Django vs WordPress for a custom business app: which?

Quick answer

Choose WordPress when your project is mainly content, such as pages, posts and simple forms or bookings, that staff need to edit. Choose Django when it is really an application: users with roles, records, rules and workflows, like a customer portal or job management system. Many businesses use both: WordPress for the website, Django for the tool.

A business owner asks for “a website where customers can log in, see their jobs, upload documents and approve quotes”. A WordPress developer says that can be done with plugins. A Python developer says it should be built properly in Django. Both may be right, and the choice decides what the project costs to build, how easy it is to change, and who you depend on for years. The key question is not which tool is better, but what kind of thing you are actually building.

What each one is

WordPress is a content management system, written in PHP, built for publishing pages and posts. It has a huge library of themes and plugins and an admin area that non-technical staff can use. It can be extended into applications with custom code.

Django is a web framework, written in Python, built for applications. It gives developers tools for databases, user accounts, permissions, forms and security, and an admin area for managing data. It has no themes or page builder; everything visitors see is built for your project.

Django and WordPress side by side

Signs your project is a content site

• Most of the work is pages, posts, images and enquiries.
• Staff need to edit text and add pages regularly.
• Logged-in features are simple: a members’ download area, a basic booking form.
• Search visibility for the content is important.

WordPress is the sensible choice. Building a content site in Django means building, by hand, features WordPress already has.

Signs your project is an application

• Users log in to do things, not just read.
• There are different user types with different permissions: customers, staff, managers, subcontractors.
• Records relate to each other: customers have jobs, jobs have visits, visits have photos and invoices.
• There are business rules: approvals, status changes, notifications, calculations.
• It connects to other systems, such as accounting or scheduling software.

Django is usually the better fit. Our guide to a client portal for a small business covers one of the most common applications of this kind.

The admin area, compared

Both tools come with an admin area, but they serve different people. The WordPress admin is built for editors: writing pages, uploading images, managing menus and publishing posts. It is friendly to non-technical staff from day one. The Django admin is built for managing data: customers, jobs, invoices and the relationships between them. It is excellent for office staff who need to look up and correct records, and it can be tailored, but it is not a page editor. If your team’s daily work is updating records, Django’s admin will feel natural. If their daily work is updating website content, WordPress will.

Growth and change over time

Think about where the project will be in three years. Content sites tend to grow sideways: more pages, more posts, more services. WordPress handles that well. Applications tend to grow deeper: new rules, new user types, new integrations, new reports. Each addition to a WordPress-based application adds another plugin or another piece of custom code that has to work with everything else, and over time the combination becomes fragile. Django is designed for that kind of growth, because the data model and the rules live in one codebase, written for your business, and can be changed deliberately. If you expect the tool to become central to how the business runs, plan for depth from the start.

Security

Both can be run securely, and both can be run badly. Django includes protection against many common attacks by default and issues regular security releases. WordPress’s core is well maintained; most WordPress security problems come from outdated plugins, weak passwords and poor hosting. Whichever you choose, keep it updated and follow the basics in the OWASP Top Ten, the standard list of web application risks. Our WordPress security guide covers the WordPress side.

Hosting and running costs

WordPress runs on almost any PHP host, including low-cost shared hosting. Django needs Python hosting, usually a virtual server or a platform that supports Python applications, which is widely available but takes more set-up. Both need backups, monitoring and updates. Over a few years, the bigger cost difference is developer time: WordPress changes are often small and quick, while Django changes always involve a developer.

The middle way: use both

Many businesses run WordPress for the public website, where staff edit pages, publish news and manage search visibility, and a Django application on a subdomain for the logged-in tool. The website sells; the application serves customers who have already bought. They can share data through APIs. This keeps each tool doing what it is best at, and means the marketing team never needs a developer to change a headline.

A worked example

A building maintenance firm wanted customers to log repairs, see job progress, approve quotes and download certificates. The first proposal used WordPress with a dozen plugins for forms, user roles, file uploads and workflows. It would have worked for the first year, then become fragile as the rules grew. The firm chose a Django application for the customer portal and kept its WordPress website for marketing, linked by a “client login” button. The portal handled jobs, quotes and approvals properly, and the office could still edit the website themselves.

Questions to ask a developer

1. Is this mainly content or mainly an application, and why?
2. Who will maintain it, and what happens if you are unavailable?
3. Which parts will my staff be able to change without you?
4. How will updates and security patches be handled?
5. Do I own the code and the data?

Common mistakes

• Building a growing operations tool out of a dozen WordPress plugins that were never designed to work together.
• Building a simple marketing website in Django, then paying a developer for every headline change.
• Choosing the tool your nephew knows rather than the one the project needs.
• Not agreeing who owns the code and the data before the build starts.
• Skipping a written specification, so nobody can say when the project is finished.

The verdict

If it is a website with some interaction, use WordPress. If it is a system with users, records and rules, use Django or a similar framework. If it is both, use both.

Getting it built

Our custom WordPress websites are £499 one-off for up to eight pages. Our web applications start from £1,999 for custom portals, dashboards and booking systems, and custom business software starts from £1,499. Our guide to no-code versus custom development covers the other options, and all our prices are on the pricing page.