The choice of technology is often made by accident: the agency works in what it knows, and the client doesn’t know what to ask. Yet that decision determines what every change will cost for years. Below we compare the three most common routes.
WordPress
The most popular website system in the world. A huge choice of themes and plugins, and many providers on the market.
- Pros: low setup cost, easy to find someone for changes, ready-made plugins for almost everything, WooCommerce for stores.
- Cons: every plugin is code that needs updating, and outdated plugins are a common cause of break-ins. Sites built in heavy visual page builders can be heavy and slow. Maintenance costs grow over time.
- For whom: content-heavy sites with many editors, companies that have or plan ongoing technical support.
Webflow
A visual tool for designing and publishing websites, with hosting included.
- Pros: a designer or marketer changes layout and content without a developer, hosting and security handled by the provider, fast publishing.
- Cons: a subscription for every site, with higher plans for more content or languages. Moving the site elsewhere is hard: the code export doesn’t carry over CMS functionality. More complex logic and integrations need third-party tools.
- For whom: marketing sites that change often, where the marketing team wants full control over them.
Custom code with a headless CMS
A website written in a modern framework, with content managed in a separate system, a so-called headless CMS, from which the site pulls text and images.
- Pros: full control over performance and accessibility, any integration you need, languages designed in from the start, code that belongs to you and hosting wherever you like. The team edits content in a simple panel without the risk of breaking the layout.
- Cons: higher setup cost. Structural changes, such as a new type of section, need a developer.
- For whom: companies whose website is a sales tool, that need integrations or several languages and want to pay for development rather than maintenance.
The comparison in short
| Criterion | WordPress | Webflow | Code and headless CMS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup cost | low | medium | higher |
| Maintenance | plugin updates | subscription | low, hosting |
| Content editing | panel, plugins | visual | CMS panel |
| Layout changes | builder or developer | designer | developer |
| Integrations | plugins | limited | any |
| Moving elsewhere | easy | hard | easy |
Questions that help you choose
- Who will edit the site, and how often? Does only text change, or the layout too?
- What does the site need to connect to? CRM, booking system, payments, product data.
- How many languages do you need, now and in two years?
- How important are speed and SEO? Is the site supposed to bring in search traffic?
- How much do you want to spend each month on maintenance, and who will be responsible for it?
- What happens when you change providers? Can you take the site with you?
What we choose
For the company websites we design, we usually choose code with a headless CMS. The reason is simple: clients come to us for a site that should sell and grow with the company, and this setup gives the most control over speed, accessibility and integrations, with low maintenance costs. The client’s team edits content on its own and assembles new pages from the components of a grid-based design system.
That doesn’t make it the only sensible choice. If you need a simple site that marketing will rebuild every month, Webflow may be better. We’ll say so on the first call. Read more about how we work on websites.
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