Wix is not a worse version of hiring somebody. It is a different product sold to a different person, and most arguments against it are really arguments about who is going to do the work.
TL;DR. The software is the cheap part. The person doing the work is not. A builder sells you the software and leaves the work with you. A web studio sells you the work. If you want to be the person who edits your own website, use a builder like Wix, Squarespace or GoDaddy and stop reading here. If you want the website to be somebody else’s job, the rest of this is how to tell which of the two you are.
The builder prices below were checked in August 2026 and they will not stay right. Nobody’s do. Check them on the day you decide rather than trusting a figure in an article, this one included.
The software is not the expensive part
A website has two costs that get sold as one.
The first is the thing that serves the pages: a template, an editor, hosting, a certificate, a form. That cost has collapsed. Builders sell it well, at a price no studio can match, and they are not cutting corners to do it. Millions of subscribers paying for the same software is a real economy and the saving is passed on.
The second cost is a person. Somebody has to decide what the pages say, write them, notice when the contact form stopped arriving, add the page about the service you started offering in March, and keep your details right in the places people look you up. Builders do not sell that, and they do not pretend to. It is yours.
That is the whole comparison. Everything below is a consequence of it.
The comparison, line by line
Eight lines, and the first one decides the other seven.
| WIXDIY builder | SQUARESPACEDIY builder | A WEB STUDIOWhat we do | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | You do | You do | We do |
| When something breaks | Live chat, or a phone callback | Live chat or email, no phone | You email the person who built it |
| How a change gets made | Drag anything anywhere | Sections, with guardrails | You send an email, at no cost per change |
| Where your time goes | Hours you would not otherwise spend | Hours you would not otherwise spend | Yours to spend on the business |
| What you own | The content. No export at all. | The content. A partial export. | Your content from day one. The site and the domain from month 24, then handed over whenever you leave. |
| The shape of the cost | £11.50–19 a month, no build fee | £16–24 a month, no build fee | £25–65 a month, no build fee, and the site becomes yours at month 24 |
| What is not in that price | Domain renewal, business email, email marketing, and an app for anything the editor will not do | Domain renewal, business email, email campaigns, and Scheduling, which is in no plan | Nothing above. Domain, hosting, changes and the monthly report are in it. |
| Being found locally | The fields, for you to fill in | The fields, for you to fill in | Claimed, kept correct, and a page each month |
Read both builder ranges as a floor rather than a cost. Each runs from the cheapest plan that builds a five-page site to the one that can take payments, on monthly billing; paying 12 months up front brings the low ends to £9 and £12. Ours runs Essential to Portal, monthly at every rung with nothing to pay up front, and the domain stays included for as long as you do.
The two builder columns agree on three of the eight rows, and they disagree with the third column on every row. That is the comparison, and it is why the rest of this article treats builders as one choice rather than two. Put GoDaddy in either builder column and nothing above changes.
Four of those rows carry something a cell cannot hold.
Where your time goes. A builder costs you hours you would not otherwise spend. Some people enjoy those hours. If you do, that is a genuine argument for a builder and not a consolation prize. If you resent them, you are paying twice: once in subscription, once in the evenings.
What you own. The site is not portable in any practical sense, so leaving a builder means rebuilding. With us the files are handed over if you go, and cancelling is an email. Worth checking on any pay-monthly studio you speak to, including the ones that are not us: some never transfer the site at all.
What the price does not include. Bookings, business email, email marketing and a review widget are separate subscriptions on a builder, bought one at a time, each small and none of them the last. That is not a criticism of the model: an app store is how a product serves millions of businesses that all want something different. It does mean the number on the pricing page is a starting position rather than a total, and it is the number people compare.
Being found locally. A builder gives you the fields to fill in. Filling them in, claiming the listings, keeping opening hours right across the directories that still matter and writing the page that answers what people type is work, and it is monthly. We do it and send you a page each month saying what changed. What nobody can sell you is a position in the results.
Which one is yours
The lines above do not add up to a winner. They add up to a question about you, so here it is from both ends.
A builder is the better choice if
- You want to make changes yourself, tonight, without asking anybody.
- The site is a shopfront rather than a working part of the business: hours, what you do, how to reach you.
- Your budget genuinely has no room for a build fee. A real site you maintain yourself beats a better site you cannot afford.
