A custom Laravel build used to be a luxury costing thousands. With AI it isn't anymore, and using your website as a brochure is starting to get expensive.
I've been building WordPress sites for ten years.
Ten.
I've installed more form plugins than I've had coffees. And I've had a lot of coffees.
So I'm not saying this from the outside, wagging a finger. I'm saying it from the inside, with 2016 PHP still under my nails:
Today it seems absurd to me that so many companies are still on WordPress.
I know. Breathe. Save the angry comment for the end, there's room.
Until very recently, the conversation with a client was always the same. They wanted a website and you gave them two paths.
Path one: WordPress. A theme, four plugins, a couple of weeks. Reasonable price. Everyone happy.
Path two: a custom build in Laravel. Made exactly for their business, no patches. Price: several thousand euros and a few months. The client made the same face you make when the mechanic says "it's the head gasket".
WordPress won. Every time. And it made sense.
Not because it was better. Because the other option was a luxury.
AI development tools have done something deeply unglamorous and deeply revolutionary: they've crashed the cost of building custom software.
What used to be weeks of grinding through forms, permissions, dashboards and tables is now far less. Not because AI does it on its own (whoever tells you that is selling a course), but because a developer who knows what they're doing now moves several times faster.
The result: a Laravel project that only companies with big-company budgets could afford is now something a small business can pay for without selling a kidney.
And that changes the question.
It used to be: can I afford something custom?
Now it's: can I afford to keep going without it?
Most WordPress sites I see do exactly one thing: exist.
A pretty homepage, a services page and a contact form that sends an email to an inbox nobody checks on Fridays. A digital brochure. Very cute. Very still.
Meanwhile the real business happens somewhere else: in a spreadsheet only one person understands, in three paid apps that don't talk to each other, in WhatsApp and in the owner's head.
With a custom build, the website stops being the shop window and becomes the shop, the warehouse and the office:
That's not a website anymore. That's your company running on the internet.
Sure. You can also carve a ham with a butter knife.
You can bolt on a booking plugin, a CRM plugin, an invoicing plugin, an advanced forms plugin and one more to stop the others from breaking. I've done it. Many times. It works, until you update one and everything falls over at eleven on a Sunday night.
WordPress is a superb tool for what it was born to do: publish content. For blogs, media and informational sites it's still a great choice, and I'll keep recommending it.
The problem is using it as the skeleton of a business that needs its own processes. That's building a house out of Lego from different boxes and praying the wind doesn't blow.
I'm not telling you to throw out your website tomorrow. I'm telling you to change the question.
Not "what website do I need?" but:
Which part of my company still runs by hand because my website can't do anything?
Write the answer down. It'll probably be a long list. And each item on it is probably costing you a few hours every week.
Five years ago, automating it cost so much it wasn't worth it.
Today it is.
And whoever notices before their competitors will be playing a different sport.
PS: If you made it this far with "but WordPress runs half the internet" ready to type: I know. I built a few bits of that half. That's exactly why I'm saying it.