A template, or theme, is a ready-made design you fill with your own content. You get a working site in days, a lower upfront price and a layout other businesses have already tested. For a new business testing an idea, or a simple site with a few pages, that can be the right call.

Costs appear when your business doesn't fit the template. Any change outside its design means fighting the theme or adding plugins. That includes a new kind of section, a different mobile layout or a custom form. Popular templates are used by thousands of sites, so yours can end up looking like a competitor's. Many themes also ship with features you never use, and that extra code slows pages down.

A custom site is designed around your content, your audience and the action you want visitors to take. Every page is planned for its job, so there are fewer workarounds and less unused code. Your brand looks like itself, and the site can take on new pages and features without being rebuilt around someone else's layout.

Compare the two over two to three years instead of at launch. For a template, add its price, the plugins you will need, the hours spent bending it to fit and the redesign when you outgrow it. For a custom build, add the design and development fee and ongoing updates. If your website is central to how you win clients, the custom route often works out cheaper over that period. For a simple brochure site you will rarely change, a well-chosen template may be enough.

Choose a template if you need a site live this month on a small budget. It also suits a site with little content that you expect to replace within a year or two. Choose custom if your site has to stand apart from competitors, explain a complex service or hold content your team will keep adding. Every ENFORG project starts from a blank canvas in Figma. You get a fixed price before any work starts, so the cost of going custom is clear from day one.

It depends on the number of pages, the amount of content and the platform. Our projects start at convenient, and you get a fixed price in writing before any work starts.

Yes, and it is a common path. Keep your content, domain and analytics in good order so they move cleanly. Expect the custom site to be a new build: the design and structure are replaced and the content carries over.