WordPress or a custom-built website?
For a lot of people WordPress is the right answer — but it gets recommended by default where it isn't, and the cost shows up in year two. When each one suits a Gran Canaria business, what it costs to keep running, and why speed decides.
Jean Ayala
Sep 28, 2026
Starting where people usually don't
For a lot of people, WordPress is the right answer, and anyone who tells you otherwise without asking you a single question is selling you their stack, not solving your problem.
That said, it gets recommended by default in cases where it isn't the best fit, and the cost of that decision doesn't show up until the second year.
When WordPress is the right call
- You need to publish a lot, and often, with several people writing.
- You want a WooCommerce shop and you already know your way around the dashboard.
- You're on a tight budget and need something working now.
- You already have a WordPress site that works and isn't broken. Leave it alone.
If any of those is you, find someone who does WordPress well and stop reading here.
When it gets expensive
When the website is your shop window and hardly ever changes. A restaurant, a clinic, an office, a holiday apartment: they post something every few months. For that, WordPress sets up a machine that rebuilds the page on every visit, with a database and a stack of plugins behind it, to serve content that hasn't changed in eight months.
When every new feature is another plugin. Contact form, languages, SEO, caching, gallery, bookings, security. Seven plugins, seven different authors, seven update schedules. Things don't break when you touch them: they break on a Tuesday, on their own, because one of them updated.
When nobody is going to maintain it. Which is the usual case. A WordPress site nobody updates is a security problem waiting for a date. WordPress maintenance for a small business site in Gran Canaria runs €30–80 a month. Multiply that by three years (€1,080–2,880) and set it against the difference in the upfront quote. That's the real decision.
When you need speed. On this island that isn't a technical nicety: your customers look you up on their phone, on mobile data, sometimes with patchy coverage — and if they're visitors, on a roaming connection. Speed is the difference between them calling you and not.
What a custom website actually is, minus the mystique
A custom-built website doesn't mean writing everything from scratch. It means this: the site is built once, when you publish, and from then on it's served as ready-made files. No database to query on every visit, no plugins to update every month, and no admin panel sitting on the open internet waiting for someone to try the door.
You still edit your text and photos from an editor, just as easily. What changes is what happens after you hit save.
The site you're reading is built this way, and it scores 99+ on all four Lighthouse tests, on mobile and desktop. You don't have to take my word for it: run the test yourself on PageSpeed Insights, then run it on your own site. You'll see the difference.
WordPress or custom: the question that decides
It isn’t “which is better?”. It’s:
How often will you change the content, and who will be looking after the website two years from now?
If the answer is “often, and I have someone”, WordPress is fine. If it’s “hardly ever, and nobody”, you’re paying to maintain a machine you don’t use.
If you already have WordPress
Don't rush to migrate. Ask yourself: is it slow? Is anyone updating it? Can you edit it yourself? If all three answers are fine, your website isn't the problem.
If you're not sure, send me your site. I'll look at it and tell you what I see: whether it's slow, whether it's up to date, and what it would cost to keep it as it is. And if the answer is that it works and should be left alone, I'll tell you that too. No strings attached.
Jean Ayala — custom web design and development in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
Is your website worth touching?
Send me your site and I'll tell you what I see: whether it's slow, whether it's up to date and what it costs to keep running. If it should be left alone, I'll say so. No strings attached.