WordPress sprint or custom engine Begin with the job, not the tool
By: Andy Chapman | Published: 22 May 2025
WordPress is brilliant for velocity, I can launch a polished site over a weekend and your marketing team can start editing on Monday. But if the brief says 'pin 20,000 poems to a live map' or 'scan 10,000 pallets per day', even the best theme or plugin will buckle under the pressure.
Two lanes, one goal - finding the perfect fit
Lane 1 – WordPress / Webflow
Ideal when speed and simplicity matter.
- Go live in days: projects hit the web this week, not next quarter.
- Editor-friendly: your team already knows the block interface.
- Budget-light: most brochure, campaign or workshop sites land well under £5k.
Lane 2 – Custom-built platform
Essential when off-the-shelf tools fall short.
- Heavy lifting: real-time mapping, multi-warehouse logic, thousands of simultaneous users.
- Total flexibility: data flows, rules and UI shaped around your workflow—not the other way round.
- Performance without plugins: no security roulette, no speed ceiling.
- Proven uses:
- Places of Poetry – 20k crowd-sourced verses on a dynamic map.
- South-West Heritage Trails – GPS-guided walks with in-browser games.
- Placeify – tour-builder SaaS used by Universities and Museums.
Choosing the wrong tool leads to crashes, slow pages and runaway budgets.
Does your brief sound like this?
“Pin 5,000 heritage assets to a map, let visitors filter by era, then trigger location-based prompts.”
If so, you need a developer who has solved problems at that scale before. I tune WordPress for speed and craft custom systems when templates can’t cope.
Your next step: a Stack Fit session
- 15-minute call
- Walk away with a one-page tech worksheet, clear timeline and budget band
- Zero obligation, zero jargon
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