WordPress or bespoke development: pros and cons
WordPress and bespoke development are not a 'bad' versus 'good' option — they are two different agreements about who handles what for the next several years.
WordPress pros
A fast start: a standard corporate site with a blog and service catalogue comes together on ready themes and plugins in weeks, and the talent pool is huge, so replacing a contractor is easy.
A non-technical content manager works comfortably in a familiar admin panel without pulling in a developer for every small change.
WordPress cons
Every plugin is code you did not write: it can conflict with others, slow the site down, and open vulnerabilities. A site with a dozen plugins is almost always slower than tidy custom code.
Core and plugin updates demand discipline — skip a couple of months and the site becomes a target for automated attacks aimed at known holes in popular plugins.
Bespoke development, both sides
Purpose-built code carries no dead weight, so speed and Core Web Vitals are higher, and any business logic ships without workarounds — with no dependency on someone else's plugin update breaking things.
The trade-off is a higher entry cost and timeline, and content or structural edits need a developer unless a flexible admin was designed in from the start.
How to decide
A standard job — a site, blog, service catalogue, no complex logic — usually favours WordPress on cost and time. Non-standard logic, critical speed, or a serious organic-growth bet favours custom development.
Don't switch for technology's sake: if a WordPress site is slow because of three heavy plugins, that's a week of optimisation, not a reason for a new project.