Wix and Squarespace vs a custom website: which is right for you?

Website builders like Wix, Squarespace and GoDaddy have made it easy for anyone to put up a site. That's genuinely great. But "easy to start" and "right for your business" aren't always the same thing. Here's an honest comparison.

Where website builders shine

• They're cheap to begin with — a low monthly fee gets you online.
• They're fast — you can have something live in a weekend.
• No developer needed — you can do it yourself.

If you need a simple presence, you're on a tight budget, and you're happy to build it yourself, a website builder can be a perfectly sensible choice.

Where they start to hurt

• You're stuck in their box. When you want something the builder doesn't offer, you often simply can't have it.
• They can be slow. Builders load a lot of extra code, which hurts speed — and speed wins customers.
• The monthly fees add up. Add the features you actually need and the "cheap" option isn't always so cheap.
• You don't really own it. Move away from the platform and you usually can't take your site with you.

How a custom site is different

A custom-built website is shaped around your business, not a template. It's as fast as it can be, does exactly what you need, and you own it outright — code, content, the lot. It costs more up front, but for a business that's serious about its website doing real work, it pays off. (See how much a website actually costs.)

A simple way to decide

• Hobby, side project, or testing an idea? A builder is probably fine.
• The website matters to your livelihood, needs to be fast, rank well, or do something specific? Custom is worth it.

If you're not sure which camp you're in, that's exactly what a discovery call is for. I'll give you a straight answer — even if that answer is "a builder will do the job for now."

Book a free discovery call →