Ask what happens every week
If the weekly job is publishing articles, service pages, or landing pages, WordPress is often the calmer choice. If the weekly job is adding products, changing prices, and taking payment, Shopify is often simpler because checkout and catalogue are the product.
HubSpot CMS is worth considering when the marketing team already lives in HubSpot and the site is mostly campaign pages. It is a weaker fit when you need a heavily custom application.
Themes and apps are not free complexity
A marketplace theme that claims to do everything usually includes code you do not need. That weight shows up in editing confusion and in performance. A smaller theme, or a custom one built around your content types, is easier to keep.
The same applies to plugins and Shopify apps. Add one when it does a job you can name. Review the list a few months later and remove what you stopped using.
Plan the move if you are replacing a site
List the URLs that receive visitors or links. A migration without redirects throws away the search history of the old site. Move the content that is still accurate, and leave behind pages that exist only because they were easy to create.
The people who will edit the new site should try the admin before launch. A training hour on a staging site prevents the first week from becoming a stream of small emergencies.
This starter guide was written for the Nerix insights library. It should be updated when the advice changes. It is not a client story and it does not report results.