$99 Sites vs. building it yourself on Wix or Squarespace

What the do-it-yourself route really costs

Squarespace is around $16 to $23 a month for a business plan, Wix similar. So on paper you save most of the $99.

The cost that does not appear on the invoice is your time. A first website takes most people somewhere between fifteen and forty hours once you count picking a template, fighting the editor, writing the words, and the fortnight it sits half-finished. If your time is worth anything to your business, that is the real number.

Where we are honestly better

Speed. Template builders load slowly on phones because they ship a lot of code to make the drag-and-drop editor work. Our sites are plain files with no page builder attached, and typically load several times faster.

The invisible parts. Local business markup, service-area signals, a proper sitemap, and the Google Business Profile connection are what get you into the map results. Nearly every self-built site skips these because nothing prompts you to do them.

And the writing. Most self-built sites stall on the words, not the design. We write them.

Where they are honestly better

If you need a shop with dozens of products you manage yourself, Squarespace's commerce tooling is good and it is included. Ours is a website, not a store.

And you would own what you built. Our sites stay ours — you own the domain and everything you write, we own and maintain the code. If that matters to you, build it yourself.

The straight version

Choose a builder if you actually enjoy this and have the weekend. Choose us if the website has been on your to-do list for over a year, because it will still be there next year.

That is not a sales pitch, it is just how it goes.