When it’s time to build or rebuild your school’s website, one big decision rises to the top: What platform should you choose?

Many schools start by comparing Composer, Finalsite’s content management system (CMS), and WordPress. On the surface, WordPress seems appealing: it’s widely used, flexible, and often described as “free.” Underneath the surface, though, the day-to-day realities of managing a WordPress site can create roadblocks, especially for school teams without dedicated web staff.

Finalsite Composer, on the other hand, was built specifically for schools, and it’s part of a powerful, unified platform supported by a team that understands the challenges of school communications and marketing. It’s also the driving force behind the first impression families get of your community.

Let’s take a closer look at how these two platforms compare and explore the impacts on your staff, your families, and your goals so you have a clearer picture of which solution is the right fit for your school.

What Makes WordPress Appealing?

When you begin exploring options for a content management system for your school, WordPress often comes up early in the conversation. It's important to understand what you're really getting and what you're not.

Here’s why WordPress initially appeals to some:

Theme Variety

With thousands of free and paid themes available, WordPress gives the impression that you can have any design you want with a few clicks. But what often goes unsaid is that many of these themes aren’t built with schools in mind.

Once you start needing calendars, staff directories, event alerts, or secure portals, those themes require heavy customization, or sketchy third-party tools that don’t always play nicely together.

Lower Initial Cost

It’s true that WordPress itself is free to download and use, which makes it attractive to schools trying to stretch limited budgets.

But the real cost of WordPress often shows up later. Hosting, plugin licenses, developer support, security patches, backup tools—all these either come at a cost or fall to your team to manage. And when things go wrong (like downloading malware or a plugin breaking your homepage), fixing them can take time and resources you don’t have.

Customization and Flexibility

WordPress is an open-source platform, which means there’s almost no limit to what a developer can build.

That kind of power sounds exciting, but it comes with a catch: one of WordPress’ biggest liabilities stems from the nature of open source, where anyone can contribute or modify the code. Maintaining and troubleshooting a heavily customized WordPress site takes time, expertise, and constant attention.

Hackers, malware, and bugs stemming from its plugins are regularly in the headlines, and in a recent case, malware disguised as a legitimate security plugin gave hackers prolonged access to infected sites.

Keep Reading: Are Open Source Websites Safe?

Before committing, it’s worth asking: Do we want to manage this ourselves, or do we want a platform built to support schools from day one?

Where Finalsite Composer Excels

If WordPress looks like a toolbox, Finalsite Composer is more like a full workshop with expert guidance, tailored tools, and a knowledgeable support team. Here’s how Composer gives schools a smarter, safer, and more sustainable way to manage their website.

A Guided Launch Process

Redesigning your website isn’t as simple as picking a theme and hitting “publish.” Between content migration, ADA compliance, cross-browser testing, and stakeholder feedback, there’s a lot to manage.

With Composer, you’re not doing it alone. The best school website design companies know that, and Finalsite provides a dedicated project manager to guide the process, keep your team on track, and make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Compare that to WordPress, where schools often juggle multiple vendors—or go it alone—leading to delays, gaps in accessibility, and added stress.

Real Support from People Who Know Schools

When you need help, you shouldn't have to chase down a freelancer or hope someone on a forum replies. Composer gives you direct access to Finalsite’s Support team via phone, email, or ticket. These are people who work with schools all day long and understand your challenges, deadlines, and goals.

WordPress support, by contrast, depends on who set your site up and how it was built. If something breaks, getting help is rarely quick or predictable.

Tools Schools Actually Use, No Plugins Required

Composer comes with features and modules that schools use every day:

• Calendars
• Staff directories
• Forms
• News posts
• Alerts
• Social media feeds

There’s no need to install, license, or troubleshoot third-party plugins. Everything is tested, supported, and works together seamlessly. With WordPress, this same functionality usually requires a patchwork of plugins, and each one is another thing to update, vet, and monitor.

"TASIS has worked with Finalsite for many years and loves all the great tools the platform provides,” said Brendan Shea, webmaster at TASIS Switzerland.”It wouldn't be nearly as easy to have all the same features in WordPress or Drupal. Finalsite offers modules that work well together to engage and get the job done.”

Automatic Updates, Hosting, and Backups—Handled

Composer takes the burden of technical maintenance off your plate. You never have to worry about:

• Platform updates
• SSL certificates
• Nightly backups
• Security patches
• Hosting reliability

It’s all managed by Finalsite, and if something does go wrong, there’s a team behind you.

Designed to Grow with You

Whether you’re managing a single school, a district, or multiple programs, Composer is built to scale. Need a microsite for a new initiative or a subsite for athletics? Composer can handle that without requiring you to start from scratch or run a second installation.

Using Finalsite’s Resource module and the COPE functionality, Sean Siciliano of Middleborough Public Schools can easily make edits to the district’s site: “The ability to copy and paste content in different places and the ability to swap out elements is so effective,” he said.

“If we have a snow day, our whole school calendar changes. When you're pointing six different pages to one PDF, like the school calendar, you can go in, swap the resource, and you know that it's updated everywhere. It definitely saves time, but the peace of mind is worth it tenfold.”

WordPress growth often means reinventing structure, duplicating efforts, or relying heavily on a developer to stitch everything together.

Easy for Staff, Regardless of Tech Skill

Most school staff aren’t developers, and they shouldn’t have to be. Composer makes content creation simple for teachers, administrators, and support staff with easy-to-manage:

• Drag-and-drop layouts
• User-friendly inline editing
• No coding required

Woodland School had been using WordPress, but “the website wasn't an accurate representation of the school,” said Bethany Silvestri, Woodland's former director of marketing and communications. “We were losing time with the website," said Bethany.

