Framer, WordPress or custom code: choose by who will edit your website

Choose Framer if your team wants to change text and design without depending on anyone and the website is a services site with a modest blog. Choose WordPress if you need features a plugin already provides, such as bookings or a client area, and someone to maintain it. Choose custom code if you have a lot of content or several languages and a stable technical provider, but not if you want to change the design yourself.

Below you will find Framer’s prices as of 2 October 2026, what a WordPress site really costs and what custom code involves. Then a 10-criteria table and a 6-question test to help you decide.

Google does not reward any of the three

No platform ranks on its own. Google’s technical requirements are three: that its crawler can access the page, that the page works and that it has indexable content. Framer, WordPress and a website built in code all meet them if they are well built.

The same goes for AI answers. Google states that there are no additional requirements to appear in its AI Overviews or AI Mode. The page just needs to be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet.

What differs between the three is something else: who can edit, how much you pay each month, what happens if you want to leave and who fixes whatever breaks.

Framer is rented, WordPress is installed and custom code is written

The underlying difference is where the website lives and who can touch it.

Framer: a paid platform with hosting included

Framer is an online tool where the website is designed, edited and published. You do not install or update anything: you pay a subscription for each website. Your team can change text and images directly on the published website, and someone with publishing permission reviews the changes before they go live.

It is a minority option. According to W3Techs, as of 2 October 2026 it is used by 0.2% of all websites. That matters the day you look for someone else to maintain it.

WordPress: free software you install wherever you like

WordPress is free software under the GPL licence: you install it on the hosting of your choice and add features with plugins. Its official directory has more than 74,000 free plugins. According to W3Techs, as of 2 October 2026 it is used by 40.2% of all websites.

Watch out for the name. WordPress.com is a hosting service run by a specific company, and the WordPress documentation asks you not to confuse it with the software. In this article, WordPress means the free software.

Custom code: your website is a programming project

A custom-coded website is built with a framework such as Astro, which is open source under the MIT licence. By default, Astro generates pages as static files when the website is built. Those files are hosted on services such as Cloudflare, where serving static files is free and has no request limit.

There is no admin panel out of the box. Text lives in Markdown files or in an external content management system connected to the website. Changing the design or creating a new type of page means programming.

Framer costs between €10 and €45 a month per website, before extras

Framer’s paid plans cost between €10 and €45 a month per website, depending on the plan and the billing method. These are the prices on its pricing page, checked from Spain on 2 October 2026. Framer states that taxes are added at checkout.

The free plan is for trying it out, but it does not let you connect your domain. Framer describes it as ideal for non-commercial use.

The extras come on top of the fee:

• Each translated language: €20 a month with annual billing or €25 with monthly billing.
• Each additional editor with access to the design: €20 or €30 a month. A content-only editor costs €10 or €15, and anyone who only comments does not pay.
• Pro plan add-ons: with annual billing, €20 for every 100 extra pages, €20 for every 10,000 CMS items and €40 for every 10 collections. The maximums are as stated by Framer, shown in the table above.

If your current website already ranks, the Basic plan is not enough. It does not include redirects, and without them every URL that changes ends up as a 404 error. This is the basis of the checklist for changing your website without losing rankings.

Let’s say a law firm already gets visits from Google, wants its website in Spanish and English and has one person who updates the blog. It needs Pro (€30), one language (€20) and a content editor (€10): €60 a month with annual billing, €720 a year plus tax. With monthly billing, the total goes up to €85 a month.

Leaving Framer means rebuilding the website

Framer’s help centre answers no to the question of whether you can download the website as HTML to host it elsewhere. It adds that, if you need full control over hosting or to export the code, Framer may not be the right solution for you.

Another of its help articles states that the published files can be downloaded and that the CMS can be exported with plugins as CSV or JSON. Even so, what you take with you is the published result and the content, not a project you can keep editing in another tool.

