It can become almost anything, including a shop through the WooCommerce plugin.
Shopify is an e-commerce platform on a monthly subscription. Hosting, security and updates are their job. You set up products, payments and delivery.
A site built from scratch is code written just for you. It has none of a platform's limits, and none of its shortcuts either: everything exists because someone built it.
Question 1: what do you actually sell?
If you sell trust and services (a clinic, a garage, a workshop, a building firm), your site is mostly text, photos and an easy way to get in touch. What matters here is that it is fast, clear and easy to find, not that it has a complicated engine.
If you sell products with a basket and checkout, the problems move elsewhere: stock, couriers, invoices, returns. A platform built for commerce has the usual ones solved already.
If you sell a process (bookings with your own rules, a quote calculator, a customer account full of documents, an internal tool), you are not looking for a website, you are looking for an application. A shop or blog platform will pinch you on every side.
Question 2: who changes the content, and how often?
If you want to publish articles yourself or change prices and photos every week, you need an admin panel you understand. WordPress and Shopify have one out of the box. A site built from scratch has one only if someone builds it, so ask about it explicitly before you sign anything.
If the text changes twice a year, the panel matters far less than you think.
Question 3: who handles updates a year from now?
This is where the options split most clearly.
- WordPress needs regular updates: the core, the theme, every plugin. A site left unattended becomes a target over time. The more plugins you have, the more work there is and the greater the chance that one update breaks another.
- Shopify does the updates for you. That is a serious part of what the monthly fee pays for.
- A site built from scratch has fewer moving parts, but you depend on whoever wrote it, or on someone who can read that code after them.
If the honest answer is "nobody", pick the option that maintains itself, or put maintenance in the budget from day one.
Question 4: how much does a monthly cost that grows with sales bother you?
Shopify has a monthly subscription, and payment transaction fees on top. Many features come from separate apps, some of them subscriptions too. Prices change, so check their official pricing page rather than figures quoted by others.
For a shop that is just starting, this is a good deal: you pay monthly so you do not pay for weeks of development. For a shop with real volume, it is worth redoing the sums now and then.
WordPress and a site built from scratch usually have lower, steadier monthly costs (hosting, perhaps licences), but a higher upfront cost in setup or development time.
Question 5: what happens if you want to leave?
Few people think about this at the start. On Shopify, products and orders can be exported, but the theme, the apps and the way the shop is put together stay behind. Moving means, in practice, rebuilding.
On WordPress, the content is yours and moves between hosts fairly easily. With a site built from scratch, make sure you receive the code and access to everything. If you do not have them, you do not own the site, you rent it.
How to read your answers
- Local services, content that changes rarely or often, a careful budget: WordPress, built cleanly with few plugins. Or a fast site built from scratch, if you want to be rid of plugin updates altogether.
- Products, you want to sell quickly and do not want to deal with the technical side: Shopify.
- A shop with needs no theme covers (integration with stock software, configurable products, an unusual checkout flow): the conversation moves to custom code, or to a platform with serious development on top.
- A process, an application, a digital product: custom code, no question.
If two answers pull in opposite directions, decide by question three. A site nobody maintains is worse than a site on the "wrong" platform that is kept up to date.
If you want to see what each option includes with me, have a look at the packages. If you are still torn, tell me through the contact form what you sell and who would look after the site, and I will tell you what I would pick in your place.