When you talk about Odoo websites, most people think of the visual builder integrated. You drag blocks, change colours, publish. It's quick, it's included, it's "visually appealing". For 60% of projects, it's the right answer. But for the remaining 40%, it's exactly what turns a promising site into a generic one. This is why, at WebNest, we have chosen the other path for you.
The Odoo builder has real strengths.
Let's be honest. The Odoo web builder is probably one of the best on the ERP market. It is integrated with the rest of the suite, it knows your products, your customers, your orders. It allows you to set up a page in 20 minutes. For a small business starting out, wanting to simply exist online, with neither the budget nor the desire to invest hours in design, it's an honourable solution.
And it has an advantage that few people realise: it speaks directly to your back office. When a product changes price, your site updates. When stock hits zero, the "Add to Cart" button disappears. This native integration is what makes Odoo win against WordPress on your serious e-commerce projects.
The standard drag and drop
Limited to the blocks and options of the theme
- The default "Powered by Odoo"
- Difficult to evolve outside the framework
- Hand coding
Every line written
HTML, CSS, and JS placed directly in the web module. No imposed template. No limits other than those of the browser.
- 100% custom design
- Clean, readable, maintainable code
- Controlled performance
- No unnecessary heavy frameworks
Where it gets stuck.
The builder is designed for everyone to use. And that is precisely its problem. To achieve this goal, Odoo made choices: predefined blocks, limited fonts, catalogued animations. You can't really step outside the box.
In practical terms: if you want an asymmetrical layout, a truly custom mega menu, a specific scroll animation, a variable Fraunces typography adjusted to the tenth of a point, a hover state that is not opacity 0.8, you can't. Or you "hack" it. And hacking in a system that wasn't designed for that creates an invisible technical debt for your company that will resurface in six months. That is creating invisible technical debt that will resurface in six months.
80% of the sites built with the builder end up having the same visual rhythm: centred hero, three columns of features, testimonial slider, black footer. It's the «Powered by Odoo» that is not acknowledged. Your site looks like 200 other Odoo sites, and no one remembers it.
A site made with the builder,is a size M suit. It fits everyone. It fitsno one perfectly.
What the code main changes.
Coding by hand does not mean starting from scratch. You keep the Odoo ecosystem, the back office, the e-commerce modules, the multilingual support, the cart, the checkout. Everything that works by default for you continues to work. What we do is intervene on the presentation layer. The result:
- A true visual identity. The colours are yours, the typography is chosen, the spacing is calculated. Nothing is 'by default'.
- Controlled performance. No unnecessary scripts loaded in cascade. We know exactly what happens with each request.
- Readable maintenance. Six months later, another developer can pick up the code and understand what we have done.
- True scalability. When you want to add a feature, we add it. We do not wait for Odoo to release a new snippet to serve you.
This is not for everyone.
Coding by hand is more expensive. It's mathematical: it takes more time to write than to drag and drop. Our minimum fee is €1,000 excluding VAT for a project, and the average for a serious showcase site ranges between €4,000 and €8,000. If your budget is below that, the builder is a more reasonable answer. We prefer to tell you this honestly rather than accept a project that we cannot do well.
Coding by hand also requires more commitment from you. We need a precise brief, a sitemap, and clear ideas about the features. We do not deliver a pre-filled theme: we build with you. If you neither have the time nor the desire for this collaboration, the builder is once again more suitable.
Specifically, how do we do it.
We work directly in your Odoo instance. No duplicates, no parallel test environment that needs to be migrated later. We create custom QWeb templates (like the one on this page, by the way), we write semantic HTML, we place the CSS in a blockstyle, and we attach vanilla JavaScript when necessary. No bloated jQuery, no framework that will need updating every six months.
A typical example of a QWeb template
It is readable. It is versionable. It can be modified by any front-end developer who knows how to read HTML. No magic, no black box. When you change agencies in two years, the new team opens the code and understands in 10 minutes what we have done. That is true freedom.
What we stand for.
Coding by hand is a choice of quality. It is also a choice of honesty. You know where your money goes. Not into a publisher's margin. Not into a hidden licence. Into the time we spend writing your site, line by line, thinking about performance, accessibility, and what it will look like in two years when your goals have evolved.
We code by hand because it is the only way to deliver a site that truly resembles you, that does not look like 200 other Odoo sites, and that does not depend on the goodwill of a marketplace theme. It is our signature. It is also our promise: Goodbye Powered by Odoo.