WordPress powers about 40% of the web. It is free, there are thousands of themes, and most web designers use it by default. I do not use it. Every site I build is written from scratch: HTML, CSS, PHP, and vanilla JavaScript. No page builders, no plugins, no templates.

This is a deliberate choice, and it has a direct impact on what my clients get.

Speed. A hand-coded site with no plugin stack loads fast. Not just fast by web standards, but fast by the standards of someone opening a link on their phone while standing on a high street. WordPress sites, even well-optimised ones, carry overhead. Every plugin adds weight. A site with nothing but the code it needs has no overhead at all.

Security. WordPress is the most targeted platform on the internet because it is the most common one. Bots scan for outdated plugins, vulnerable themes, and unpatched core versions constantly. A hand-coded site has no plugin surface to exploit. The attack surface is smaller by default.

Ownership. When a site is built on WordPress, the client depends on third-party plugins staying maintained, on themes staying compatible, and on the hosting environment staying up to date. When I hand-code a site, my client owns something that will not break because a plugin stopped being maintained in 2023. The code does exactly what it is supposed to do, and nothing else.

Fit. A local hair salon does not need a blog, a shop, a membership system, or a contact form plugin with 47 settings. They need a page that says what they do, shows their prices, and has a way to book. Building that from scratch takes less time than configuring WordPress to do only that, and the result is simpler and faster.

The argument against hand-coding is usually speed of delivery. WordPress has everything pre-built. That is true for complex sites with lots of features. For a five-page small business site, the difference is hours at most. The quality difference lasts years.

I am not against WordPress as a concept. For the right project, it makes sense. But for the clients I work with, a small clean hand-coded site is the right tool. It loads faster, costs less to maintain, and does exactly what they need without the baggage.

If you are curious about the web performance basics that make hand-coded sites fast, web.dev is a good starting point.