That is what we did with Zoundroom when we moved it from Framer to Astro in July 2026. The website was rebuilt in code, with a 301 redirect table so as not to lose its rankings.

WordPress has no fee, but it does have recurring costs

WordPress is free, but a business website on WordPress has 4 annual costs. We do not give market figures because there is no reliable source that collects them. Ask for them to be broken down like this:

1. Hosting. WordPress recommends PHP 8.3 or higher, MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.11 and HTTPS. It works with older versions, but the same page warns that they are no longer supported and may expose the website to vulnerabilities. Ask which version of PHP your hosting runs.
2. Licences for paid plugins and themes. Many are sold as annual update subscriptions. For example, WordPress is not multilingual out of the box, and the WPML language plugin costs from €39 with one year of support and updates. That is the price on its website on 2 October 2026. If you do not renew, it keeps working but stops being updated, and WPML itself warns that this puts the website at risk.
3. Maintenance. Updating the core, the theme and the plugins, with a backup first. Since version 5.5 you can turn on automatic updates plugin by plugin, and the documentation recommends being able to roll back if something fails.
4. Fixes. If the layout breaks after an update, the official upgrade guide points to an old plugin that does not work with the new code as a possible culprit.

The risk is not WordPress, it is leaving it unmaintained

WordPress only officially supports the latest version, although its security team backports patches to earlier versions as a courtesy. Its security guide explains why this matters: when a fix is released, the information needed to exploit the flaw is almost certainly already public. That is why it asks you to always keep plugins updated and delete the ones you do not use.

There is a catch with plugins. When a plugin in the official directory has an unresolved security flaw, it is closed to new downloads. You may not receive any notice until the fix is published.

And many websites are not updated. The current version is 7.1. According to W3Techs, as of 2 October 2026 more than a third of WordPress websites are still on version 6 or earlier.

We saw this at Maestrat Global: an old WordPress site, without valid HTTPS, with test content published and hosting about to be shut down. The new website is custom code, but the underlying problem was not WordPress: it was the lack of maintenance.

Custom code has no licence fees, but you pay for development hours

With your own code you do not pay for a platform or plugins: you pay for the initial development and for whoever makes changes afterwards. The initial development takes more hours, because everything is programmed, including what a plugin solves in WordPress.

What you gain:

• Almost free hosting. On Cloudflare, a static website is not charged per visit. If you need server features, such as processing a form, the free plan has limits and the paid plan starts at $5 a month per account.
• Full technical control. URLs, redirects, structured data and performance are decided line by line. Astro comes with per-language routes out of the box, and the hreflang annotations that Google recommends for each language are added by the developer.
• Nothing to patch every week. A static website has no exposed database or admin panel. The project’s dependencies are updated when whoever maintains it decides.
• Real ownership. If the repository is in your name, any developer who knows Astro can take over.

What you lose:

• Autonomy over the design. Your team can edit text and articles if a content management system is connected. A new section or a layout change goes through the developer.
• Ease of changing provider. Finding someone to maintain a WordPress site is easy. A custom project requires the next developer to read and understand the code.

Framer vs WordPress vs code: the 10 criteria that decide

This table sums up what matters for a services website. The specific prices are in the previous sections.

Speed is measured on your website, not on the technology

There are fast and slow websites built with Framer, with WordPress and in code, so do not trust generic comparisons. Measure yours and the ones your provider has built with PageSpeed Insights, Google’s free tool.

1. Paste in the URL and look at the mobile result first.
2. Focus on the real user data. This is Chrome data from the last 28 days, and PageSpeed shows the 75th percentile: the value below which 3 out of 4 visits fall.
3. Compare them with Google’s thresholds. Loading (LCP) should be under 2.5 seconds; responsiveness (INP), under 200 milliseconds; and visual stability (CLS), under 0.1.
4. If the page gets few visits, PageSpeed shows data for the whole domain or none at all. Then all you have is the lab diagnosis: a simulation with a fixed device and network, which may not match reality.
5. Measure 3 different pages: the home page, a service page and a blog article.

