Custom design or template: when each one is right

A template is not the cheap version of a custom design; it is a different trade. You buy decisions someone else already made, and you pay for them with the freedom to undo them. For an organisation that mainly needs to be online quickly, with a site that mainly informs, that is a fair swap. For a brand that has to stand apart from five providers selling the same thing, it is the most expensive saving available, because you are buying visibility in a look that belongs to nobody. The question is not which is better, but how much rests on the design in your case.

When a template is right

• There is a date, and the site has to exist by then
• The content is the value: documentation, news, a programme, an archive
• Your direction is not settled and you want to see what works first
• The budget does more good spent on writing or advertising

When it is not

• You charge a price you visibly have to justify
• Your competitors are recognisably running the same theme
• There is a process inside the site: configuring, booking, requesting
• You already have an identity and the site has to carry it

There is a middle route that fits more often than either extreme: a custom design for the handful of pages where it actually happens — home, the service, the request — and one strict grid carrying everything else. Build time stays sane and the site still does not look like someone else’s.