Why we hand-code every site, without templates
The WordPress vs custom debate, settled by engineers: performance, SEO, control, durability. Where we stand as a Toulouse web agency.
In 2026, launching a web project almost always comes down to a binary choice: a pre-built theme installed on a generic CMS, or a site hand-coded by a team of engineers. At SARO Agency, we made our choice a long time ago. Here's why.
A website is not a visual deliverable — it's a software product. It lives, it's maintained, it warps over time. Its first version determines its trajectory over five years.
A site is not a disposable product
Most WordPress, Wix, or Shopify themes are designed to fit an average brief — one that has to please everyone and, by construction, serves no one in particular. The result is a site that looks like thousands of others, loads dozens of unnecessary scripts, and degrades as fast as the industry evolves.
A hand-coded site, by contrast, is built for a specific use. No plugins, no features you'll never need. Each line of code answers a concrete question: what does the user do, what do they expect, how do we reduce friction.
Performance: what Core Web Vitals are actually telling us
Google no longer ranks pages on keywords alone. Since the introduction of Core Web Vitals, three signals now weigh heavily on natural search rankings:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) — render time of the largest visible element
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint) — responsiveness to interactions
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) — visual stability of content
The average WordPress site loads 30 to 80 requests on initial render. A custom Next.js site, designed with discernment, typically loads 5 to 15 critical resources. That gap isn't marginal — it's structural.
SEO: structure beats patches
Many agencies sell SEO as something you bolt on after the fact. That's a mistake. Search ranking is decided first in the structure:
- Correct semantic HTML (one
<h1>, consistent hierarchy,<main>,<article>,<nav>) - Valid structured data (Schema.org: Organization, BreadcrumbList, Article, FAQ)
- Per-page metadata (canonical, hreflang, Open Graph)
- Dynamic sitemap and consistent robots.txt
A generic theme delivers a generic shell. A custom site delivers a platform whose every structural element has been thought through to be readable by Google, by humans, and by accessibility tools.
Control and durability
The code we write belongs to you. No license to renew, no plugin whose maintainer changes overnight, no surprise at the next security audit. You know what your site does because you know exactly what's inside it.
And when the time comes to evolve it — a new feature, a business integration, a partial redesign — there's no ceiling imposed by a third-party framework. The code reflects your business; it evolves at your pace.
For the actual numbers — what a custom site really costs, whether it's a brochure, e-commerce or SaaS — read our transparent 2026 pricing breakdown.
Our commitment
Every SARO site is:
- Hand-coded by CTI-certified engineers, with no template or generator
- Hosted in France on sovereign infrastructure
- Delivered with its source code, with no proprietary lock-in
- Monitored 24/7 with an average response time under 2h in 2024
It's harder to produce. It's slower to ship. But the result — a fast, indexable, durable site that looks like your brand and no one else's — justifies every hour spent writing clean code rather than stacking plugins.
The craft of the web isn't a slogan. It's how we work.