Is it better to work with WordPress or a custom CMS?
It’s safe to say one of the biggest questions in the minds of web design clients is to choose between designing a website with a custom CMS or use an open source content management system like WordPress and Joomla. Of course, in this doubt, we give them the right to question this! In fact, both solutions are correct, but first, you need to determine how your website is going to function.
What is design with a custom CMS?
CMS means a content management system, or the management board of a website. In recent years, many CMSs have been introduced that are completely free and open to the public. The most well-known free CMS are WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. Custom CMS are designed, however, for you and tailored to your website’s needs.
Advantages of custom CMS
Certainly, the use of a custom system can have many benefits! We are only going to consider the most important ones.
Higher speed and more flexible
When everything is implemented from the outset by a professional designer and tailored to your goals, means any extra code on the page and table used in the database is avoided. Thus access to the information occurs as quickly as possible.
Secure CMS
One of the most important factors that is always considered in a custom CMS is its high security. This security is due to the specific codes used in creating this custom CMS. Imagine your website written in a new language that nobody knows in the world, spying will be very difficult!
Of course, it’s also important to note that the exclusivity of the CMS alone cannot be a reason for its high security, and even in some cases it may be more vulnerable than free content management systems. The security code depends on the knowledge and experience of the developer team and on the safety side of the website’s management team.
Disadvantages of custom CMS vs. WordPress
In addition to features such as security and speed that are considered in a custom CMS, other factors should also be considered in the design of the website that can affect your choices. The main disadvantages of a custom content management system are as follows:
High cost and long time for website design
Imagine going to the market to buy a suit or a personal tailored one, which one will be more expensive? The same example exists in the design of a website. When you use a free content management system, you will not have much cost for developing and deploying management panels.
The design of a website with custom CMS has increased the design time of your website, and the same way, your costs will increase. A company might offer you a similar offer for a custom WordPress-like website instead of a custom CMS. That is, a CMS is implemented by a team of 5 to 10 people sold to you as a proprietary name, while the same system will be sold to other companies and other fields of work, and it’s virtually non-specific to you.
In the image above, you see a very high WordPress use of web design market compared to other systems. WordPress Management System has reached its current point in 14 years and has made millions of people around the world to become its users.
It is estimated that the implementation of a content management system with wordpress features by one person takes about 100 years!
Weak or expensive support
When you use an open source content management system like WordPress, you’re faced with a multi-million dollar community of website designers around the world. People who each have different experiences and abilities. While in a custom system you are restricted to a team and only they can implement your requests.
In these situations, the website design companies encounter traffic problems, or delay your requests or request a high cost for small changes, and in both cases, you experience difficult conditions. The longer this collaboration will be, the greater your dependency on the company and the more difficult the support conditions will be. On the contrary, if your website’s core is on WordPress and the company does not offer the right support, you can quickly find an alternative company or workforce to execute your requests at the right price.
Any of the above issues does not mean that WordPress is better than a custom content management system, both of which can be a good choice for you because another factor in your decision is still influential!
Which CMS is suitable for which websites?
In this section, we review websites that are popular on the web and decide which content management system is recommended for each of them.
Designing an online store
Usually, websites that intend to sell a wide range of products require a custom platform for the website and links to important areas such as warehouse, delivery, and personnel. In this case, it is suggested that using custom coding to create the right connection between them and create the conditions for the rapid upgrade of the system is most ideal.
Of course, these companies usually prefer the design of the online store by an internal team and the IT department of the company to meet the needs of the system at the earliest time, a very successful example of which is Amazon. On the contrary, if you intend to set up a specialist online store for selling products in a specific field and with a limited target community, using WordPress can be a very good choice because the time and cost of setting up your website will be much lower.
After a year or two, you can design and implement a custom CMS based on your needs.
Corporate website design
For companies, industrial and manufacturing complexes, the best choice is to design a corporate website using WordPress. These collections usually require sophisticated features in their admin panel and are more concerned with the design of the outer shell. In this situation, WordPress solves all your needs and designing a custom template can at your reasonable cost make your presence on the Internet the best.
Website design for government agencies
Government agencies, such as large online stores, usually need a central portal to manage the resources of human resources and internal communication in addition to providing information on their website. For this reason, they generally go to companies that specialize in the design of organizational portals and ERP systems.
Web design for corporate and government websites with WordPress, Of course, is possible. It is possible to separate the company’s internal relations from the website, since most of them use the website only for their own introduction and information. Under such circumstances, it is possible to design a corporate website for web presence and manage internal relationships through an organization’s portal.
Design news websites
For news websites, SEO is generally very important and all features of a news website on the WordPress platform can be implemented. Many imagine that free content management systems like WordPress do not have the ability to host websites with a lot of content and users, which is a misconception in the world.
Creative website design
Innovative websites generally refer to websites that are implemented by a start-up and with a completely different approach. Usually, these websites require the implementation of features that are not available on any other website. In this situation, WordPress and CMS have a very similar situation and both require development and creativity.
Given that startups generally do not have the capital to code out a custom CMS and form a strong team, in the early months of their work they implement an initial version of the WordPress platform that analyzes customer feedback. Whenever they feel that the idea is approaching the stage of expansion, then one can decide to re-write the website on a custom CMS, or even add their desired features to the WordPress platform.
Creative design with WordPress or CMS
Share your experiences with setting up a new business using WordPress or a custom CMS with us! What other factors do you think should be considered in this selection?
