A marketplace theme is a finished system you recast. A custom website is a research project you must staff for years. Buy the catalog when the industry already has a shape. Commission when your object has no analogue. This is a working note from the VicanTheme journal, written for watchmakers, maisons, and producers weighing a catalog pack against a commission. The catalog we keep returning to is HTML templates, because files you can host beat a locked builder when the brand has to last.
If you already know the industry, skip ahead to the recommended demo — Forge — and use the headings as a checklist rather than a speech.
What you are purchasing in each column
On a marketplace you purchase files, a license, and a preview you can operate before money moves. On a custom commission you purchase time, workshops, and a risk that the first homepage ships in a quarter. Forge knows a watchmaker’s pages: watches, the bench, service, visit. Aurelia knows jewellery viewings. Aether knows fleet and dispatch.
Custom is not automatically more premium. Many custom sites are generic kits with a larger invoice. Marketplace HTML from an industry author can be more particular than a studio that sells the same grid to a dentist and an airline. Judge the live pages, not the procurement story. If Forge’s bench photography and service terms match how you sell, the marketplace is the adult choice.
Time-to-honest-launch versus time-to-unique-IA
A well-cut pack can go live in days once photography exists. Custom IA can be the right delay when legal, medical, or product complexity needs original patterns. Do not use delay as a proxy for quality. Aether’s dispatch enquiry can be live while a custom aviation OS is in discovery. Those are different products. Brochure versus software is the real comparison hiding inside marketplace versus custom.
Agencies sometimes sell custom because marketplace work pays less. That incentive is not your brief. Ask for a week on Forge or Aurelia with your images in the slots. If the result is embarrassing, you have evidence. If the result is close, you have a recast, not a nine-month identity. Worldwide clients deserve that test.
Maintenance, ownership, and lock-in folklore
Custom shops can lock you to a proprietary CMS as tightly as any platform. Static HTML from a marketplace is a folder. You can hire anyone who reads CSS. That is the opposite of lock-in. You owe the license terms: one end product, no redistribution of the pack as a template. You do not owe the original author a monthly tax to change a caption.
Ownership of custom code is only as good as the contract and the documentation. Many clients own a repo nobody understands. A VicanTheme pack plus an overrides file is clearer. If you go custom, require tokens, a type ramp, and a handover that a third studio could continue. If you go marketplace, require the same of yourselves. The procurement channel does not invent discipline. It only changes the starting files.
A rule you can write into a brief
If three catalog themes show our sitemap, we buy one and recast. If none do, we commission IA and may still use a pack for components. If the project is an authenticated product, we do not pretend a brochure theme is the product. That rule keeps watchmakers on Forge, jewellery on Aurelia, and flight desks on Aether unless the business has left those industries. Leaving is rarer than decks claim.
Then freeze. Mixed strategies — custom homepage, marketplace inner pages, a page builder for news — create seams guests can feel. Pick a parent. VicanTheme is for the parent that exists in HTML. Custom studios are for the parent that does not. Both can be honest. Neither is a personality. Your movement, your stones, or your aircraft will do more than the procurement story. Shoot them.
Questions people actually ask
Will a marketplace site look like other buyers?
It will if you ship demo copy. Recast photography and sentences. Custom sites look alike too when studios reuse a grid.
Can we start marketplace and go custom later?
Yes. Semantic HTML is a cheap starting point. Do not rebuild in month one because the word custom tests well in a board meeting.
Keep reading: Watchmaker website design: layout that does the job and Best HTML template for watchmaker sites in 2026. Or browse Comparisons in the journal.
