Should You Build Your Own Website or Hire Someone?

The short answer: pick by the job

What DIY actually costs

"Free to start" usually means free until you want your own domain and no platform branding. After that, a DIY site has four ongoing costs:

• the platform plan, billed every month or every year for as long as the site is up;
• the domain, often free for the first year and then renewed at the platform's price;
• paid add-ons, if you need features the plan doesn't include;
• your time, which I count separately below.

A free first-year domain comes with strings. Wix says its free domain voucher is only valid with a purchase of a new domain from Wix and cannot be used to renew a domain you already own. Squarespace says domains registered through its promotion renew at its standard rate, plus applicable taxes, after the first year.

Sources: Wix plans page, FAQ on the free domain, Squarespace pricing page, "Free custom domain".

Wix vs Squarespace vs WordPress

Here is the plan cost of the entry-level paid plan on each, over three years, before the domain renewal.

Arithmetic: $17 × 12 = $204, and $204 × 3 = $612; $4 × 12 = $48, and $48 × 3 = $144. Sources: Wix blog, "How much is a Wix website?", table in the TL;DR section, WordPress.com pricing, Personal plan, Squarespace pricing, Basic plan. Wix and Squarespace set prices by region, so check the page from where you live.

A note on the Squarespace row. The pricing page detects your location, and from Poland it shows zloty. Converting that into dollars would give you a number Squarespace never quoted, so I left it out. The page also says you can try it free for 14 days and save up to 36% by paying annually.

WordPress.com is the cheapest here if you pay up front: US$2.75 a month when billed every 36 months, or US$9 a month on a monthly plan. Wix's own blog puts its paid plans at $17 to $159 a month and says Core, at $29, is the first plan that lets you accept payments.

The cost people forget: your time

No price page lists this line, so work it out with your own numbers: hours you will spend × what an hour of your time is worth to your business.

Say the site takes you two weekends, 16 hours in total, and an hour of your work is worth $50. That is $800 before the first subscription payment. If you enjoy this kind of work and your evenings are free, the number is closer to zero. If those 16 hours come out of paid jobs, it is real money.

Count the second round too. Every price change, new photo or broken form later comes out of the same evenings.

What hiring someone buys you, and what it doesn't

You pay for someone else's hours and experience: design, the words on the page, setup, testing on phones and a site finished by a set date. You also skip the learning curve, which is the part of DIY that eats most of the weekends.

A build fee does not automatically cover what comes after it. Before you agree, ask about each of these:

1. Is the price fixed in writing before work starts?
2. When do I pay: up front, or after I have seen the finished site?
3. Who pays for hosting and the domain from year two?
4. What does a change cost after launch?
5. Do I get the files and the accounts when the job is done?

What agencies and freelancers charge for a small business site, with sources, is in How much does a small business website cost.

Who owns the domain, site and accounts?

Whoever builds the site, register the domain in your own name, in an account you control. A domain is cheap to keep and painful to get back from someone else's account.

At Namecheap, under "Prices for .COM domains", a .com costs $11.28 for the first year (a sale price, 25% off $14.98) and $18.48 a year to renew. New customers can get the first year for $6.79 with a promo code, first-year registrations only. Namecheap adds that ICANN charges a $0.20 annual fee, which is added to the listed price for some domains. Three years at the regular sale price: $11.28 + 2 × $18.48 = $48.24.

Cloudflare Registrar sells domains at cost: it says registration, transfer and renewal prices are always at or below what registries and ICANN charge it.

Sources: Namecheap .com prices, Cloudflare Registrar, "At cost".

What happens after launch?

On a builder, the plan bills for as long as the site is online. On WordPress that you host yourself, someone installs updates for the core, the theme and the plugins, and checks that the contact form still works afterwards. What that upkeep costs by published estimates is in A website without WordPress: when plain HTML is enough.

A static site, plain HTML files with no database, can be hosted free on the Cloudflare Pages free plan. That plan allows 500 builds a month to publish changes and up to 20,000 files per site, and requests to static files are free and unlimited. Forms and other server-side features count toward a free limit of 100,000 requests a day.

Ask one more question before you choose: can I take the site with me? A static site is a folder of files that any developer can open.

Sources: Cloudflare Pages limits, page last updated September 5, 2026; Cloudflare Pages Functions pricing, "Static asset requests" and "Free Plan", page last updated September 8, 2026.

Where I fit, and when I'd send you elsewhere

For a simple brochure site, there is a middle ground between a weekend of DIY and an agency project. I build it myself for a fixed price from my public price list: one page $50, four to eight pages $75–150, a shop with up to ten products $175–200, a redesign of a site you already have $100–150.

The 24-hour clock starts with my email confirming I have the agreed scope and all your materials. You pay only after you have seen the finished site working. If you don't like it, you pay nothing. If I miss the 24-hour deadline, the agreement is canceled and you owe nothing.

I host your site free of charge, and on request I hand over the source files and move it to your own account. You pay for your own domain. One round of changes is included: you ask within seven days of delivery, and I make the changes within 24 hours. For seven days after you accept the work, I fix anything that breaks in what I built, free. The full rules are in the terms of work.

I would send you elsewhere in three cases:

• You plan to add posts or new pages yourself every week. Wix or WordPress suits that better: on my sites you edit text, prices and photos in the site's panel, but each new page is a new order.
• The shop is the business: many products, stock, orders every day. Go with Shopify or WooCommerce. My shops stop at ten products.
• You need an app: a customer portal with its own database, or complex system integrations. Hire a developer; I don't build apps.

A decision tree for a small business

1. Is the thing you need really an app, with logins and a database at its core? Hire a developer.
2. Is the online shop the business itself? Choose Shopify or WooCommerce, on your own or with help.
3. Will you add pages or posts yourself every week? Use Wix or WordPress, whether you set it up or someone does it for you.
4. Do you have more free evenings than budget? Build it yourself, and count three years of the plan before you pick one.
5. None of the above? Get a simple site from a professional, and get the fixed price in writing first.

See what a website needs by industry: for law firms and hair salons.

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