Templates are everywhere. Squarespace, Wix, WordPress themes — they promise a professional website in hours for a fraction of the cost. And for many situations, they work fine.
We chose a different path. Every project at Linjerum is designed and built from scratch. Not because we enjoy extra work, but because we believe it produces fundamentally better results.
The template trap
Templates solve a generic problem. They’re designed to work for thousands of different businesses, which means they’re optimised for none of them. The compromises are subtle but significant:
Your brand disappears. When your website uses the same layout as hundreds of other businesses, you blend into the noise. Visitors have seen that exact hero section, that exact grid layout, that exact pricing page before. Nothing about your site says “this is us.”
You work around the template, not with it. Every template has constraints — where images go, how text flows, what animations are possible. You end up adapting your content to fit the template rather than designing the experience around your message.
Performance suffers. Templates ship with code for every possible feature, even the ones you don’t use. Unused CSS, JavaScript for components you never touch, compatibility layers for edge cases that don’t apply to you. The result is a heavier, slower site than necessary.
What custom gives you
Design that fits your brand exactly
When we start a project, we start with your brand — your values, your aesthetic, your audience. The design follows from there, not from a template’s constraints.
This means every detail is intentional. The spacing, the typography, the colour palette, the way elements animate on scroll — everything is chosen to reinforce your brand and guide your visitors toward the action you want them to take.
Only the code you need
A custom site contains exactly the code required for your specific features. Nothing more. This translates directly into faster load times, better Core Web Vitals scores, and higher Google rankings.
Our sites typically score 95+ on Google PageSpeed Insights out of the box. Most template sites struggle to break 70.
No limitations on functionality
Need a custom booking flow? A real-time dashboard? An integration with your existing systems? With a template, you’re limited to what plugins and extensions offer. With custom development, if you can describe it, we can build it.
Future-proof architecture
Templates age poorly. When the template maker stops updating, or a critical plugin conflicts with an update, you’re stuck. Custom code built on stable, well-supported frameworks continues to work reliably for years with minimal maintenance.
When templates make sense
We’re not dogmatic about this. Templates are the right choice when:
- Your budget is under €2,000
- You need to launch within days, not weeks
- Your needs are genuinely simple (a basic blog, a simple portfolio)
- You plan to replace the site soon anyway
For anything beyond that — anything where your website is a meaningful business tool — custom development pays for itself.
Our approach
We build with Elixir and Phoenix LiveView. It’s a modern, high-performance stack that gives us full control over every aspect of the user experience. Real-time interactions, sub-second load times, and a codebase that’s clean enough to maintain for years.
Every project gets a unique design, purposeful animations, and thoughtful typography. No themes, no page builders, no compromises.
Want to see what custom looks like? Browse our design showcases or get in touch at support@linjerum.com.