WordPress vs a custom website for a small business

This argument is usually conducted by people who sell one of the two, so it tends to generate more heat than information. Both are legitimate. WordPress runs an enormous share of the web for good reasons, and a custom build is not automatically better just because it costs more. The useful comparison is about responsibilities: who is accountable for accessibility, for data, and for upkeep in each model, and how much of that work lands on the owner.

One fact frames everything below. The Justice Department's position is that the ADA applies to websites of public-facing businesses, and that position does not care which software rendered the page. Neither platform makes a site compliant or non-compliant by itself; both can be built well or badly.

Accessibility across themes and plugins

The standard's own rule sets the test: WCAG conformance is full-page, including every variation shown at different screen sizes. On WordPress, a page is assembled from a theme and a stack of plugins written by different authors, and the page conforms only if every one of those pieces does — the slider, the booking widget, the cookie banner, the contact form. A custom build has fewer authors, which makes conformance easier to control but no less the builder's responsibility. The real question for either is who tests the whole page, at every breakpoint, after every change.

Where the data goes

Contact and booking plugins frequently store every submission in the site's database indefinitely, often without the owner knowing. That matters in North Carolina: under the disposal statute (G.S. 75-64 — protect personal info at disposal), a business holding a resident's personal information must take reasonable measures to protect it at and after disposal, including properly erased electronic records. A custom build can be designed to send a form and keep nothing; a WordPress site can be configured to do the same, but only if someone audits each plugin. Default settings are not a data policy.

Upkeep and security

WordPress's strength — a huge ecosystem — is also its maintenance burden. Core, theme and plugins each release updates, and a site that is not updated becomes the easy target on the internet. That is manageable with a care plan and dangerous without one. A custom site has a smaller surface and fewer updates, but when something does need changing, fewer people can change it. Neither is maintenance-free; they distribute the work differently.

Editing it yourself

WordPress's editor is familiar to many people, and owners who want to publish their own news, menus or listings every week often value that above everything else. A custom site can include a simple editor for the parts that change and lock down the parts that should not. If you will genuinely edit the site yourself, say so early; it should drive the choice more than any technical argument.

Speed and simplicity

A lean site loads faster and breaks less. WordPress sites get slow in proportion to their plugin count, and a custom build gets slow when its developer is careless. We do not quote page-speed percentages here, because we have not seen a primary source that measures them for sites like yours; what we can say is that fewer moving parts is almost always faster and cheaper to keep accessible.

Cost and lock-in

WordPress itself is free, and the cost lives in themes, premium plugins, hosting and the hours to keep them current. A custom build costs more to write and less to run. Lock-in cuts both ways: any WordPress developer can pick up a WordPress site, while a custom site is only as portable as its code and documentation. On our plans the build and upkeep are one monthly figure — $150, $250 or $400 by size — and you keep your domain and content either way. If a site sells goods, the store must also collect sales tax (NC general sales tax rate 4.75%) plus local tax, whatever the platform.

Pick WordPress if you will edit often, want a broad pool of future developers and will pay for proper upkeep. Pick custom if you want the smallest possible thing to maintain and secure, and a clear answer to where every form submission goes. In both cases, insist on a full-page accessibility test before launch — the platform will not do it for you.