Website builders vs a built site — the honest comparison

Cost & buying22 August 20268 min read

If you ask other trades about websites, someone will tell you that web builders charge well over the odds, that the site builders’ own tools do the job perfectly well, and that you could knock one up yourself in an evening.

Most of that is true. It is worth saying so plainly, because we sell the more expensive option and you should know we know.

What Squarespace and Wix genuinely do well

Not “for the money”. Genuinely well.

• The templates are good. Professionally designed, and better looking than plenty of sites that cost thousands.
• The technical side is handled. Hosting, security certificates, backups, mobile layouts, updates. You do not think about any of it.
• You are in control. Change your prices at eleven at night without emailing anyone or waiting three days.
• It is genuinely cheap. Around £10–15 a month, no build fee.
• You own it. It is your account, in your name, with your card on it.

If you are a sole trader who needs somewhere for people to check you are real, this is a sensible thing to do and we would not try to talk you out of it.

The comparison is not about features

This is the part that usually gets argued badly. Someone selling you a built site will list things a builder cannot do, and most of that list is either wrong or irrelevant to a trade business.

A modern website builder can produce a fast, mobile-friendly, properly structured site with all the technical foundations in place. Feature-matching against them is a losing argument and we are not going to make it.

The real difference is who does the work.

What the tenner a month does not include

The subscription is for the software. Everything else is you.

• Choosing and adapting the template. An evening, if you are decisive. Considerably longer if you are not, and most people are not.
• Writing every word. This is the one that stops people. Describing your own business in a way that reads well is genuinely hard, and it is where half-finished sites go to die.
• Sorting the photographs. Taking them, choosing them, cropping them, getting the file sizes down so the site is not slow.
• Structuring it properly. Separate pages for each service and each area, linked sensibly, rather than one page listing everything. The builder will let you do this. It will not do it for you or tell you that you should.
• The technical bits that are not automatic. Page titles and descriptions, structured data, connecting a Google Business Profile, submitting a sitemap. All possible on a builder. None of it happens by itself.
• Keeping it current. New services, new areas, new photographs, prices that changed last spring.

Put an hourly rate on it

This is the honest way to compare the two, and you can do the sum yourself.

Setting up a builder site properly — not the template, the whole job including writing and photographs — is realistically two to four full days for someone doing it for the first time. Then a few hours every few months to keep it from going stale.

Now price those days at what you charge for a day on site. For most trades that is several hundred pounds a day. Two to four days is most of the way to, or well past, the cost of having it built for you — and that is before the evenings you spend on it instead of quoting, invoicing or being at home.

That is the entire argument. Not that the builder is bad. That the builder moves the work to you, and your time has a price you already know.

When the builder is the right answer

We would rather say this than pretend otherwise.

• You genuinely enjoy this sort of thing, and you will keep it current.
• You are starting out and cash is tight. A basic site now beats a good site never.
• Your business is one service in one town, so there is not much structure needed.
• You want to be able to change everything yourself, immediately, without asking.

When it is not

• You have started one twice and not finished it. This is extremely common and it is not a character flaw — it is the writing that stops people.
• Your business has several services and several areas, and needs structure a template will not suggest.
• You are quoting for commercial work, where somebody is checking you properly before you go on a list.
• Your evenings are worth more to you than the difference in price.

So what are you paying us for

Ours is £700 up front and £65 a month at the entry tier, against roughly £10–15 a month for a builder. That is a real gap and it deserves a real answer.

The build fee buys the days of work above, done by someone who has done it before, so it gets finished. The monthly is hosting, updates, backups, support and the chat widget — maintenance, not marketing. SEO and ads exist as separate services with their own prices, and are never folded into that monthly, so you can always see what you are paying for and stop any of it without touching your site.

What the extra is not buying is a search ranking or a number of enquiries. We cannot promise you those and neither can a builder. Anyone comparing the two on promised leads is comparing two things that were both made up.

And because we build the site before we ever speak to you, you can settle this argument by looking rather than by reasoning. If what we have built is not worth the difference, say so and pay nothing. There is a fuller breakdown of the price bands here, and our prices are published in full so you can do the comparison without ringing anybody.