A template feels like a shortcut. You get something on screen in an afternoon and it looks close enough. The problem shows up six months later, when the business needs the one thing the template was never designed to do.
The assumptions you inherit
Every template encodes decisions about your data model, your users and your workflows — decisions made by someone who has never met your business. For a brochure site, that's fine. For infrastructure your operations depend on, you inherit constraints you didn't choose and can't easily remove.
Custom is cheaper than you think
The old argument for templates was cost. AI-accelerated engineering has changed that maths. We now ship custom platforms in weeks, not quarters — which means the durable, owned option is no longer a luxury reserved for the largest budgets.
Build on your own foundation and every future decision gets easier. Build on someone else's and you'll eventually pay to tear it out. We'd rather you only build it once.