First, the fair bit

Website builders aren't terrible. They've made it possible for anyone to put something online without knowing how to code, and for certain use cases they're perfectly fine. A personal blog, a hobby project, a temporary landing page for an event. No complaints there.

But for a business? The trade-offs start to matter.

What "free" actually costs

The free tier on most builders comes with strings attached:

  • Their branding on your site. A banner or footer that says "Made with Wix" or "Powered by Squarespace." It's small, but it tells visitors this is a free site. For a business, that's not the impression you want.
  • No custom domain. Your address is something like yourname.wixsite.com/business instead of yourbusiness.co.uk. That matters for trust and for Google.
  • Ads. Some free plans show ads on your site. Ads you don't control and don't earn from.
  • Limited storage and bandwidth. Fine for a few pages. Less fine if you want decent photos of your work.

To remove those limitations, you need a paid plan. Wix's cheapest business plan is about £13/month. Squarespace starts at £13/month. By the time you add a domain (£10-15/year) and email (£3-5/month), you're spending £16-18 a month. And you're still doing all the work yourself.

The real difference: what happens after it's built

Building the site is the easy part. The hard part is everything after:

  • Something breaks on mobile. With a builder, that's your problem. You'll spend an evening dragging boxes around trying to fix it. With a professionally built site, you send a message and it's sorted.
  • You want to change something. On a builder, you log in and try to remember how the editor works. On a managed site, you send a text or email and it's done, usually within a day.
  • Google isn't finding you. Builders give you basic SEO tools, but most people don't know how to use them properly. Page titles, meta descriptions, structured data, sitemap, alt text. A professionally built site has all of that set up correctly from day one.
  • Your site goes down. Builders handle hosting, so this is rare. But if something does go wrong, you're in a support queue with millions of other users. With a freelancer who monitors uptime, they often know before you do.

Speed

This one matters more than people realise. Website builders load a lot of code behind the scenes to make the drag-and-drop editor work. That code stays on the published site, slowing it down.

A typical Wix site scores 30-50 on Google's PageSpeed Insights (out of 100 on mobile). A well-built static site scores 90-100. Google uses page speed as a ranking factor. Visitors bounce from slow sites. It's one of those invisible things that quietly costs you customers.

Ownership

This is the one that catches people out years down the line.

With a website builder, your site lives on their platform. You can't take it with you. If you decide to leave Wix, you can't export your site and host it somewhere else. You're starting over.

Some builders lock your domain too. If you bought your domain through Wix or GoDaddy's bundled builder, transferring it out can be a frustrating process.

With a properly built site, you own the files. You own the domain. If you ever want to move, you take everything with you.

A side-by-side comparison

Wix / Squarespace Professionally built
Monthly cost £13-18/month (paid plan + domain + email) £25/month (everything included)
Who builds it You Someone who does this for a living
Who updates it You Send a message, it's done
Mobile performance Often poor (30-50 PageSpeed) Fast (90-100 PageSpeed)
SEO setup Basic tools, you configure them Done properly from day one
Custom domain Paid plans only Included
You own the site No (locked to platform) Yes (files are yours)
Support Help articles and ticket queues A real person who knows your site
Time investment Hours learning and building A short questionnaire

When Wix is the right call

If you genuinely enjoy building websites, have the time, and don't mind managing it yourself, Wix and Squarespace are capable tools. Some people like the creative control and the process.

But if the website is a means to an end, if you'd rather spend your time on the business itself, and if you want something that looks professional and works properly without you having to think about it, then paying someone is the better move.

The difference in monthly cost is small. The difference in how you spend your time is not.

If you're curious what a professionally built site looks like for a small business, have a look at some recent projects. Or read more about what's included in the package.