In 2025, having a website is a non-negotiable part of doing business. But not all websites are created equal. One of the first choices many business owners face is whether to go with a custom-designed site or a pre-built template. On the surface, templates can look like a fast, affordable option. But dig deeper, and the decision becomes far more nuanced.
At Futurelab, we’ve helped brands of all shapes and sizes make that decision - from high-end film companies like MPFilms to fun, personality-driven eCom stores like Proper Plushies. In this guide, we’ll walk through the pros, cons, and real-world outcomes of both options, so you can make an informed choice for your brand.
Table of Contents
- 1. The Rise of DIY Templates
- 2. The Illusion of Customisation
- 3. What Custom Design Really Gives You
- 4. Case Study: MPFilms
- 5. Case Study: Proper Plushies
- 6. SEO, Speed & Scalability
- 7. Time & Cost: The Honest Trade-Off
- 8. What Type of Businesses Should Go Custom?
- 9. When Templates Are Still a Smart Choice
- 10. What to Expect Working With Futurelab
1. The Rise of DIY Templates
Templates have exploded in popularity, and for good reason. Platforms like Shopify, Webflow, and Squarespace have made it incredibly easy to spin up a site in hours. For early-stage founders or side hustlers, that’s powerful. You get something functional, fast, and relatively low-cost.
But there’s a catch: templates are built to be generic. They have to cater to everyone ... which means they’re rarely optimised for anyone. You’re shoehorning your unique business into someone else’s framework. Fine for MVPs. Limiting for brands.
2. The Illusion of Customisation
Most templates market themselves as "highly customisable," but in reality, you're only changing colours, fonts, and maybe some layout elements. The core structure is still fixed. You can’t truly control flow, interactions, or hierarchy. Worse, many templates come with bloated code, unnecessary scripts, and performance issues you can't easily fix.
3. What Custom Design Really Gives You
Custom design means starting from the ground up, around your goals, not a grid. It’s not just about aesthetics. It’s about how your users flow through the site, what actions you want them to take, and how to reduce friction at every step. You get:
- Fully optimised mobile experience
- Lean code, fast load times
- Custom animations or interactions
- Flexible page layouts built around your actual content
It’s design aligned with your brand and your business logic - not a template’s constraints.
4. Case Study: MPFilms
MPFilms is a high-end film and production company. Their clientele includes yacht builders, real estate developers, and luxury brands. They needed a site that spoke to that level of quality, cinematic, sleek, minimalist but bold.
A template couldn’t have captured that essence. We built them a custom site from scratch: full-screen reels, smooth transitions, and typography that felt as premium as their showreel. Every section was tailored to let the visuals breathe and create a sense of polish.
5. Case Study: Proper Plushies
On the other end of the spectrum, we worked with Proper Plushies which is a dropshipping eCom brand with personality at its core. Their site needed to feel fun, youthful, and giftable. The challenge was to combine playfulness with trust.
A template would’ve given them a bland grid. Instead, we built playful hover states, animated product cards, and a homepage that felt like a marshmallow exploded (in a good way). That personality is part of what drives conversions, it makes people feel something. That’s what templates often lack.
6. SEO, Speed & Scalability
Custom sites often come with better performance. Why? Because we’re not loading unused features or carrying legacy scripts. This matters for SEO. Google favours fast, well-structured, accessible websites. Custom builds give you more control over headings, image optimisation, semantic structure, and accessibility.
- Lean & Mean Code: Templates often come bundled with extensive CSS and JavaScript to cater to a multitude of potential uses. Much of this code may go unused by your specific site, leading to unnecessary bloat that slows down page load times. Custom builds include only the code essential for your site's functionality and design, resulting in faster loading and a better user experience.
- Optimized for Core Web Vitals: Google's Core Web Vitals (Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift) are critical ranking factors. Custom design allows for meticulous optimization of images, scripts, and server response times, directly improving these scores.
- Semantic HTML & Structure: Custom development enables the precise use of semantic HTML5 tags (e.g.,
<article>,<section>,<nav>). This provides clearer structural cues to search engines, helping them understand the hierarchy and relevance of your content more effectively than generic template structures might allow. - Structured Data (Schema Markup): Implementing detailed schema markup for rich snippets (like reviews, products, FAQs, articles) is often more straightforward and flexible with a custom build. This can significantly enhance your site’s appearance and click-through rates in search results.
- URL Structure Control: You get complete authority over your URL structures. Clean, keyword-rich, and user-friendly URLs are a positive, albeit minor, SEO signal. Templates might impose rigid URL patterns.
- Mobile-First by Design: While most templates are responsive, a custom design process inherently prioritizes a mobile-first approach from the foundational stages. This ensures an optimal experience on all devices, aligning perfectly with Google\'s mobile-first indexing.
- Enhanced Crawlability & Indexability: A logical site architecture, clean code, and an optimized internal linking strategy, all more controllable in a custom build - make it easier for search engine bots to crawl and index your site efficiently.
- Accessibility (a11y): Custom design provides the opportunity to build a site that meets WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) standards from the outset, making your site usable for people with disabilities and also benefiting SEO, as many accessibility practices overlap with SEO best practices.
In essence, while templates offer a quick start, custom builds provide granular control over all the technical SEO aspects that contribute to higher rankings and better visibility. This control is vital for businesses serious about organic growth.
And as your site grows, maybe you add a blog, a booking flow, or gated content. A custom framework makes it easier to scale. You’re not locked into what the template allows.
7. Time & Cost: The Honest Trade-Off
Templates are cheaper upfront. Custom sites cost more. But you’re not just paying for pixels, you’re investing in performance, brand clarity, and strategic thinking. Templates might save you £2,000 now, but if you have to rebuild in 9 months when you hit limitations, was it really cheaper?
At Futurelab, our custom projects start from £750 for simple landing pages and scale based on complexity. But even at the entry level, you’re getting something unique.
8. What Type of Businesses Should Go Custom?
- Brands with a strong identity or visual style
- eCom stores relying on product storytelling and conversion flow
- Agencies, consultants, or creatives where polish = credibility
- Any business that plans to scale or evolve its site over time
If your site is central to how you make money, custom is almost always worth it.
9. When Templates Are Still a Smart Choice
We’re not anti-template. In fact, for side projects, short-term MVPs, or budget-tight startups, they can be perfect. You can even launch with a template and upgrade to custom later (many of our clients do exactly that).
The key is knowing when you’ve outgrown it. If your brand feels boxed in or your site can’t grow with you, that’s when to make the leap.
10. What to Expect Working With Futurelab
We don’t just “design websites.” We ask questions. We learn your business. We create layouts around your content, your goals, and your users. Whether you’re a yacht-filming crew or a plushie-slinging eCom wizard! You get a site that feels yours.
Everything we do is built around clarity, conversion, and long-term value. And we don’t disappear after launch. We’re here to help as your business grows.
So if you're stuck in template limbo, or just want an honest take on what your site could be... drop us a message. Let's make something that doesn't just look good, but works.
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