WordPress vs custom,
over three years.
WordPress looks cheap on day one. Add three years of hosting, plugins, security, and upkeep and the picture changes. Put in your own numbers and compare it to one flat care plan.
A professionally-maintained WordPress setup — the fair like-for-like with a done-for-you care plan. Every figure is editable, so use your own numbers.
These figures are planning estimates, not a quote — every project is different. The numbers use Stonekept's published pricing as a baseline; for an exact price, tell us what you need and we'll send back a fixed proposal.
WordPress is cheap to start — and then it isn't
The sticker price of a WordPress site rarely tells the whole story. The real cost shows up over the years that follow: managed hosting, premium plugin licences that renew annually, a security or backup service, and the hours (yours or a developer's) spent keeping core, theme, and plugins patched so the site doesn't break or get hacked. Add an occasional "can you fix this" invoice and the running total climbs.
A hand-coded site flips that. There's no database, no plugins, and no admin login — so there's nothing to license, patch, or break into. One flat care plan covers hosting, HTTPS, monitoring, and your edits. We're not anti-WordPress — for a big, content-heavy site with a team, it's the right tool, and we'll say so honestly. But for a typical small-business site, the three-year math usually favours hand-coded. Put in your own numbers above and see.
Let's turn this into
a real plan.
Tell us what you're building and we'll send a straight, fixed proposal — no pressure, no sales fog.