A beautiful website that doesn't convert is an expensive brochure. A fast one built on a template still carries the template's weight. We do neither — every Baldwin site is designed for your buyers and coded from a blank file, so nothing exists on the page except what earns its place.
What "hand-coded" actually means
We built WordPress sites for a decade. This table isn't theory — it's the ledger of what we watched clients pay for.
| Typical WordPress Site | Baldwin Hand-Coded Site | |
|---|---|---|
| Page weight | 2–4 MB — theme, builder, and plugin assets load on every page whether used or not | Typically under 100 KB — only the code your page needs exists |
| Load time | 3–6 seconds is common; every second past two costs conversions | Sub-second on real-world connections; built to pass Core Web Vitals |
| Security | Database, admin login, and 20–40 plugins — each one an attack surface that needs constant patching | Static files. No database to inject, no login to brute-force, no plugins to exploit |
| Maintenance | Weekly plugin updates, core updates that break themes, and a retainer to manage the fallout | No update cycle. Content changes are the only maintenance |
| Ongoing costs | Builder license + premium theme + plugin subscriptions + managed WP hosting, every year | Hosting for a few dollars a month. No licenses, ever |
| Ownership | Your site depends on third-party licenses staying active and compatible | You own every line. Host it anywhere, hand it to any developer, forever |
| SEO foundation | Builder markup bloats the DOM; speed and crawl issues need plugins to partially fix | Semantic HTML, clean architecture, and schema written in — the foundation Google rewards |
Designed around your buyers and your brand — not adapted from a theme demo. CTA hierarchy, trust signals, and friction reduction are design decisions, not afterthoughts.
Optimized images, self-hosted assets, and code measured against Core Web Vitals on every page before launch. Speed is a feature we build, not a plugin we install.
Semantic markup, JSON-LD schema, XML sitemap, and crawl-ready architecture from day one — so an SEO campaign starts on third base.
GA4, Google Tag Manager, call tracking, and form conversion events wired in at launch. You'll know what the site produces from week one.
Moving off WordPress? We migrate your content, preserve URL structure with proper redirects, and protect your existing rankings through the switch.
Updates, edits, and optimization after launch — month-to-month, no lock-in. Clean code makes edits fast, which makes support affordable.
It's the first thing everyone asks, and it deserves a straight answer. You have three options, and we'll recommend the right one for how you actually work:
You give up a dashboard you probably logged into twice a year. You get a site that loads instantly, can't be hacked through a plugin, costs almost nothing to host, and never sends you a "your site is down after an update" email. Ten years of WordPress work taught us which side of that trade to be on.
Your buyers, your goals, your competitors, and a teardown of your current site. We map the sitemap and conversion paths before designing anything.
Custom design for your key pages, reviewed with you until it's right. No theme demos, no "pick a template" step.
Hand-coded, tested across devices, and measured against Core Web Vitals. Schema, analytics, and redirects included.
DNS cutover, Search Console verification, and post-launch monitoring. Then month-to-month support on your terms.
Send us your URL. We'll measure your page weight, load time, plugin exposure, and annual stack costs — then show you what the same site looks like hand-coded. If keeping WordPress genuinely makes sense for you, we'll say so.