- You are testing an idea and may not be doing this in six months.
- You have somebody in-house who likes this work. A capable person with a builder is a strong combination and needs no agency.
A web studio is the better choice if
- You are the bottleneck. The site is already out of date and the reason is that editing it is on a list you never reach.
- The site has to do something: take bookings, take payments, run a shop, or send a form somewhere it arrives.
- You want one person who knows your business and answers your email, rather than a ticket.
- The monthly work matters to you: listings, content changes, keeping it up and backed up, and a report you can read.
- You would rather buy an outcome than a tool.
Five questions that settle it
If you are between the two lists, these decide it.
- When did you last change your own website? If the answer is more than six months and it needed changing, a builder will not fix that.
- Who noticed the last time something on it broke? If the answer is a customer, you are buying monitoring, not software.
- How many hours a month do you want to spend on it? Multiply by what an hour of your time is worth. Compare that to a monthly fee before you decide anything.
- Does the site need to take money or bookings? If yes, the work is a build, and builders are weakest exactly here.
- Do you enjoy it? An honest yes is the best reason to pick a builder there is.
If a builder is right, which builder
We do not sell any of these, so here it is plainly. The differences that matter are not features, because all three will build you a five-page site. They are differences of shape, and shape does not change the way a price list does.
- Wix gives you the most freedom and the most room to make a mess. If you enjoy the fiddling, it rewards it.
- Squarespace gives you fewer choices and better defaults. If you would rather be handed a good decision than make one, that is the trade.
- GoDaddy is already bundled with the domain a lot of people bought there. The convenience is the argument, and for some businesses it is enough.
WordPress is missing on purpose. It is the name people ask about most and it is not really a builder. The hosted version at wordpress.com is one. The version most freelancers and agencies build on is software that somebody has to run, which puts it in the other column of this article rather than this one. If you have been quoted a WordPress site, you are already choosing a person, and the questions above are the ones to ask them.
Check the current prices and features yourself, on the day you decide.
Two worked examples
The same five questions, opposite answers.
The plumber in Widnes
Take a two-van plumbing firm. The owner is on tools all day and quotes in the evening. The website is four years old, still lists a landline that rings out, and has no page for the boiler servicing contracts that are now most of the profit.
A builder does not solve this. The problem was never the editor: it is that nobody has an hour to open it. The subscription is the smaller cost here and the missing servicing page is the larger one.
The ceramicist
Now take a ceramicist selling at two markets a month. She photographs her own work, writes her own descriptions, and enjoys the fiddling. She should use a builder, and anybody selling her a managed monthly site is selling her something she does not need.
Both of those are the right answer. They are the right answer for different people.
What we do about it
We design your homepage before you pay anything, and we change it until you are happy with it. If it is not right, that is the end of it and you owe nothing. That offer exists because the choice above is hard to make in the abstract, and a real design of your real homepage is the cheapest way to settle it.
After that: one fixed monthly price to build it and look after it, nothing to pay before it is live, and you email the person who built it.
What Essential costs
- £25 a month, and nothing up front. It builds the site, hosts it, changes it, keeps it patched and keeps your listings right.
- The same £25 in year two, and in year three. There is no introductory rate, no step up and no rise once the build is paid off, because the monthly never carried the build to begin with.
- Up to five pages, on a domain of your own. The domain is included in the price and is never a separate bill.
- Live in seven days, or the first month is on us.
- Moving your existing site across is included, along with a contact form and a WhatsApp button.
- The site, and a domain we register for you, are ours until the twenty-fourth payment and yours from it. Cancel by email in any month and the Direct Debit stops that day: no notice, no exit fee, nothing to settle. Before month twenty-four what you keep is your own words and pictures rather than the site or the address, which is the trade for a build nobody invoiced you for. A domain you already own is the exception and stays yours throughout. So does buying the build outright and owning everything from day one, which is still sold and priced on the call.
- We are not VAT-registered, so there is no VAT to add.
What the monthly covers in full is on what you are actually getting, and if you have a quote in front of you from anybody, how to read a website quote goes through the line items. All three plans are on pricing, and the dates and the process are on how it works.
If you would rather talk it through, book a 30-minute call. We will tell you if a builder is the better answer for you, because a client who should have used Wix leaves within the year anyway.
