I want to be upfront: I run a web design business. So take this with appropriate skepticism. I've tried to make this as honest as I can.

The real answer is: it depends on where you are as a business and what you need your website to do.

When DIY is the right call

You're pre-revenue. If you're testing a business idea or haven't made your first sale yet, a $16/month Squarespace site is the right move. Don't pay $3,000 for a custom site before you've validated that people want what you're selling.

Your needs are genuinely simple. A static site with a few pages — about, services, contact — that you update twice a year. If that's you, Squarespace, Wix, or even a well-configured WordPress theme will do the job. You don't need custom code for that.

You have time to learn and maintain it. DIY tools require ongoing attention. Template updates, plugin conflicts, broken integrations after platform changes. If you're willing to spend that time, DIY saves money.

Your market isn't particularly competitive online. If you're in a niche where nobody's doing SEO and a basic online presence is sufficient, a DIY site is fine.

When hiring makes sense

You're competing for search traffic. Local SEO is technical. Page speed, schema markup, crawlable site structure, Core Web Vitals — these matter, and they're hard to do well in a template builder. If your customers search for what you sell, a poorly optimized site costs you customers every month.

Your site is a significant sales channel. If a meaningful portion of your revenue depends on people finding and converting on your website, the ROI on a well-built site is often fast. A $3,500 site that brings in one extra customer a month at an average ticket of $400 pays for itself in under a year.

Your brand needs to stand out. Template sites look like template sites. If you're in a market where design credibility matters — hospitality, retail, professional services — being distinguishable from the sea of Squarespace sites has real business value.

You don't have time. Your time is worth something. If you'd spend 60 hours building and iterating on a DIY site, and your time is worth $80/hour, you've spent $4,800 of value — more than a custom site would have cost.

The middle path a lot of businesses miss

You don't have to choose between "full DIY" and "expensive custom site." Options in the middle:

• Hire a designer for just the logo and brand system, then build the site yourself in a template
• Hire for the initial build on a good platform, then manage the content yourself
• Use a website care plan (like ours) where a professional builds and maintains the site for a flat monthly fee — no big upfront cost

What to look for when hiring

Whether you hire us or someone else, these are the questions worth asking:

• Do they hand over full ownership of the domain, hosting, and files?
• Will you be able to update content yourself?
• What happens if you want to leave?
• Can they show sites they've built with good PageSpeed scores?
• Do they include ongoing support, or does every change cost extra?

Beware of anyone who builds you a site and then holds it hostage through proprietary systems you can't access. It's more common than it should be.