Site builder or have it built?
Wix, Squarespace and the like against a built site. Both have their place, but not for the same business.
A site builder when the site mainly has to exist and the budget is zero. Have it built as soon as it's meant to bring customers — and always when you want to own what you pay for.
You rent. Stop paying and the site is gone.
The files and the content are yours. After three years the cost is roughly level.
What a site builder really costs
The monthly fee sounds harmless. 15 € a month is 180 € a year and 540 € over three years — without anyone ever having done anything for you.
Then there's your time. Clicking through a builder in the evenings quickly adds up to twenty hours. Price them at what an hour of your work is worth.
Where builders are genuinely good
When it has to be fast and nothing depends on it. A club, a one-off event, a page that mainly needs to exist.
Also as a stopgap: a simple builder page beats two years of nothing at all.
Where they break
Four points where it regularly goes wrong:
- Speed. Builders load a lot your site doesn't need. On a phone you notice it clearly.
- Individuality. You move inside a template. What it doesn't allow for can't be done — and people can tell which template it was.
- Dependency. Price rises, feature changes, a provider being sold: you're not at the wheel.
- Moving. Export is deliberately close to useless with most providers. Switching means rebuilding.
The question that matters more than price
Who owns what in the end? With a builder you rent a site. Stop paying and it's gone.
With a built site you own the files and the content — and the domain can be in your name if you want it there. You can hand it to someone else at any time. That isn't a technical detail, that's the whole difference.
The three-year maths
Builder: 540 € in fees plus your twenty hours plus a site you don't own that looks like a thousand others.
Built: from 500 € once, hosting usually free, domain 15 € a year. After three years you're roughly level — except the files and the content are yours, it's faster and it looks like your business.
That's not a sales pitch, it's arithmetic. Run it with your own numbers.
The honest recommendation
If you're just starting and every euro counts: take a builder, but buy the domain yourself and in your own name. Then you can move later without losing everything.
If your website is meant to bring customers: have it built. The difference doesn't show on day one, it shows in year two.
Can I move away from a builder later?
The content yes, the design no. Copy and images carry over, the site itself gets rebuilt. What matters is that the domain is in your name — otherwise the move gets unpleasant.
What about WordPress?
That's the third route: powerful and widespread, but you take on a maintenance duty. Updates for the system and its extensions are a security matter, not a comfort feature. For a small business without support it's often the worst of the three.
Does a built site need a maintenance subscription?
Technically no — it keeps running without one, because it has no extensions that can go stale. You only need a subscription if you want regular changes.
Between 300 and 3,000 € — and three things decide where you land.
For a first impression, yes. As your only home, no — and there are two solid reasons.
Written by Florenz Hardt, Berlin. If any of this stops being true, tell me — I keep these up to date.