We Migrated from WordPress to Custom Code. Here's What Happened.

Last year, a mortgage advisory firm came to us with a familiar problem: their WordPress site was breaking at the worst possible times.

Critical security updates would break their forms. Plugin conflicts took their site offline during peak hours. Page load times were pushing 6 seconds. They were paying £200/month for fixes and patches on top of hosting costs.

They asked us to rebuild it properly.

The Old Site

Platform: WordPress with Elementor
Plugins: 34 active (including 6 for forms alone)
Load time: 5.8 seconds average
Mobile score: 23/100 (Google PageSpeed)
Monthly maintenance: £200+ in fixes

The site looked fine, but underneath it was held together with digital duct tape.

The Rebuild

We started from scratch. No templates, no page builders, no plugin dependencies.

Tech stack:

Next.js for the frontend
PostgreSQL for data
Custom CMS for content management
Hosted on Vercel with global CDN

Timeline: 4 weeks from kickoff to launch

What Changed

Speed

Before: 5.8 second load time
After: 0.9 second load time
Google mobile score: 23/100 → 96/100

Stability

Before: 3 outages in 6 months, multiple broken forms
After: Zero downtime, zero broken functionality

Costs

Before: £150/month hosting + £200/month maintenance
After: £50/month hosting + £0 maintenance

Conversions

Before: 2.1% visitor-to-enquiry rate
After: 4.7% visitor-to-enquiry rate

That's 124% more leads from the same traffic.

The Objections We Hear

"But we can update WordPress ourselves"

You can - until an update breaks your contact forms and you spend 3 hours on support chats. Our clients get a simple admin panel that only does what they need. No way to break anything.

"Custom means we're locked into you"

The code is yours. Any competent developer can work with Next.js and React. Contrast that with being locked into Elementor's ecosystem forever.

"It's more expensive upfront"

True. But factor in the £2,400/year you're spending on maintenance and plugin subscriptions. Custom code pays for itself in 12-18 months, then keeps saving you money.

What We Learned

The client told us something interesting six months after launch: *"I used to dread checking my website. Now I forget it exists - in a good way."*

That's the point. Technology should work so well you don't think about it.

WordPress is fine for blogs and simple brochure sites. But when your website is a business-critical tool for generating leads and serving customers, you need something built for purpose.

Thinking About a Migration?

Here's what we'd check first:

What's actually broken? Sometimes a plugin cleanup fixes the immediate pain
What's your traffic worth? If faster = more conversions, the math is simple
What's your pain threshold? Some people don't mind monthly maintenance hassle

We're not anti-WordPress - we just think you should use the right tool for the job. When that job is "reliable business platform," custom code wins every time.

Want to talk through whether migration makes sense for your site? Drop us a message. We'll give you an honest assessment - no pitch, no pressure.