Every agency has a preferred stack, and the recommendation you get often reflects what they like building more than what you need to run. Here is a more neutral way to think about it.
Start with who maintains it
This is the question that should drive the decision, and it is the one most often skipped.
If a non-technical marketing person needs to publish pages weekly, you need a genuine CMS with a usable editing interface. If the site changes twice a year and you have a developer on call, a static site is faster and cheaper to run. If nobody internally will ever touch it, the calculation changes again.
Choosing a stack your team cannot maintain guarantees either paying a developer for trivial changes or watching the site go stale.
WordPress
Good for: content-heavy business sites, blogs, sites where non-technical staff publish regularly, and anything needing a broad ecosystem of integrations.
Trade-offs: requires ongoing maintenance and updates. Security depends on keeping plugins current and minimal. Performance depends entirely on how it is built — a custom theme is fast, a purchased theme with a page builder generally is not.
WordPress’s poor reputation in developer circles is mostly earned by bad implementations rather than by the platform. Built properly, with a custom theme and few plugins, it is fast, secure and genuinely pleasant to edit. We cover this in more detail under WordPress development.
Shopify
Good for: most ecommerce. Hosting, security, PCI compliance and payment infrastructure are handled, which removes a significant operational burden.
Trade-offs: monthly fees plus transaction costs if you do not use Shopify Payments. Limited flexibility for unusual pricing logic, complex B2B requirements or deep content integration. You are working within their structure.
For a straightforward product catalogue, Shopify is usually the pragmatic answer. The moment you need unusual pricing rules, complex variants or a content-led experience wrapped around the store, it starts to fight you.
WooCommerce
Good for: ecommerce where you also need substantial content, or where pricing and product logic are unusual. Full control over hosting and data.
Trade-offs: you are responsible for hosting, security, PCI considerations and performance. It needs more technical attention than Shopify, and at higher traffic volumes hosting needs real thought.
Static site generators
Good for: marketing sites, documentation and brochure sites that change infrequently. Extremely fast, very cheap to host, and a minimal attack surface.
Trade-offs: content changes typically require a developer or at least familiarity with the workflow, unless you pair it with a headless CMS — which adds cost and complexity of its own.
The performance and security benefits are real. The editing experience is the constraint, and it is the one people underestimate.
Custom development
Good for: web applications, client portals, booking systems and anything where your process genuinely does not fit an existing product.
Trade-offs: highest upfront cost, and you own maintenance indefinitely. Only justified when off-the-shelf tools genuinely cannot do the job — which is less often than people assume.
A useful test: if you can describe your requirement and someone can name three products that already do it, you probably do not need custom development.
Total cost, not build cost
The build quote is one component. The full picture includes hosting, maintenance and updates, licence and plugin fees, developer time for changes, and — importantly — how easy it will be to find someone to work on it in three years.
A cheap build on an obscure framework can cost considerably more over five years than a more expensive build on something standard.
Questions worth asking any agency
- Who maintains this after launch, and what does that cost?
- Can our team update content without a developer?
- What happens if we want to move to another agency?
- Do we own the code, the hosting and the domain?
- Why this stack rather than the obvious alternative?
The answer to the last one should be about your requirements, not their preferences. If it is not, ask again.
Once the stack is settled, compare costs on our website design pricing page and see how a conversion-focused website pays for itself.
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