Template vs bespoke: which is right for you?

A website template is a ready-made design. The structure, layouts and styling are done, and you replace the placeholder words and images with your own. A bespoke (or custom) website is designed from scratch around your business, your clients and your brand.

Here’s how that looks with Bloom specifically, so you can see the real difference rather than a generic one:

Both run on WordPress with Divi 5, and with both you can update your website yourself once it’s live. So the choice isn’t between a “proper” website and a lesser one. It’s about how much of the design needs to be shaped around you.

You’ll see templates described as a good fit for people starting out, and bespoke as being for established businesses. That’s a fair shorthand, and it’s how my own pages describe them, but it isn’t how I’d make the decision.

Imagine two made-up businesses. One is a massage therapist who has been working solo for ten years, has a loyal client list and offers four treatments. The other is a brand-new clinic opening with a training academy attached and two very different audiences from day one. The first is very established and might be perfectly served by a well-chosen template. The second is brand new and would probably struggle to squeeze into one.

So instead of asking “am I established enough for bespoke?”, it’s more useful to work through the five questions below.

A template costs much less up front because the design work has already been done and is shared across everyone who buys it. On my shop, templates are described as budget-friendly. A bespoke website is a bigger investment because every page is designed and built for you. My bespoke projects are scoped in a proposal and client agreement setting out the scope, timeline, payment schedule and revisions, with a deposit to secure your place in the calendar.

Whichever you choose, remember the ongoing costs, such as hosting, your domain and your Divi licence, which apply to both. My guide to website running costs covers these. A sensible rule is not to spend so much on the website that there’s nothing left for photos, marketing or the business itself.

A template is built to help you launch quickly. The design is ready, so the main thing setting your pace is how fast you can add your own content and work through the videos. Bespoke takes longer, because there are real stages to go through: getting to know your business, planning the site, designing it, building and testing it across desktop and mobile, and then launching together.

If you’re opening a new premises or launching a new service on a fixed date, a template can get you live in time, and you can always step up later.

This is the factor I’d weigh most heavily. Templates work best when your business fits a fairly standard shape: a set of treatments or sessions, prices, an about page, reviews and a way to book. Most solo practitioners and many small salons and studios fit that shape well.

Bespoke starts to make sense when your business doesn’t fit neatly, for example:

On the Jazz Beauty project, for example, the clinic and the academy had two very different audiences who needed to find their way quickly, which is the kind of structure a ready-made template isn’t designed for.

This one surprises people. Whichever route you choose, a website is only as good as what goes into it: your photos, your service descriptions, your prices and your story.

With a template, you’ll be adding all of that yourself, and the demo images and text have to be replaced with your own. With bespoke, the design is shaped around your content, so it helps a great deal to have it, or at least a clear plan for it, before the design starts. If you go bespoke with anyone, it’s worth asking up front whether copywriting and photography are included.

If your content isn’t ready, that’s fine, but factor in the time to sort it. The questions to answer before building a website is a good way to start pulling it together.

Think about what your business might look like in two or three years. If you expect to stay much as you are, with a few new treatments here and there, a template will handle that comfortably, because you can add, remove and rearrange pages and sections.

If you’re planning bigger changes, you have choices. With Bloom, you can start with a template and step up to the Bloom Library, a larger, swappable library of sections for adding services, courses and pages as you grow, without starting again. What is the Bloom Library? explains how that works. Or, if the business is going somewhere a template structure can’t follow, bespoke gives you room for more pages, services, locations and integrations.

A template is probably right if:

Bespoke is probably right if:

Something in between might suit you if:

And if you choose a template now, that isn’t a dead end. Plenty of businesses start with something simple and step up when the business is ready. The signs you’ve outgrown your website will tell you when that time comes.

Neither is better in general. A template suits a business with a fairly standard shape that wants to launch sooner and manage its own site. A custom or bespoke site suits a business with an unusual model, more than one audience or a need for a design built entirely around it.

The underlying layout can be recognisable, because other businesses can buy the same template. Changing the colours, fonts, photos, words and sections makes a big difference, though, and with your own content it should feel like yours.

No. I’d look at your budget, timeline, how unusual your business model is, how ready your content is and your growth plans, rather than how long you’ve been trading.

Yes. With Bloom, you can start with a template and step up to the Bloom Library or a bespoke design as your business grows.

With Bloom, yes. Bespoke sites are built on Divi 5 and handed over with training, so you can make the everyday updates your business needs yourself. Templates are designed to be self-managed in the same way.