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A website builder or a web designer: which does your business actually need?
An honest comparison for a small business: when a builder is the right call, what a designer gives you that a builder usually does not, and what each really costs.
If you have looked for a website lately, you will have seen both: builders that let you make a site yourself, and designers who make one for you. Both are reasonable choices. Here is how to tell which one fits your business.
What a builder is
A website builder is a service where you put the site together yourself, usually by picking a template and changing the words and pictures. You typically pay a monthly subscription, and the site lives on the builder’s platform for as long as you keep paying.
When a builder is the right call
- You have more time than budget, and you enjoy doing it yourself.
- You need a page or two up today, and that it exists matters more than how it looks.
- You are testing an idea and do not yet know whether it will last.
If that is you, a builder is a sensible place to start. Nobody should spend money on a website before they need one.
What a builder usually does not give you
- A design made for your business. A builder usually starts from a template somebody else is also using. Ours starts from your business.
- A site you can take with you. A builder’s site usually lives on the builder’s platform and cannot simply be moved somewhere else. With us, on final payment the code, the repository, every credential and the intellectual property transfer to you in full.
- Your time back. With a builder, you are the designer, the writer and the person who fixes it. With us, the design and the build are done for you, and you still edit your own pages afterwards, without touching code and without asking us.
What each really costs
A builder looks cheaper because it is paid monthly, and part of what it costs never appears on an invoice: your own hours.
Our websites start from £500. That includes bespoke design, a year of hosting and SSL for reasonable usage, pages you edit yourself, a multi-step enquiry form, a news section, a gallery, WhatsApp chat and your Google reviews pulled in live. After the first year, hosting depends on how much your site actually uses, and we put that in your proposal in writing at the start. What a £500 website actually includes goes through it item by item.
The low-risk way to compare
For a website, discovery is free and you click through a working prototype before you pay anything. If it is not right, you walk away, and you can still build it yourself. A site usually takes one to two weeks.
Start your brief and tell us what you have in mind, or send us a message.