The free website builder pitch is compelling: drag-and-drop design, no coding needed, publish in a day. For a business owner trying to keep costs down, it sounds like an obvious move. The reality is a little more complicated.
What Free Plans Actually Give You
Free tiers on most major website builders typically include:
- A website with their branding displayed prominently ("Made with Wix" banners, etc.)
- A subdomain URL like yourbusiness.wixsite.com — not a real domain
- Limited storage for images and files
- No ability to connect your own domain
- No access to e-commerce features
- Platform adverts that appear on your pages
A website with "yourname.wixsite.com" in the address bar, with Wix's branding in the footer, does not look professional. Most potential customers will notice. It signals that the business isn't established enough to invest in a proper web address.
What You Actually Need to Pay For
To get a website that looks and functions like a real business website, you'll need at minimum:
- Your own domain name — approximately £10–£15/year for a .co.uk
- A paid plan on the platform to remove their branding and connect your domain — typically £12–£25/month depending on the platform and tier
Once you add those up, a "free" Wix or Squarespace site typically costs £150–£300/year — before you've paid anyone to help you build it.
The real cost of DIY website builders: Platform subscription (£12–25/month) + domain (£10–15/year) + your time (honest estimate: 20–40 hours to build something you're happy with) = a meaningful investment. The time cost is often the largest one — and time spent building a website is time not spent on the business itself.
The Time Cost Is the Biggest Hidden Expense
Most business owners underestimate how long building a website takes. It's not just the dragging and dropping — it's:
- Learning the platform (a few hours at minimum)
- Writing all the page content (harder than it sounds)
- Finding, editing, and uploading photos
- Getting the mobile layout right
- Setting up contact forms and checking they work
- Making changes after you notice things that don't look right
For a tradesperson or service business owner who charges £30–£100/hour for their own time, spending 30 hours on a website is a significant real cost — even if no money changes hands.
What DIY Builders Are Good For
DIY builders aren't without merit. They're a reasonable choice if:
- You genuinely enjoy this kind of work and have the time
- You need to update content yourself very frequently
- You're in an early testing phase and want a temporary online presence while you validate the business idea
- Your budget is genuinely zero and even a subdomain site is better than nothing
The Case for Having It Done For You
For a business owner whose time is worth money — and whose website's main job is to generate enquiries — having a website built professionally and maintained for a monthly fee is often the better deal. You get a purpose-built result faster, and you can get on with running the business instead of learning web design software.
The question isn't really "can I do this myself?" You probably can. The question is "is this the best use of my time?" For most business owners, the honest answer is no.
Before you start a DIY build, ask yourself: (1) Have I set aside at least 20 hours? (2) Do I have good photos ready to use? (3) Have I written the text for each page? (4) Do I know what I want the site to achieve? If any of these answers is "not yet," your site will take far longer than you're expecting — and the quality will reflect the rushed content rather than the platform.
From £20/month, £0 setup fee, live in 48 hours. We build fast, SEO-ready websites for UK small businesses — no contract, cancel anytime.