Choosing the Right CMS

A website isn’t just how your brand looks.
It’s how your business operates.

The CMS you choose determines how easy it is to update pages, launch campaigns, publish content, integrate marketing tools, and scale later. Most problems we get asked to “fix” aren’t design problems — they’re platform decisions made too early.

There isn’t one perfect CMS.
There is a right one for what you’re trying to do.

Here’s how the main options actually play out in the real world.

WordPress

WordPress is still the most common CMS on the internet. Not because it’s the newest — because it’s flexible and familiar.

It can run almost anything: marketing sites, property sites, memberships, education platforms, e-commerce. If a business has specific operational requirements, WordPress is often where we start.

Where it works well

• Businesses that need integrations (CRMs, booking systems, payments, automation)

• Content-heavy sites

• Membership or gated platforms

• Teams who need structured editing control

What to understand
WordPress isn’t a “set and forget” platform. It’s a system. Updates, hosting quality, and plugin decisions matter. Built properly, it’s powerful. Built poorly, it becomes slow and unstable.

The platform isn’t the issue — implementation is.

Framer

Framer is where a lot of modern marketing sites are moving (and we love it).

It sits in a rare middle ground: custom design quality without a full development build. For brands that care about presentation, speed, and being able to update their own site, it’s often the cleanest solution.

Where it works well

• Brand-led businesses

• Property marketing sites

• Launch campaigns

• Service businesses

• Teams that update their site regularly

Why we use it a lot
Pages publish instantly.
No plugin stack.
No dev tickets to change a headline.
Fast by default.

You get a site that feels custom, but behaves like a tool your team can actually use.

It’s not trying to be everything — it’s trying to be a very good marketing website platform.

Squarespace

Squarespace is a straightforward all-in-one platform. Hosting, editing, templates and security are handled for you.

It’s designed for simplicity and that’s its value.

Where it works well

• Small businesses starting out

• Personal brands

• Portfolio sites

• Low-maintenance websites

It launches quickly and looks polished.

The trade-off is flexibility. As soon as a business needs integrations, automation, or custom functionality, the platform becomes restrictive. Most companies outgrow it rather than scale with it.

Custom Build (Headless CMS: Sanity / DatoCMS)

This is the “build it properly from day one” option.

We design and develop the frontend, then connect it to a structured content system (usually Sanity or DatoCMS). The result is a high-performance site that can behave more like a product than a website.

Where it works well

• Large organisations

• Multi-location brands

• Complex content structures

• Platforms, not just marketing sites

• Businesses investing long-term

This gives total control BUT it’s an investment. It requires planning, development and ongoing support. It’s not about launching fast, it’s about building infrastructure.

So What Do We Recommend?

We don’t push a single platform.

We choose based on what the website needs to do:

The right CMS makes your website useful to your business, not just live on the internet.

Most people pick a platform first and try to make it fit.
We work backwards — from business, to behaviour, to system.

If you’re unsure what category your site actually falls into, that’s usually the first conversation we have.