Pre-built systems are the perfect choice for most people. WordPress in particular is a free system used by thousands. We use it on this site for example. However it comes with a lot of overhead. It is designed to be very general purpose which means the underlying code must be more complex. There are thousands of "plugins" which add to it's features. For them to install and work properly there are limits on how the code must be written and standards that must be followed. All this bloats the code.
Custom code can be lean and mean, but it's expensive to develop. If you are not sure exactly what functions and features you need, you will waste time and money figuring it out. For most people the free Content Management Systems (CMS) are a quicker and cheaper route to online business success.
We have spent lots of time in the last two years developing what we call our "Listing Code". The name came from the fact our first project was for a Realtor. Since then we have come to realize that lots of businesses can be described as doing things with lists. The concept works for car dealers and many others.
We have gotten to the point where are beginning to deploy the Listing Code on sites where we sell our digital pictures. The stock photo market is huge and filled with well-funded players. We can not possibly compete directly against these guys. Out strategy is to build out a lot of small photo sites on niche domains. This is where the Listing Code comes into play.
With our lightweight code and small sites we don't need a database. We keep all the pages as simple html. As a result we can run our sites on cheap, shared servers. If a vendor fails the sites are easy to move.
In addition, we avoid a "footprint", Google has traditionally liked WordPress sites but systems to build thin WordPress sites that are very close to spam have proliferated. There are thousands of sites currently under construction to take advantage of online opportunities. They are sold to the technically challenged as a way to start making money without knowing how to write code. At some point we think the spam sites will become such a large percentage of the total the search engines will start to downrate them.
In addition, sites based on popular software are targets for hackers. With so many of them published there is a large potential reward for finding a way to penetrate them. There is little value to a hacker in targeting our sites.
We see lots of internet marketing programs telling people that don't know how to code that it will be easy for them to have whatever they need written for them by contract programmers they hire online. Given the fun and games we have had developing what we need that is unlikely.
Computer code is very specific. It is not reasonable to think some programmer, perhaps with a different native language, can somehow figure out what you meant, rather than what you said. In addition, things that seem important at first may become less so as your ideas mature. What worked for us was an ongoing interaction between my son the programmer and me. I would say what I wanted. He would deliver what he thought I needed. I would try it out and find features/issues to add or change. He would apply the suggestions and we would do it again.
After a few of these iterative cycles the underlying programs start to look like spagetti and the mental models of what the data is and how it should be organized change. Then it is time for a ground up re-write of the code and the process starts again. After several years of this we think we are getting close to a viable product.
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