The fair question
Thinking of Wix, GoDaddy or IONOS? Fair. Let’s do the sums properly.
They’re the names you see advertised, they start at a few pounds a month, and if we pretended that wasn’t tempting you’d be right not to trust anything else on this page.
No. 01
What the builders are genuinely good at
The software is capable. Templates look decent out of the box, the editors are friendly, and plenty of people with a good eye and a spare fortnight have built themselves a perfectly respectable site. None of what follows argues otherwise, and if that’s you, our honest advice is at the bottom of the page.
No. 02
What the subscription doesn’t include: the doing
£10 to £25 a month buys the tool, once the first-year offer prices wear off. It doesn’t buy anyone doing anything. Nobody writes your pages. Nobody works out why a plumber in Llandeilo should rank for “boiler service Llandeilo” and builds the page that does it. Nobody chooses the photos, nobody notices the contact form quietly broke in March, and nobody answers when something looks wrong on a Friday afternoon.
That’s not a hidden catch; it’s the product. DIY means you do it: the writing, the layout, the updates, the fixing. So the honest price of a builder is £15 a month plus your evenings, and the finished thing usually looks like what it is: a template filled in after work.
No. 03
The same money, the other way round
Our price is £49 a month, published in full, with nothing up front and no minimum term. For the difference between that and a builder subscription, the whole job is done for you: the site designed and written around how your business wins work, structured to be found in your towns, hosted, secured, backed up, and looked after every month by a person twenty minutes up the road. You send a text when a price changes; it’s live before the kettle’s boiled. Your evenings stay yours.
No. 04
When DIY is honestly the right call
If the budget is genuinely zero, or you actively enjoy building things and the website is a pleasure rather than a chore, or the site is a hobby rather than a livelihood: take the builder, and take it without guilt. It’s the right tool for that job. This page exists for the other case, where the website is supposed to win work while you do the actual work.
No. 05
The Sunday evening test
Both routes end with your business online. One of them also ends with you updating a website on Sunday evenings. Ask yourself which half of that you’re actually good at, and what an hour of your time is worth on the tools. That’s the whole comparison.