When considering a new website build for a client, the first question is very rarely, “What should it look like?” … More often it’s, “How should it be built?”. Because how a website is built determines far more than how it looks.

The build approach defines how the site will perform, scale, integrate, and evolve over time, matching our client’s strategy to its future digital needs. It influences everything from speed and security to SEO, content management, ongoing costs, and how easily internal teams can actually use it day to day.

A beautiful website built on the wrong foundations can quickly become a bottleneck with large expense for change management, difficult maintenance, and misalignment with the business’s real needs. Conversely, the right build choice creates a platform that supports growth and scalability, adapts as the business changes, and delivers long-term return on investment.

At Thrive Online Group UK, we spend a lot of time helping businesses navigate this decision and one of the simplest ways to explain it is with a metaphor almost everyone understands:

Coffee Machines

At a glance, they all do the same thing, make coffee. However, coffee machines come in vastly different shapes, sizes, and levels of complexity, each designed for a very specific use case.

Some are compact, intuitive, and built for speed and consistency. Others are large, complex, and engineered for precision, volume, and full control. The difference isn’t about quality, it’s about context.

  • A small kitchen doesn’t need a café-grade machine.
  • A high-street coffee shop couldn’t survive with a pod machine.

Coffee machines vary in many aspects, size and footprint, complexity, scope and capability, maintenance demands, skill level required and Intended use case.

Comparing a coffee machine to a website, there’s no single “best” option only the right one for how you work, what you need today, and how you plan to grow tomorrow.

Some businesses need speed, reliability, and ease of use. Others require deep customisation, complex integrations, and complete architectural control. The mistake is treating all website builds as if they serve the same purpose.

Which brings us to the first and most common choice:

The Nespresso Machine: Platform‑Led Builds (WordPress, Elementor Hello, Astra, GeneratePress, Neve, OceanWP, Blocksy, Hello Biz)

Choosing a platform-led website build such as WordPress using a lightweight framework like Hello Elementor, is very much like choosing a Nespresso machine, it’s easy to use, cost‑effective, low maintenance and designed to deliver consistent results at the touch of a button

Why businesses love this option

A Nespresso machine doesn’t try to be everything, it focuses on doing it’s one task effectively. The same applies to a modern, well-architected Elementor build, which carries a host of benefits.

The benefits:

  • Fast to launch
  • Lower upfront cost
  • Simplified maintenance
  • Expandable
  • Efficient performance
  • Compact and elegant
  • Perfect for SMEs and scaling businesses

Much like pressing a button and getting a perfect coffee, a well-built platform-based site delivers:

  1. Consistent UX
  2. Strong SEO foundations
  3. Easy content management
  4. Dependable performance

And crucially you don’t need a specialist engineer every time you want to change the blend.

The Barista Machine: Fully Bespoke Website Builds (hand-coded, using modern web languages and frameworks)

At the other end of the spectrum is the full barista-grade coffee machine, the kind you find in high-end cafés. This is the equivalent of a fully bespoke website build, it’s powerful, impressive, and capable of extraordinary things but it comes with complexity.

What bespoke really means

A bespoke build gives you complete architectural control, with tailored functionality, highly customised user journeys, deep system integrations and a true digital asset built exactly to specification. However, this level of website build is not for every business and can come with trade-offs:

  • High upfront investment
  • Ongoing and cost heavy maintenance
  • Specialist dependency
  • Training requirements
  • Longer delivery timelines

Just like a barista machine, it’s not designed for casual use and is potentially a complete overbuild for smaller, localised or even growing multinational companies, however it shines when:

  1. The website is the product
  2. The business runs complex workflows
  3. Scale, security, or regulation demand custom engineering
  4. Performance and control outweigh simplicity

Chosen and handled well, it becomes a long-term asset. Chosen and handled poorly, it becomes an expensive liability.

Choosing the Right Machine for the Job

In practice, the decision often becomes clear when you look at how the business operates and your agency undertaking the job has taken the time to understand your business and its needs.

For many organisations, a platform-led build is exactly the right fit. Professional services firms such as accountants, consultants, legal practices and recruitment agencies need websites that establish credibility, generate leads, and communicate clearly. SMEs and growing businesses, from construction companies to B2B service providers and regional brands, need to look professional, rank well, and convert enquiries quickly. Retail brands running on platforms like Shopify rely on their website to support storytelling and campaigns, while the commerce engine does the heavy lifting. Hospitality and leisure businesses prioritise bookings, menus, galleries, and promotions, and early-stage start-ups focus on proving the model before investing in heavy infrastructure.

At the other end of the scale, some organisations genuinely need a bespoke approach. Enterprise and multinational businesses in sectors such as financial services, insurance, utilities, and telecoms require compliance, security, personalisation, and multi-region delivery. Marketplaces, SaaS platforms, and booking engines rely on the website as the product itself, not just a brochure. Heavily regulated industries like healthcare, fintech, and education demand custom permissions, audit trails, and strict data handling. High-volume e-commerce brands and digital-first businesses need bespoke logic, performance, and UX that off-the-shelf platforms simply can’t deliver.

The key takeaway is simple: The best website isn’t defined by how complex it is, but by how well it matches the business behind it. Choosing the right “machine” ensures the website works as a long-term asset, not an over-engineered expense or an underpowered compromise.

How Thrive Online Group UK Helps Clients Choose

Our role isn’t to push a platform or sell complexity, it’s to investigate, understand and align the build to our client’s business goals, internal capability, budget reality, growth roadmap and marketing strategy. Sometimes that means the sweet spot for our client is:

  • A lean, elegant Elementor build that delivers ROI fast

Or

  • A phased approach that starts platform-led and evolves over time

Or

  • Or a fully bespoke solution where the business case genuinely supports it

We architect websites the same way a great barista makes coffee… intentionally, precisely, and with the end user in mind. This is why we state that working with Thrive Online Group UK will Craft Design, Shape Strategy, Drive Impact.

My Closing Thoughts

Whether you need a Nespresso machine or a full barista setup depends on, who’s using it, how often, what results you expect and how much ongoing cost and effort you want to invest, all aligned with your current and future business strategy.

A great website isn’t defined by how complex it is but by how well it serves the business.

If you’re considering a new website and want honest guidance, Thrive Online Group UK is here to help.

About Thrive Online Group UK
Thrive Online Group UK is a full-service digital consultancy specialising in:

With teams on multiple continents, we build scalable, performance-driven digital platforms and marketing strategies that deliver measurable commercial impact.