If you need a new website and you're familiar with WordPress, you might think that's always the best available option. And certainly WordPress has its benefits, and is clearly a popular choice among people and businesses, large and small.

And WordPress is not the only option, and sometimes it's not necessarily even the best option. It all depends on the specific needs of your web project. Here are some situations in which WordPress may not be the ideal solution for your website.

Your website needs a lot of customization

WordPress is great for creating websites if you're OK with using themes and plugins as they come, out of the box, with minimal customization. And there's a multitude of themes and plugins to handle a wide variety of needs. But the more unique and unusual your needs are, the more problematic WordPress becomes.

What invariably ends up happening is that your WordPress developer comes up with a variety of workarounds to make the website do what you want it to do. Or they have to install a number of plugins, some of which are well-supported and well-maintained over time and some of which aren't.

The more unusual or unique your website, the more efficient and effective it can be to let go of WordPress and opt for a custom-built solution.

You feel like the WordPress interface is too cluttered

Anyone who uses WordPress is familiar with the menu items listed in the left column. As you begin to add more themes and plugins, that list of options can get pretty long and cluttered. And while it's convenient to have quick access to some of these elements, you may not need to see all of those options every single time.

Also, no matter how many categories you have for your posts and/or pages, you can still only access them via the Posts and/or Pages link in the left column. True, you can filter your posts and/or pages by category to access the ones you want. But having to do that every single time can be annoying.

You hate having to update the site every few weeks

Every so often, WordPress will send you an email asking you to update to the latest version. Sometimes these versions address long-standing security concerns. But most of the time, the updates are the result of new features being added to the WordPress core system. In fact, sometimes a security issue will arise because WordPress decided to add a new feature.

WordPress isn't the only one asking you to update to the latest version. Themes and plugins often require updates as well. In fact, themes and plugins sometimes require updates only because WordPress itself has generated an update.

It's fine if these updates fix security issues or add elements that you would like to incorporate into your site. But if not, the constant updating can be annoying.

The last two reasons alone are probably not enough to move away from WordPress. But all three reasons taken together — or even just the first one — can provide a compelling case for not using WordPress to build your site.

There's no doubt that WordPress is a powerful solution. But it's not the only one. A  custom website may be a better way for you to go. Contact me if you have questions about which is the best solution for your particular needs.