This website is custom-coded. The previous one was WordPress with Elementor. PageSpeed Insights gives the old one 51 out of 100 on mobile. The main element takes 13.4 seconds to render. On desktop, 64.
I'm Nico, a freelance digital marketing consultant in Seville. I build websites in WordPress or in custom code, depending on the project. Right now, both at the same “from” price you'll see in web design. Here's how I decide which, with the numbers I have to hand.
What's the difference between a WordPress website and a custom-coded one?
WordPress is a program you install on your hosting. It gives you a dashboard to write pages, upload photos and add features with plugins. A custom-coded website is a set of HTML, CSS and JavaScript files written by hand, or generated with scripts, like this one. The server delivers them as they are, with no dashboard and no database.
The practical difference is who touches the website. With WordPress, you do. With code, whoever programmed it or someone who can code. Everything else hangs on that. WordPress needs updates because it's built from third-party parts. Code has no parts to update, but no “edit” button either.
Neither ranks better on its own. Google measures the page it receives and doesn't care which program built it. A well-built WordPress site passes Core Web Vitals. A badly built custom-coded site doesn't.
Comparison table: eight criteria
| Criterion | WordPress | Custom code | Matters more if… |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who edits the content | You, from the dashboard | Whoever programmed it | You publish or change text every week |
| Changes per month | Lots, at no cost per change | Few; each one is a separate job | Your website is a living catalogue |
| Online shop | WooCommerce, mature | Only with development or an external service | You sell products |
| Speed | Depends on the theme and the plugins | High out of the box: no database or plugins | You compete on mobile and on Google |
| Security and updates | Weekly: core, plugins, theme | Hardly any: there are no plugins | Nobody is going to maintain it |
| Monthly maintenance | Needed (I do it, from €120 a month) | Hosting, backups and not much else | You want to forget about it |
| Forms, bookings, newsletter | Plugins and done | Programmed once (PHP or a service) | You have lots of integrations |
| Switching provider | Easy: any WordPress professional | Easy if the code is clean and documented | You're thinking five years ahead |
Choose WordPress if you're going to write on the blog every week or you have an online shop. Also if someone in your business wants to change the website without calling anyone. And accept maintenance as a fixed cost, like the electricity bill.
Choose code if your website is ten service pages that change twice a year. If you care that it loads in a second on a phone out in the countryside. And if you don't want to hear the word plugin. In return, every text tweak goes through whoever built it.
If you're torn between the two, it's WordPress. Being torn usually means you'll want to make changes yourself.
How much does each one cost to maintain?
A WordPress site without maintenance is a problem with a date on it. Patchstack counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the ecosystem in 2025: 42% more than in 2024. Of those, 91% were in plugins and 9% in themes. In WordPress core, 6. WordPress's own documentation puts it plainly: always keep core and plugins on their latest version. Core security updates arrive several times a year, and plugin ones every week.
That means weekly work. I maintain 11 WordPress websites every Monday with my own system: backup, update, check and notification. It takes me about 30 minutes per site. So far in 2026 I've had to step in by hand on 4 issues the system didn't fix by itself. That's why I charge for monthly website maintenance from €120 as a fixed fee. It's what keeps the website yours two years from now.
A custom-coded website adds up differently. Hosting, a backup and a certificate. No plugins to update. But the day you want to change the price of a service on three pages, someone has to open the code. In my case I solved it with scripts that regenerate all 131 pages of this website. In yours it might be a one-hour job each month, or a small custom dashboard.
What about speed?
Google measures three things on every page. How long the main element takes to appear: LCP, good below 2.5 seconds. How long the page takes to respond to a tap: INP, good below 200 milliseconds. And how much the layout shifts while it loads: CLS, good below 0.1. Google recommends reaching those thresholds “for success with Search”. And it says they line up with what its ranking systems reward.
My old website, on WordPress with Elementor, falls well short. An LCP of 13.4 seconds on mobile and 6.9 on desktop, measured with PageSpeed Insights in 2026. Piled-up plugins and a heavy page builder take their toll.
WordPress can pass Core Web Vitals. A lightweight theme, five plugins instead of thirty, WebP images and a properly configured cache will get you there. The catch is that you have to keep an eye on it every time someone installs something. With code, speed comes as standard and stays.
On 1 October 2026 I'm launching the new website and repeating the measurement on the same page. I'll add the result here.
What I see with my clients
Of the 47 case studies published on my website, 24 are websites. Most of them, WordPress. And the pattern repeats itself: the client asks for WordPress “so I can edit it myself” and in a year they've edited it twice. They've paid for a dashboard they don't use and for maintenance they do need.
The opposite case exists too. A clinic that publishes every week, an association with news and an events calendar, a shop. There, WordPress is the right answer and anything else would mean making them call me every Tuesday.
And then there's what comes before choosing a program. Viva Games Studios had a website that didn't load in eleven countries. Today it gets around a thousand clicks a month from Google. The program was the least of it. The first thing was getting the website to work.
How I decide in the Diagnostic Session
Three questions and I know what to suggest:
- Who's going to touch the website after it goes live, and how many times a month?
- Do you sell anything online or take bookings?
- Who's going to maintain it a year from now?
If you'd like us to answer them together with your website in front of us, I open two slots a week. Free, 30 minutes, with your website already reviewed before the video call. Book yours. And if you're going to ask several people for a quote, first read how to hire a web designer without any nasty surprises.
Sources
- W3Techs, Usage statistics and market share of WordPress (40.2% of all websites; 58.7% of CMSs; 2026): https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/cm-wordpress
- W3Techs, Usage statistics of content management systems (31.5% of websites with no known CMS; 2026): https://w3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_management
- Patchstack, State of WordPress Security in 2026 (11,334 vulnerabilities in 2025, 91% in plugins, 6 in core; 25 February 2026): https://patchstack.com/whitepaper/state-of-wordpress-security-in-2026/
- WordPress.org, Hardening WordPress (updated 7 January 2026): https://developer.wordpress.org/advanced-administration/security/hardening/
- web.dev, Web Vitals (LCP, INP and CLS thresholds; updated 31 October 2024): https://web.dev/articles/vitals
- Google Search Central, Core Web Vitals and Google search results (10 December 2025): https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/core-web-vitals
- Own data: PageSpeed Insights for https://auvenico.es/ in 2026 (mobile 51, desktop 64; Lighthouse 13.5.0) and Auve Nico's weekly maintenance log (11 websites, 2026).
Freelance digital marketing consultant in Seville. I work on the digital presence of professionals and small businesses with one simple principle: your website as your operations hub. Building websites, doing SEO and running social media with my own hands since 2018.
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