WordPress vs hiring a web designer: which is better for a small business?

Short answer: WordPress is a good tool, and it can be the right choice. But the software being free doesn't mean the site is. Hosting, updates, security and changes still cost money or time, and somebody has to do them.

I build my sites by hand rather than on WordPress, so I'm not neutral. I'll tell you honestly where WordPress wins.

What WordPress does well

WordPress runs a huge share of the web, and there's a lot of help available. If you have a developer you trust, or you like tinkering, it's flexible. Almost anything you can imagine has a plugin. If you want a large blog, a membership site or a store, it's a real contender.

What it costs

The software is free to use. The things around it aren't:

• Hosting, which you choose and pay for
• A theme, and often a paid version of it
• Plugins, some free and some paid, for forms, SEO, backups and security
• Your time or a developer's for updates

WordPress needs regular updates to stay secure, and plugins need them too. If nobody does them, the site becomes a target. That's the part small businesses skip, and it's the part that bites later.

Where small businesses get stuck

Most local owners don't want to be a site administrator. They want the phone to ring. A WordPress site that's installed once and never touched slows down, breaks when a plugin updates and collects security warnings. I see this when owners come to me with an old site and a developer who's disappeared.

What I do instead

I build sites by hand, so there's no plugin pile to maintain. I host them, run the updates and backups, and make changes within 48 hours. It's $99 a month with nothing down, and I build a demo first. You don't need to know anything about hosting or plugins, and you can leave with a full export.

I'm not saying WordPress is bad. I'm saying the question isn't WordPress or not. It's who does the maintenance, and what it costs when they stop.

How to choose

• You have a developer or the time, and need something complex: WordPress is a solid choice
• You want a simple site that brings in calls and somebody else keeps it running: hire a designer who includes upkeep
• You're not sure: ask any designer, including me, who handles updates after launch and what it costs

See the full side-by-side with other options in N5 Studio vs a web agency vs Wix or Squarespace, and what a site costs in how much does a business website cost.