Is it cheaper to build my own website than to hire a professional?

In cash, yes, every time. A typical small business on Wix or Squarespace pays around $550–$930 a year once email, apps, and domain renewal are counted. The real cost is the hours you spend running it, because on a DIY platform the webmaster is you.

Do Wix and Squarespace sites show up on Google?

Usually not. A 2026 analysis found roughly 85% of Squarespace sites get no organic traffic, and both platforms restrict the technical settings (robots.txt, schema markup, structured data) that competitive rankings depend on.

Can I move my site off Wix or Squarespace later?

Mostly no. Wix's official policy is that sites built in its editor can't be exported; only data like products and contacts comes with you. Squarespace exports a partial file with no images, product pages, or styling. Plan on rebuilding when you leave.

Should I hire a web designer or do it myself?

Do it yourself if you're validating a new idea, the budget is zero, or all your business arrives by referral. Hire a professional when the website needs to generate customers, your time is worth more than the webmaster job, and you want to own a site you can take anywhere.

Business owner working at a laptop late at night, face lit by the screen

DIY Website vs. Hiring a Professional

08/18/2026

Choosing a Provider Small Business

DIY Website vs. Hiring a Professional

It's 9 p.m. on a Tuesday. You've got a Wix trial open in one tab, a web designer's contact page in another, and a business to run in the morning. The builder says $17 a month. The designer hasn't quoted anything yet, but you already know it won't be $17 a month. So should you hire a web designer, or just build the thing yourself this weekend?

We build websites for a living, so you know which side our bread is buttered on. We've also told plenty of callers to skip us and build it themselves, and by the end of this post you'll know if you're one of them. Every number below comes from published 2026 pricing and platform policy, verified this month.

What DIY actually costs

The advertised price is real, with an asterisk. Wix starts at $17 a month and Squarespace at $19, but both figures assume you prepay a full year. Month-to-month billing runs 30–40% higher on either platform.

Then the site starts doing actual business work, and the line items arrive:

Business email isn't included on any plan. Google Workspace runs $7 per user per month, so figure $84 a year.
Apps and add-ons. Paid Wix apps typically run $3–$20 a month each; two modest ones (say, reviews and a chat widget) add $120–$300 a year. On Squarespace, email marketing starts at $8 a month and Acuity Scheduling at $16.
The domain is free for year one, then renews at roughly $10 to $13 a year.
Selling online adds card processing of 2.9% + $0.30 per sale, and Squarespace's Basic plan takes an extra 2% platform fee on top.

Add it up and a typical small business lands around $550–$930 a year, roughly double the sticker price. A simple brochure site with no add-ons runs closer to $320–$470.

Credit where due: that's still the cheapest cash option there is, and the fastest. Nothing a professional offers can beat a real site live by Sunday for a few hundred dollars a year. If cash and speed were the whole decision, this post would end here.

The second price: the webmaster job

The platform supplies the tools. You supply the labor. Design, copy, image compression, search settings, troubleshooting: all yours, forever.

That's not a hypothetical. One developer who maintains two Wix sites reported manually requesting Google indexing for nearly every page, one page at a time. Keeping a Wix site fast enough to pass Google's Core Web Vitals means disciplined image work and holding yourself to two or three apps, because each app adds code the page has to carry. On Squarespace, custom CSS requires the $29 Core plan, and the company warns that adding custom code may limit the support you receive. In other words, the moment you customize past the template, the breakage is yours.

When a professionally managed site breaks, someone whose job is fixing it gets a call. When a DIY site breaks, you're back at the laptop at 9 p.m., working from support articles.

Will anyone actually find it?

If every customer you get arrives by referral, skip this section; the website just needs to confirm you exist, and a builder does that fine.

If you need the website to generate leads, the numbers get uncomfortable. One 2026 analysis found that roughly 85% of Squarespace sites get no organic traffic at all, most often because of oversized images and missing alt text. And the ceilings are structural, not skill-based: Squarespace won't let you edit robots.txt and limits your control of canonical URLs and schema markup, while custom structured data on Wix requires third-party apps or writing JavaScript in Velo. Both platforms stop handing you technical control at exactly the moment a site starts competing for rankings.

The exit door is smaller than it looks

Here's the part nobody mentions at signup. Wix's official policy states that sites built in its editor cannot be exported to another host. Your product list, contacts, and orders can leave; your pages and design cannot. Squarespace does offer an export, but it's a partial WordPress-format file with no images, no product pages, and no styling.

So "start cheap, upgrade later" actually means "pay to rebuild from zero later." That's not a reason to avoid DIY. It is a reason to treat the builder as a temporary tool rather than a foundation, and to budget accordingly.

When DIY is the right call

Build it yourself, and don't let anyone talk you out of it, if any of these fit:

You're validating a brand-new idea. Don't spend real money proving a concept. A $19-a-month site that dies quietly is a cheap experiment.
The budget is genuinely zero. A live DIY site beats a professional site you can't afford.
All your business comes by referral. If the site's only job is confirming you exist to people who already have your number, a builder does that job well.

If that's you, go build it on Squarespace this weekend. That's not a backhanded blessing; it's the correct move. The problems in this post are good problems to defer until the idea has proven itself.

What hiring actually buys

A professional costs more cash. Full stop. Anyone who tells you otherwise is hiding a line item. What the money buys is four specific things:

Your evenings back. The webmaster job transfers to someone who does it for a living.
Accountability. When something breaks or rankings stall, a specific person is responsible for fixing it, and you know their name.
A site that can compete. No platform ceilings on speed, structured data, or search settings. The site can actually earn rankings instead of renting attention.
Ownership. A hand-built site on open infrastructure leaves with you: domain, code, and content. Done right, your own staff can update it too, so hiring help doesn't mean becoming dependent on it.

Professionals come in several shapes, from marketplace freelancers to national agencies, and the right one depends on your budget and situation. We covered that full landscape, including when each lane makes sense, in our guide to how to choose a web designer in the Shenandoah Valley.

The one-question test

Does your website need to bring in customers, or just confirm you exist?

Confirm you exist: DIY wins, genuinely. Bring in customers: you're comparing a professional's quote against a $550–$930-a-year tool plus an unpaid part-time webmaster job with a roughly 15% success rate at earning search traffic. Run that math with your own hourly worth in it, and the quote starts looking different.

Settle it in twenty minutes

Still on the fence? A short call will sort it. Tell us what the site needs to do, and we'll tell you which side of the line you're on. If DIY covers it, we'll say so and you keep your money.

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