Squarespace, Wix, WordPress. The honest answer is that the builders are good and you may well not need us — but the moment they stop being enough is predictable, and it is worth knowing where it is.
What the builders genuinely do better
You can have a decent-looking site by this evening, for around £15 a month, with hosting, certificate and updates included and nothing to maintain. For a business with one location, a phone number and no plans to grow the site, that is the right answer and we will tell you so.
They are also forgiving. Nothing you click will break the site, and you never have to think about a plugin again.
Where it starts to cost you
Four limits show up in roughly this order:
- The site cannot do what your business does. Bookings with your rules, a quote calculator, a members area, stock that syncs with the shop. Builders offer versions of these; the gap appears when your process is not their process.
- More than one language. Most builders treat this as a bolt-on, and it shows in the addresses and in what search engines are told about each version.
- Search. You can rank well on a builder — but the fine control over page structure, speed and redirects is thinner, and you feel it once you compete for anything.
- The subscription never ends. £15 to £40 a month, forever, and the moment you stop paying the site is gone. There is nothing to move.
What you actually own
This is the part people find out too late. On a builder you rent a place in someone else's system: the design, the pages and often the domain live there, and they cannot be taken with you. With WordPress you have files and a database. Any competent developer can pick them up, and you can move to another host in an afternoon.
If leaving a provider means rebuilding from scratch, that is not a website you own — it is a subscription with a picture of your business on it.
What WordPress costs against a builder
Compare the same three years honestly:
- Builder: around £15–£40 a month, so £540–£1,440 over three years, and you keep nothing at the end.
- WordPress with us: £495 to £1,495 once, hosting from £15 a month, and looking after it from £39 a month if you would rather not do it yourself.
The numbers land close together. The difference is not the price — it is what you are left holding.
WordPress is not free of trouble either
It needs updates. Plugins conflict. A site nobody maintains for a year is a security problem, which is exactly why care plans exist. Anyone who tells you WordPress is maintenance-free is selling you the first year and not the second.
The short rule
One page, no growth planned, want it today — use a builder. The site has to work for you rather than just describe you — take something you own. If you are between the two, tell us what the site has to do and we will say which way we would go, including when that means not hiring us.