DIY website builders versus getting it done for you
DIY builders like Wix and Squarespace cost £240 to £360 a year and suit businesses with more time than money, some design confidence, and simple needs. Professional routes cost more but win on conversion, distinctiveness and your freed-up time. The fair comparison is not £20 a month versus £50 a month; it is your evenings and the enquiries a template loses versus having it done properly.
What DIY builders are genuinely good at
Modern site builders are impressive. Drag and drop editing works, hosting and SSL are handled, and the templates look clean. If your business is young, cash is tight, and you have patience and a decent eye, a DIY site is far better than no site, and better than a bad cheap "professional" one.
DIY also wins on immediacy: you can have something live tonight. For a market stall trial, a side project or a brand new venture testing demand, that speed is worth a lot.
The costs the adverts do not mention
- The real subscription. The headline £10 to £15 plans keep the builder's branding on your site. Removing it, adding a domain and business email lands most people at £240 to £360 a year.
- Your time, priced honestly. Most owners spend 30 to 60 hours getting to a site they would show customers. At even £25 an hour of your time, that is £750 to £1,500 of hidden cost, spent once, then again every time something needs changing.
- The template ceiling. Your site is assembled from the same blocks as thousands of others. Visitors may not name the template, but they register the sameness, and sameness does not win price-sensitive buyers.
- Nobody accountable. When something breaks, looks wrong on someone's phone, or vanishes from Google, the support queue does not know your business and does not care about your Tuesday.
How to choose in five minutes
Pick DIY if at least two of these are true: you are pre-revenue or testing an idea, you genuinely enjoy this sort of thing, your needs are one simple page, or £50 a month is real money to the business right now.
Pick done-for-you if at least two of these are true: an hour of your time is worth £25 or more, your competitors have professional sites, your work is visual and deserves better than a template, or the site's job is to win enquiries whose value dwarfs the cost. One extra £300 job a month pays for a £50 monthly website six times over.
Frequently asked questions
Is Wix or Squarespace good enough for a small business?
Often yes for a starting point: they are reliable, secure and quick to launch. The limits show in distinctiveness, conversion and your time. Businesses tend to outgrow DIY sites once enquiries matter more than the monthly saving.
Will a DIY website rank on Google?
It can. Builders produce technically adequate sites, and Google does not penalise them. Rankings depend far more on content, reviews and local signals than on the platform. The honest caveat: writing content that ranks and converts is a skill, and it is the part DIY owners most often skip.
What does a professional website give me that a template cannot?
Three things: design built around your specific business rather than a generic layout, words written to convert your specific customers, and a human responsible for keeping it fast, secure and current. Whether that is worth the difference depends entirely on what an enquiry is worth to you.
Can I move from Wix or Squarespace to something better later?
Yes, and businesses do it all the time. Your domain moves with you, and content can be rebuilt. What you lose is the time invested in the old site. Starting DIY is not a trap, it is just a stage some businesses pass through.
The short version
- DIY costs £240 to £360 a year plus 30 to 60 hours of your time.
- It genuinely suits new, simple, cash-tight ventures, and beats having no site.
- The hidden costs are your evenings, template sameness, and lost conversions.
- Done-for-you wins once enquiries matter more than the monthly saving.
- Compare routes by cost per enquiry, not cost per month.
Rather skip all this?
We are the done-for-you option priced like the DIY one: £50 a month, no setup fee, bespoke design, and you only start paying when you have approved the finished site. Keep your evenings.
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