Plain-English guide
Wix, Squarespace, or hiring someone: an honest guide
Half our website clients arrive from a builder, not from nothing. So this is not a hit piece — Wix and Squarespace are good at what they are for. The useful question is where the ceiling is, and whether your business is already pressed against it.
By Matt Rooney · 23/08/2026 · T19 Digital
Where the builders genuinely win
Speed to something: an evening and a card gets you live. Cost of entry: £10–£30 a month feels safe. Control: you never wait for anyone. For a placeholder, a side project, or testing whether an idea has legs, a builder is the right call and we will tell you so on the phone.
The three ceilings people hit
Findability: builder sites can rank, but you are fighting the template — slow shared code, generic structure, and thousands of near-identical sites. Fit: the booking or quote flow bends to the template, so you bend your business to the tool. And the treadmill: £25 a month, plus the appointments add-on, plus the domain, plus the email, is £600–£900 a year for something you still had to build yourself. Over three years that is a custom site — without owning anything at the end.
The honest switching point
Switch when the site is your shop window and it is losing to competitors who load faster and answer better; when the booking flow needs deposits, trade-specific questions or your calendar; or when an hour fighting the editor costs more than the edit. Do not switch because someone on the internet said templates are embarrassing. They are not. Slow and unfindable is.
What hiring actually costs against that
Our sites run £1,500–£2,100 fixed, editable by you, loading in under a second, with the code in your name. Care is £39 a month if you want the hosting and fixes handled — less than most builder stacks once the add-ons pile up. The estimator on the homepage prices your version in fifteen seconds without asking who you are.
Questions we get on this
Can I move my Wix or Squarespace site to a custom one?
Yes — the words and images come with you, the template does not. We rebuild the pages properly and set up redirects so any Google rankings you have earned survive the move.
Is Wix bad for SEO?
Not inherently, but you are racing in a heavier car: shared template code, slower pages, and structures Google has seen a million times. Fine for low-competition searches; a handicap for competitive ones.
What does a builder really cost over three years?
Typically £600–£900 a year once the plan, appointments, domain and email add up — £1,800–£2,700 over three years, for something you built yourself and never own.
Sixty seconds gets you a number
The estimator prices your version of this without asking for an email.