Once the website is live, the Core Web Vitals report in Search Console groups similar pages and alerts you to the ones performing poorly, also with real data.

And put it in context. Google says it always tries to show the most relevant content, even if the page experience is poor. When a lot of helpful content is competing, a good experience can contribute to success.

6 questions that decide your website’s technology

Answer thinking about your website 2 years from now, not today’s. Each answer points to one or two options; the ones that say “any” do not count. If you would rather have the tally done for you, there is the interactive test.

1. Who is going to change the website and what will they change?

• Us, including the design and new campaign pages: Framer.
• Us, but only text, photos and articles: any.
• The provider, once we send them the changes: WordPress or code.

2. Do you need anything more than pages, a blog and forms? For example, bookings with payment, a client area, a shop or courses.

• No: any.
• Yes, and there is an established plugin that does it: WordPress.
• Yes, and it is something specific to your business that would have to be programmed: code.

3. How much content will you have in 2 years’ time?

• The service pages and a blog with dozens of articles: any.
• Thousands of articles or listings, or content that comes from a database: WordPress or code. Framer supports it, but charges by volume.

4. In how many languages?

• One: any.
• 2 or 3: any. In Framer, each language is an extra monthly fee.
• More than 3, with a blog in each one: WordPress or code.

5. Who will maintain the website 3 years from now?

• Nobody, we want to forget about updates: Framer.
• A provider with a maintenance plan: WordPress or code.
• Someone technical on our own team: code or WordPress.

6. If you change provider one day, what do you need to take with you?

• The content; if the design has to be rebuilt, it gets rebuilt: Framer.
• The whole website, to host it wherever we want: WordPress or code.

How to read the result. Count how many times each option comes up.

• Mostly Framer answers: choose Framer. If you already get visits from Google, take the Pro plan for the redirects.
• Mostly WordPress answers, or an “established plugin” in question 2: choose WordPress, with maintenance contracted from day one.
• Mostly code answers: choose custom code, with the repository in your name and someone to maintain it.
• A tie: questions 1 and 5 decide. Getting who edits or who maintains wrong is the most expensive mistake to fix later.

Our view: custom code is not for everyone

At NOR studio we build websites in Framer, WordPress and our own code, and we choose based on who is going to edit and who is going to maintain. Our own website was on Framer and we are moving it to our own code, as we did with Zoundroom. Even so, we do not recommend code to everyone.

We do not recommend custom code when:

• You want to change the design or build campaign pages without asking anyone. That is what Framer is for.
• You need bookings, a shop or a client area and there is already an established plugin that does it. Programming it from scratch costs more and takes longer to get right.
• The website is small and is not going to grow. The extra development hours do not pay off.
• You are not going to have anyone technical at your side. A custom project with nobody to maintain it is harder to hand over than a WordPress site.

We do recommend it when there is a lot of content or several languages, technical SEO matters and there is a stable provider behind it. That is the case with Zoundroom, with its blog in several languages.

What we value in Framer is that clients can edit with confidence and there is nothing to update. We keep an eye on the monthly extras and on the fact that leaving it means rebuilding the website.

What we value in WordPress is that it is free and a lot of people know it. We keep an eye on unnecessary plugins and on the maintenance that nobody does.

What to do on Monday

1. Take the test with the person who is going to edit the website, not just with whoever is paying for it.
2. Run your current website and 3 websites built by your provider through PageSpeed Insights, on mobile, and note down the real user data.
3. Ask for the quote in 2 columns: initial cost and annual cost. In the annual cost, break down platform or hosting, licences, languages, editors and maintenance.
4. Ask in writing whose name the domain, the platform account or the code repository will be in.
5. If your current website gets visits from Google, insist on the redirect map before approving the design. We explain it in the guide to changing your website without losing rankings.

If you would like to go through it with us, see how we approach web design or, straight away, let’s talk about your case.