The problem with templated themes

We get it. Templates are tempting. WordPress, Squarespace or Wix theme builders promise quick, cheap, good-looking websites that anyone can launch with a few clicks. No devs, no drama, no decisions. Just pick a theme, change some colours, and away you go.

But we’ll be honest with you: templates don’t work for brands that want to stand out. They’re built to be generic. And when you’re trying to grow, compete, and convert? Generic isn’t the one.

You’re not saving time – you’re buying someone else’s limitations

Sure, a template like Divi or Avada gets you a website quickly. But it’s not your website. It’s a pre-built structure designed for the masses. Which means the second you try to do something unique – like add a feature, customise a layout, or shift a flow – you hit a wall.

What starts as “plug and play” becomes “fight and fix.” You spend more time working around the template than actually building what you need. And when you’re not an expert, that usually gives you that ‘I want to tear my hair out’ feeling.

Templates are bloated by default

To appeal to everyone, template themes come packed with options: sliders, animations, widgets, headers, footers, colour pickers, even entirely templated websites you can just click into existence.

Sounds pretty good, yeah? Until you realise your users have to load all of that – even the parts you’re not using.

That extra weight slows everything down. It’s bad for user experience, worse for mobile, and absolutely brutal for SEO.

You’re sharing a design with strangers

If you’ve seen that layout before, it’s because so has everyone else. Templates get reused thousands of times. And while that might be fine for personal blogs or hobby projects (shout out to Robyn’s Dungeons & Dragons wiki), it’s not fine for a brand that’s trying to look credible, modern, or premium.

Your website shouldn’t feel familiar. It should feel unmistakably you. A template makes you look like the business equivalent of clip art, and that hasn’t been cool since 1995.

Editing a temple isn’t always simple.

“Just customise it,” they said. Cool, cheers for that one, buddy. But every time you want to make a change, you’re dealing with someone else’s logic, someone else’s CSS, and usually a back-end that’s more duct tape than dashboard.

Updates are painful. Design tweaks break things. And if your content team’s not technical? Forget it. They’re stuck trying to shoehorn your messaging into boxes that weren’t made for it.

You’re setting yourself up for a rebuild

Here’s the part most people realise too late: templates don’t scale. The more your brand evolves, the more your site needs to do. And the more your templated site tries to flex, the more it fights back.

Eventually, you’ll hit a ceiling, and the only option is to start again. So much for saving money.

The bottom line

Templates offer convenience, but what they actually give you is compromise. Less control, less performance, less originality. If you’re serious about your brand and where it’s going, build something that’s actually made for it.

Want a website that actually stands out?

We build custom websites from the ground up. We don’t shortcut. We don’t template. We work with you to figure out what you need and make it happen in a way that you and your customers will love. Check out our digital capabilities, then come and have a chat with us.