bytebrise vs WordPress
An honest web design comparison for small businesses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Where WordPress is strong and where bytebrise pays off: set side by side, factually, without marketing phrases.
In short
WordPress suits you if you only need a website and take care of being found yourself. bytebrise Sichtbar suits you if you want to be found on Google, in the map pack and in AI answers without working on it yourself.
bytebrise and WordPress side by side
The key technical and process differences. All figures are based on platform documentation and our own measurements, as of 2026-09.
| bytebrise | WordPress | |
|---|---|---|
| Rights to the code | Right of use, permanent after 24 months or through a buyout | Full (open source) |
| SEO depth (Schema.org, JSON-LD) | Tailored to each industry | via plugin (Yoast/RankMath) |
| Multilingual (DE/EN) | included | Plugin (WPML, paid) |
| GDPR compliance out of the box | Google Fonts hosted locally, EU hosting | Depends on plugins |
| Maintenance (patches, updates) | Included in the maintenance package | Your own responsibility (main cost driver) |
| Custom functionality (industry logic) | anything you need | Depends on plugins, often fiddly |
| Delivery time (5-7 pages) | 2-3 weeks | 3-8 weeks |
| Scaling as you grow | Easy to extend | Scalable, but maintenance-heavy |
| Point of contact | One person (Jakob, directly) | depends on the agency or forum |
| Being found (profile, directories, reviews) | included, with proof every month | up to you |
What costs what: a realistic calculation
What costs what? A website builder costs less if you build and maintain the site yourself. Sichtbar costs more because the work on your profile, directories, reviews and website is included. Calculated over three years:
WordPress · 3-year TCO
Premium theme (€50-300) plus hosting (€10-40/month) plus a maintenance agency or your own time for updates (€50-150/month with an agency) plus plugins (WPML €99/year, backup tools, security). Realistic over 3 years.
bytebrise · 3-year TCO
Included: your website, hosted, maintained, secure, with one page per service. Your Google Business Profile, fully maintained. Reviews coming in at a steady pace. Your business in the right directories. Three numbers and a call every month. See Pricing.
When WordPress and when bytebrise
WordPress is the right fit if …
you run a blog- or magazine-heavy project with dozens of authors and several hundred pieces of content. You have a developer or an agency on the team who is responsible for monthly plugin updates, security audits and theme compatibility. For sole traders without a tech background, WordPress quickly becomes a maintenance trap after 6-12 months. And if you want to maintain your profile, directories and reviews yourself.
bytebrise is the right fit if …
you want to be found on Google, in the map pack and in AI answers without working on your profile, directories and reviews yourself, and you want to see proof every month of whether it works. Industry-specific modules and an admin backend for text and images remain part of the website, but take second place to the visibility work.
Switching from WordPress to bytebrise
A WordPress migration is the most demanding of the four: plugin data has to be migrated, custom posts, taxonomies and comment threads mapped, and the database can be several GB in size for magazine sites. We handle this as a dedicated sprint with its own content mapping step.
Frequently asked questions: comparison with WordPress
We check every plugin for whether it is really needed. What you genuinely need (contact form, SEO plugin, caching) we build natively into the bytebrise build. Most plugins become redundant because their function sits directly in the build: that removes the biggest maintenance headache.
Yes. bytebrise Sichtbar costs €490 setup plus €149 a month, cancellable monthly, €5,854 over three years. All prices are final prices; under § 19 UStG no VAT is charged. WordPress stays cheaper if you handle being found on Google, in the map pack and in AI answers yourself. You can see every month in three numbers whether the difference is worth it: AI mentions in test queries, map pack position and enquiries via the website.
Yes. Your own content and your domain are yours from day one; the content is stored in a JSON structure that can be imported into any CMS, and you receive it for export when the contract ends (Terms and Conditions, § 11.7). Design, source code and configuration stay with bytebrise until a buyout for €1,990 takes place or 24 months have passed since the agreed work start date. You then hold the permanent rights of use to them.
We carry over the design concept if you wish. We refactor the code, because WordPress themes typically carry a lot of bloat (PHP includes, fragile action hooks). The result: the same look, much better performance.
With WordPress, monthly plugin updates are a must, and every update can trigger conflicts. With bytebrise, all updates are part of the maintenance package: you notice nothing, because we test the build before it goes live.
Not with a clean migration. We map every WordPress URL to its new counterpart, carry over all meta data and schema structures 1:1 and set up 301 redirects. Google picks up the migration in the first 4-8 weeks; after that the rankings have transferred, often with an improvement thanks to a better Lighthouse score.
In our market review, many page builder themes load 200 or more CSS and JS files, even for simple pages, and the Lighthouse score drops accordingly. A custom-built vanilla stack loads only the few kilobytes that the specific page actually needs.