This question comes up in almost every early conversation about a new website, and the honest answer is: it depends on what you actually need the site to do, and who's going to be updating it after launch.
When WordPress is the right call
If you're going to be publishing blog posts, updating pages, or adding products regularly, and you want to be able to do that yourself without calling a developer every time, WordPress is usually the better fit. It has a mature ecosystem, a huge plugin library for common needs, and — when built properly with a custom theme instead of a bloated page builder — it can be just as fast and clean as a custom build.
When custom development makes more sense
If your site needs specific functionality that doesn't map to how WordPress (or its plugins) are designed to work — a custom booking flow, a client dashboard, an unusual integration between two systems — trying to force that into WordPress with a stack of plugins often ends up more fragile and harder to maintain than building it properly from scratch.
The honest middle ground
Most businesses actually fall into a middle category: WordPress core, with select custom-coded functionality where it's needed, rather than an all-or-nothing choice. That gets you the content-editing flexibility of WordPress without forcing every feature through a plugin that wasn't built for your specific use case.
The right answer depends on your specific situation — how often you'll update content, what functionality you actually need, and your budget. If you're not sure which side of that line your project falls on, that's exactly the kind of question worth a quick conversation before committing to either direction.