The CMS your business uses is the system your team uses to update content. Wrong choice = team can't update the site = the website slowly goes stale and you pay a developer for every change. Right choice = a non-technical staff member edits a page in five minutes. Pick deliberately.
WordPress
- Good at: brochure sites, content-heavy editorial, blogs, businesses that need control of every detail. The Irish developer pool is huge; finding help is easy.
- Bad at: staying secure if neglected. Most "hacked WordPress site" stories trace back to ignored updates.
- Cost: €0 software; €5–€30/month hosting; €100–€300/year in commercial themes and plugins.
- Verdict for Irish SMBs: still the default for content sites. Use a small set of well-maintained plugins. Set up automated updates and daily backups, or pay for a maintenance retainer.
Shopify
- Good at: e-commerce. The cleanest path from "I want to sell things online" to "I'm selling things online." Strong Irish payment integrations (Stripe, Revolut Business, AIB).
- Bad at: heavily-content-led businesses where blog and product live side-by-side. The blog is an afterthought.
- Cost: €29–€299/month base, plus payment processing fees, plus apps that add up quickly.
- Verdict: if e-commerce is the business, Shopify is rarely the wrong answer. If e-commerce is a side feature, look elsewhere.
Webflow
- Good at: design-led sites where the visual quality matters and the team is small. Excellent CMS for editorial pages.
- Bad at: complex e-commerce, large content libraries, sites with non-designer editors.
- Cost: €15–€30/month for hosting, plus Webflow's own design subscription if you build in-house.
- Verdict: excellent for studio-built portfolio sites and small-to-medium brochure sites. Lock-in is real — migrating off Webflow is painful.
Squarespace
- Good at: very small businesses, photographers, restaurants, side-businesses. The fastest path from zero to live site.
- Bad at: growing past a small site; SEO at scale; custom functionality.
- Cost: €15–€55/month all-in.
- Verdict: a sensible starting CMS for a one-person business that needs a site this week. Plan to outgrow it.
Headless CMS (Sanity, Storyblok, Contentful)
- Good at: sites with structured content, multi-channel publishing (web + app + email), modern static-generated front-ends.
- Bad at: small teams without development capacity. The editor experience is excellent; the developer cost is real.
- Cost: €0–€100/month CMS + custom front-end development.
- Verdict: increasingly the right answer for content-led sites that take performance seriously. Not the right answer for one-person businesses.
How to choose, in three questions
- What's the primary thing this site does? Sell? Inform? Both? E-commerce-first → Shopify. Content-first → WordPress or headless. Studio-portfolio → Webflow.
- Who edits the content day-to-day? Non-technical owner → WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify. Designer → Webflow. Developer team → anything; headless is fine.
- How long do you expect to use this site? 2 years → almost any CMS works. 10 years → stick with the well-supported standards (WordPress, Shopify, headless on a major framework).