This decision trips up a lot of business owners, partly because the two options get discussed as if one is always “better.” In practice, they're suited to different situations.
What WordPress Is Good For
WordPress is a content management system, which means it's built for websites where you'll be regularly updating content yourself, adding blog posts, changing text, publishing new pages, without calling a developer every time. It has a huge ecosystem of plugins, and for most standard business websites, it's faster and more affordable to build well.
What a Custom Website Is Good For
A custom-built website makes sense when your requirements go beyond what a CMS handles well, complex booking logic, unusual integrations with internal systems, or performance requirements that a plugin-heavy WordPress site would struggle with. It costs more upfront, but you're not working around the constraints of someone else's platform.
Cost Differences
WordPress websites are generally faster and less expensive to build for standard business needs, since so much of the groundwork already exists. Custom builds take longer and cost more because everything is built specifically for you, that cost is justified when your needs are genuinely specific, and unnecessary when they're not.
Maintenance and Ownership
WordPress requires ongoing updates to core files, themes, and plugins to stay secure, manageable with a maintenance plan, but it is an ongoing responsibility. A custom site has no plugin ecosystem to maintain, but any changes down the line require a developer, since there's no admin panel built for non-technical editing unless one is specifically built in.
How to Decide
Ask yourself: will I be updating content myself regularly? Do I need anything beyond a standard business website, store, or booking system? If you answered yes to the first and no to the second, WordPress is very likely the right call. If your needs are genuinely unusual, custom is worth the investment.