An arithmetic question
For a clinic, "template or custom" is not about taste. A new patient at a physiotherapy, chiropractic or osteopathy clinic is typically worth several visits in their first course of treatment and often returns for years. The website exists to produce those patients, and the two build options produce them at different rates for different prices. The question is which pays back sooner.
The template
A theme or builder layout for health clinics in general, with your logo, colours, photos and copy dropped in, and a link to your booking system. Sold by clinic marketing companies or installed by a local designer from a marketplace.
Cost: low thousands, sometimes bundled monthly.
What it does well: launches quickly; has a plausible page list; looks like a clinic.
Where it falls short: heavy, so slow on phones; services and conditions as pages of prose rather than structured records, so adding a condition page is a developer job; booking as a link out rather than an embedded, deep-linked flow; the same design on many other clinics; often on the vendor's hosting.
The custom build
Designed around your clinic: services, conditions and practitioners as structured content with fields; booking from Cliniko, Jane or Nookal embedded and deep-linked per service and practitioner; built to pass Core Web Vitals on a phone; structured data for a medical business; conversion tracking; everything in your name.
Cost: mid four figures to low five, fixed.
What it does well: ranks per condition, books in one tap with the right practitioner, edits without breaking, and reports what it produced.
Where it costs more: the invoice, and two to four weeks.
Where the extra patients come from
Condition pages that rank. Patients search "sciatica physio [town]", "plantar fasciitis treatment", "frozen shoulder osteopath". A template with one Services page ranks for none. A custom site with a structured page per condition can rank for a dozen within a few months, each bringing patients who searched for exactly their problem.
Speed. A template at four seconds on a phone loses a share of visitors before the Book button appears. A custom build under two does not.
A booking path that converts. "Book a sports massage with Sam" as one tap from Sam's profile, versus a generic link to a widget listing twelve services and six practitioners. The right practitioner pre-selected is the difference between a booking and a closed tab.
The arithmetic
A clinic with a template site getting 500 visits a month, converting 2.5 percent to bookings: about twelve new patients a month from the site.
A custom site ranking for condition terms, faster, and booking in one tap might reach 800 visits at 4.5 percent: thirty-six a month. The exact figures depend on your market; the shape is consistent across the clinics we have measured.
Two dozen additional new patients a month, each worth a course of treatment, covers the price difference between the two builds within the first few months. At a third of that uplift, it still pays back inside the year.
When the template is right
- A solo practitioner just starting, with no patient base and a tight budget: template now, custom in year two.
- A clinic that is full, with a waiting list, whose site is for information only.
- A clinic joining a group whose central site will take over.
When the template is a leak
- The clinic depends on search for new patients in a competitive area.
- The current site fails Core Web Vitals and ads are being sent to it.
- Reception is answering questions the site should answer: which practitioner, what it costs, what the first visit involves.
- The site is on a vendor's hosting with a monthly fee for a template you do not own.
Deciding
Three numbers: monthly visits, monthly bookings from the site, and the value of a new patient. If conversion is under 2 percent or the site takes over three seconds on a phone, a custom build at a fixed price pays back in months. If the site is fast and converting, keep it and spend on photography and condition content.
Our clinic sites are custom builds at a fixed price, with condition pages, deep-linked booking and speed included, because that is the version that pays for itself. The template is cheaper to buy and more expensive to own.