"I was spending too much time just updating the site because much of it was in custom HTML, and site visitors were spending too much time trying to find the necessary information that just wasn't making it online in a timely enough manner." 

After switching to Finalsite's CMS platform, the intuitive drag-and-drop interface and “create once, publish everywhere” features helped the site stay updated and accurate. “For so long, families didn't use the website because it didn't house any information they needed,” she said. "But it's a testament to the ease of using Composer that someone with little or even no web experience can learn it quickly.”

Keep Reading: Is Open Source a Good Solution for School Websites?

Role-Based Permissions Keep Things Organized

Composer allows you to assign clear user roles:

• Teachers can update class pages.
• Coaches can post schedules.
• Communications staff can manage the homepage.

Training is quick, and permissions are granular. Staff can access only the parts they’re responsible for, while your communications or IT team retains full control. In WordPress, permissions can be overly broad or confusing.

Built-In Accessibility and Compliance Tools

Composer includes built-in accessibility checkers to help your site meet ADA standards—without relying on separate plugins or third-party audits. It flags issues in real time and helps your team make fixes before they become liabilities.

In WordPress, compliance depends on your team’s awareness and setup, and many plugins were never designed with accessibility in mind.

Marketing & Communication Advantages

Your school’s website is a critical marketing tool to engage prospective families, support enrollment goals, and guide current families to what they need. Composer makes all this easier by combining great design with key features specifically built for schools, including:

Built-In SEO Tools to Improve Visibility

Composer web pages are built with search engine optimization (SEO) best practices, so your school appears higher in search results, and families find the right pages faster.

Each page allows for creating and managing:

• Page titles
• Meta descriptions
• Alt tags for images
• Easy styling for proper headings

Collaborative, Brand-Aligned Design

Your school website should reflect your school's personality and values, not look like a template from a theme shop. Finalsite’s design team works with you to build a look and feel that matches your mission, colors, photos, and communication goals.

With WordPress, you're often choosing from generic templates or hiring a designer without school experience. The result might lose your brand consistency or not reflect who you are as a school.

Seamless Integration with School Systems

Composer connects with the student information systems (SIS) and tools you're already using, helping you streamline everything from form submissions, email lists, and directories, reducing manual work for your team.

In WordPress, integrations like this usually require developer support, third-party APIs, and ongoing maintenance.

Marketing and Enrollment Support

A great website should move prospective families from “interested” to “enrolled.” Composer includes tools to support that journey:

• Landing pages for campaigns
• Contact forms with conversion tracking
• Custom thank-you pages
• Analytics that show what’s working

WordPress can achieve this, too, but often requires several plugins stitched together, plus knowledge of Google Analytics, form builders, and paid tools.

Your website should be your school’s hardest-working marketing and communication tool. Composer gives you the strategy, design, and tools to make that happen—without the headaches of patchwork plugins or generic templates.

Ongoing Training and Resources

When someone new joins your team, they’re not left to figure things out alone or dig through old documentation. Finalsite has your back with:

• On-demand training
• Help articles
• Webinars
• Live support

WordPress offers general support articles, but they’re often written for developers or cover third-party plugins that aren’t tailored to schools.

Questions to Ask Before You Decide

Choosing the right website platform is a leadership decision. Your CMS affects how you communicate with families, how your team works, and how your school is perceived online.

Before committing to WordPress, Composer, or any other solution, here are a few questions worth discussing with your team. These will help surface the real needs behind the budget, design, and feature wish lists.

Who will manage the site?

If your site depends on one person to update content, troubleshoot errors, or manage plugins, that’s a risk. Composer’s intuitive design and team-based permissions help distribute ownership so the site doesn’t grind to a halt when someone changes roles or leaves.

Who’s responsible for plugin updates, patches, and fixes?

In WordPress, it’s like every plugin is a mini product with its own update schedule and support model. Your team has to keep track of all of them, or hire someone who will. With Composer, all tools are native, supported, and maintained for you.

What’s the plan when something breaks?

When your calendar disappears, who do you call? With WordPress, you may be searching YouTube tutorials at 10 PM or waiting days for a third-party developer to respond. With Composer, you have Finalsite’s award-winning support team ready to help.

How will you handle security, backups, and downtime?

Finalsite Composer takes care of backups, SSL, and infrastructure hardening. WordPress sites require manual setup or third-party services for each of those pieces. Security threats and data loss aren’t “if” scenarios with open source, they’re a “when.”

How confident are you in your ADA and data compliance?

Composer is built with accessibility and data privacy in mind. WordPress requires active monitoring, audits, and tools that weren’t designed specifically for schools. If you’re concerned about FERPA, COPPA, or ADA lawsuits, this isn’t a corner to cut.

• Is your website helping or hurting your marketing efforts?
• Is it telling your story clearly?
• Are you tracking engagement?
• Do forms connect to your enrollment process?

Composer supports marketing and enrollment goals right out of the box. WordPress needs custom work to get there.

Keep Reading: The 9 Biggest Problems Schools Face When They Choose Open Source

Key Takeaway

WordPress is a powerful platform, but it wasn’t built for schools. It wasn’t built for staff turnover, tight timelines, emergency alerts, or the unique demands of school communications. Finalsite Composer was.

You don’t need to be a developer to launch a great website. You need a platform that supports your team, saves you time, and helps you communicate with clarity and purpose.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Connor has spent the last decade within the field of marketing and communications, working with independent schools and colleges throughout New England. At Finalsite, Connor plans and executes marketing strategies and digital content across the web. A former photojournalist, he has a passion for digital media, storytelling, coffee, and creating content that connects.