Practical checklist
Choose a platform from these operating questions
- Who will publish and review content after launch?
- How many languages and markets need independent updates?
- Does the site need an e-commerce, CRM, booking, membership or product-data integration?
- What must be editable, and what should remain protected as a reusable component?
- Who owns security updates, hosting, backups and incident response?
- What are the ongoing subscription, plugin, development and support costs?
- What happens if the business later changes provider?
Start with the content operation, not the homepage mockup.
Suppose a product owner updates a specification and English and Traditional Chinese reviewers approve the corresponding versions. Have the future editor change, preview, publish and restore that item in each proposed setup, recording permissions and missing-translation handling. This is an evaluation task, not a completed test of the three approaches.
Write down the content types, editors, languages, approvals, integrations, traffic expectations and support owner before anyone chooses a platform. This produces a defensible decision instead of a tool preference disguised as strategy.
WordPress: flexible publishing with an ownership requirement.
WordPress is often a practical choice for content-led company sites because it has a mature editor, many hosting options and a wide ecosystem of themes, plugins and developers. It can support multilingual publishing and custom content models when the implementation is planned well.
That flexibility creates responsibility. The business needs a clear approach to theme and plugin quality, updates, access, backups, security, performance, licence renewals and support. ‘WordPress’ does not describe a consistent outcome; the architecture and operating discipline do.
Webflow: visual control with plan and workflow boundaries.
Webflow can be a strong fit for marketing-led sites that benefit from visual design control, reusable components and a managed publishing environment. Its localization tools support locales, localized content and language-related SEO workflows, which can be useful when a team has a clear editorial process.
Confirm plan limits, editor permissions, CMS modelling, localisation requirements, custom-code dependencies, integrations and export or handover expectations before committing. A visual editor is only an advantage when it matches the people who will update the site.
Custom development: freedom where the business actually needs it.
A custom website can be appropriate when the buyer journey, content model, performance requirement or integration is meaningfully different from a well-configured CMS. It can give a team a tailored editing experience and allow the public site to be designed around a specific product, RFQ, account or data workflow.
Custom is not a synonym for better. It brings a bigger ownership requirement: source-code access, technical documentation, hosting, monitoring, security updates, dependency maintenance and a realistic plan for the next developer. Do not commission a custom build merely to avoid learning a standard platform.
For bilingual Hong Kong sites, model the language workflow first.
The platform should let your team maintain English and Traditional Chinese versions with clear URLs, review ownership and a predictable way to handle differences. Both WordPress and Webflow can support multilingual workflows, but the exact setup, plan, plugins, localisation service and editorial process need to be confirmed for the project.
Avoid language overlays that only translate the page in a visitor’s browser when you need stable, reviewable and indexable versions. Choose the approach that the business can keep accurate after launch, particularly for product, medical, legal or technical information.
Sources and scope
- Google: localized versions of a pagedevelopers.google.com
Supports the guidance on separate language URLs and reciprocal hreflang links; it does not guarantee rankings.
- WordPress: Multilingual WordPressdeveloper.wordpress.org
Official multilingual implementation options; check the selected plugin and its maintenance requirements.
- Webflow Localizationwebflow.com
Vendor documentation for localization; current plan limits and fees must be checked before purchase.