Wix, Squarespace or a custom website: when you honestly don't need me

I build websites for a living, so you might expect this post to end with “and that’s why you should never use Wix”. It doesn’t.

Website builders like Wix and Squarespace have got genuinely good. For plenty of small businesses they’re the right answer, and if you’re one of them I’d much rather you knew that before we spent an hour on a discovery call. So here’s an honest go at where the line is.

When a builder is the right call

You need a handful of pages and not much else. Who you are, what you do, some photos, a way to get in touch. That’s most sole traders, and builders do it well.

You actually enjoy doing it. Some people like fiddling with layouts on a Sunday afternoon. If that’s you, you’ll probably end up with something you’re happier with than if you’d handed it over.

You’re testing an idea. If you’re not sure the business will exist in a year, spending a few hundred pounds up front on a custom site doesn’t make sense. Get something up, see if anyone bites, and decide later.

Money is tight right now. A monthly subscription is easier to find than a lump sum, and a decent builder site is far better than no site, or a Facebook page pretending to be one.

If most of that sounds like you, go and build it. Pick a template that’s close to what you want, so you’re not fighting it, and read the bit at the end about getting a few hours of help.

Where it starts to hurt

Builders are brilliant at the thing they’re designed for. The trouble starts when your business needs something slightly different from what the template imagined.

You’re stacking up paid apps. Bookings, memberships, a better form, reviews, a pop-up, a translation tool. Each one is another monthly fee, and each one is a separate company’s code running on your pages. It’s worth adding up what you’re paying across all of them, because it creeps.

You need it to work the way your business works. A booking flow that fits how you actually take jobs, a quote calculator, a customer area, a link into the software you already use. Builders can get you some of the way with add-ons, but at some point you end up bending your business to fit the tool rather than the other way round.

You want control over speed and accessibility. Builders have improved a lot on both, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But you’re limited to what the platform lets you change. If a page is slow, or something doesn’t work properly with a keyboard or screen reader, sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it except wait for them to fix it.

Your time has become the expensive bit. When you were starting out, an evening spent on the website was fine. Once you’re busy, every hour you spend dragging boxes about is an hour you’re not doing paid work.

You’re renting, not owning

This is the one people don’t think about until they want to leave.

On a builder, your website only exists inside that company’s platform. Stop paying and it goes. Want to move somewhere else? Wix won’t let you take the site with you at all. Squarespace will export some of your content, like pages and blog posts, but not the design. Either way, moving usually means rebuilding.

That’s not a scandal. It’s the deal you sign up for, and for a lot of businesses it’s a perfectly fair one. Just make sure it’s a deal you’ve chosen, not one you find out about later.

Whatever you use, make sure the domain is registered in your name, separately from the builder if you can. That way, if you ever do move, your address and email come with you. I’ve written about why that matters in a different context, and the same advice applies.

Do the sums over three years

Comparing a monthly fee against a one-off price is apples and oranges, so put them on the same footing.

Take the builder plan you’d actually need (not the cheapest one on the pricing page, the one that includes the features you want), add any paid apps, and multiply by 36. That’s roughly three years. Then compare it with the one-off cost of a custom site plus whatever you’d pay to host and maintain it over the same period.

Sometimes the builder wins that comfortably. Sometimes it doesn’t. You won’t know until you do the maths with your own numbers, and it takes five minutes.

The honest downside of a custom site

Since I’m being fair to builders, I should be fair about my side too.

With a custom site, you generally can’t just log in and drag things around the way you can on Wix. Some things you’ll be able to edit yourself, particularly if you have a blog or content editor set up. Other changes will need a developer, which means either paying for the time or having a care plan that includes updates.

If you want complete freedom to redesign pages yourself whenever you feel like it, a builder genuinely suits you better, and I’d tell you that on the call.

The middle ground

You don’t have to choose between doing everything yourself and paying for a full build.

A good option for a lot of people is to build it yourself on a builder, then pay someone for a few hours to go over it: check the page titles and descriptions, make sure the contact form actually delivers, tidy up the mobile layout, and set up Google Search Console and your Business Profile. A half day of my time is £200, and that covers a lot of that list.

Then, when you outgrow it (and if the business goes well, you probably will), you’ll know exactly what you need from a custom site, because you’ll have spent a year finding out.

If you’re not sure which side of the line you’re on, ask me. If the answer’s “stick with Squarespace”, I’ll say so.