With our company selling both poly shutters and wood shutters customers often ask which material is better for shutters. Most companies would tell you that one or the other is a better product depending on what they sell. We think this is the wrong approach and it reminds me of the saying "when the only tool you possess is a hammer, you tend to perceive all of your problems as nails". Before there was poly or faux plantation shutters, products that were created in an effort to produce a more cost effective imitation to the real thing, there was wooden plantation shutters. Why do people choose to buy imitation when the real thing is available for purchase? Simply because they are convinced that the imitation plantation shutters are just as good if not better, but facts being what they are, there is nothing like the real thing. Wood plantation shutters are, and always will be, the most sturdy and durable of all the plantation shutters.