Perspective3 min read
Custom website vs Squarespace, Wix, and WordPress
Each option is the right one for somebody. The mistake is choosing by price alone and finding out later which somebody you were.
A business choosing how to get a website has three broad routes: a hosted builder such as Squarespace or Wix, WordPress with a theme, or a custom build by a studio. We build custom sites, so read what follows knowing where we sit. We have tried to be fair, because a business that chooses the wrong route on our advice is not a client we want.
Hosted builders: Squarespace, Wix, and their peers
What they do well: they exist immediately, they are inexpensive, hosting and security are handled for you, and a motivated owner can produce something presentable in a weekend. For a new business validating an idea, or a very small one whose site only needs to confirm that it exists, this is a legitimate choice, and we say so to people who ask us.
Where they run out: the design is a template, and the template is recognised. Performance is whatever the platform delivers, and it is rarely fast on a phone. Search and structured data are limited to what the platform exposes. Anything beyond the platform's features, a specific booking flow, a portal, an integration, is either impossible or a fragile workaround. And the site is rented: you can leave, but you cannot take the site with you in any meaningful sense.
WordPress with a theme
What it does well: it is open, enormously flexible, and there is a plugin for almost everything. You own the site and can move it. A competent WordPress developer can make it do a great deal.
Where it runs out: the flexibility is the cost. A themed WordPress site accumulates plugins, each a maintenance and security obligation, each adding weight. Performance suffers unless someone is actively managing it. The theme has the same sameness problem as a builder, and the workaround tax we described in the hidden cost of template-based design applies in full. Kept lean by a careful developer, WordPress is fine; left to grow, it becomes the slow, fragile site most businesses eventually ask us to replace.
A custom build
What it does well: everything is designed for your business, from the structure to the last hover state. Performance, accessibility, and search are engineered in rather than bolted on. There is no ceiling: booking, portals, products, and integrations are built as needed on a foundation that can carry them. You own it outright.
Where it runs out: it costs more up front and takes longer, and it depends on the studio being good. A bad custom site is worse than a good builder site, because it has all of the cost and none of the safety. Judge a studio by sites you can click through to, not by a portfolio of images.
The middle path
The gap between a template and a full custom engagement is real, and it is where a lot of good businesses fall. Our answer to it is Digital Editions: complete, original designs that we sell once, to one business, retire, and adapt to your brand at a fixed price. The design quality of custom, the price and timeline of a builder, and no one else will ever have your site.
How to choose
- If you are testing whether the business has customers: a builder, this week, and spend your money on the test.
- If the site's only job is to confirm you exist and look competent: a builder or a lean WordPress site is enough, provided someone keeps it fast.
- If you compete on trust or price against similar businesses and need to look like the obvious choice: an Edition or a custom build.
- If the site has a specific job, booking, selling, serving customers, integrating with your other systems: custom, on a foundation that will take the weight.
- If you intend to grow into the site rather than out of it: custom, once, rather than a builder now and a rebuild later.
Questions people ask
- Is Squarespace good enough for a small business?
- For a new or very small business whose site needs only to confirm it exists, yes. It runs out when you need to stand apart from similar businesses, when performance and search matter, or when the site has a job beyond being a brochure.
- Is WordPress better than a website builder?
- It is more flexible and you own it, which matters. It is also more work to keep fast and secure, and a themed WordPress site has the same sameness problem as a builder. Better depends on whether someone is going to look after it.
- When is a custom website worth the money?
- When you compete on something other than price, when the site has a specific job a generic layout does badly, when speed and maintainability matter over years, and when you would rather build once than twice.
Put it to work