Wix vs a custom website: an honest comparison
What Wix is genuinely good at, the three real trade-offs, and the outdated criticism you can safely ignore.
We build custom websites, so factor that in. We have also told plenty of people to use Wix instead, because for some businesses it is the right answer and taking their money would have been the wrong one.
First, the criticism you can ignore
"Website builders are bad for SEO." This was a fair complaint years ago and it is largely out of date. Modern builders let you set page titles and descriptions, produce sitemaps, handle mobile layouts and give you reasonable control over structure. A well-built Wix site will out-rank a badly built custom one every time.
Anyone still leading with that argument is either repeating something they learned a decade ago or hoping you will not check. The real trade-offs are elsewhere.
What Wix is genuinely good at
Starting today, for very little. No brief, no supplier, no waiting.
Changing things yourself, instantly. If you want to move a section at eleven at night, you can. That is real, and for some people it is worth more than everything on the other side of this comparison.
Bundling the boring parts. Hosting, certificate and domain in one place with one bill and nothing to configure.
Being enough. For a business whose website needs to say what it does, show some photos and give a phone number, a builder can genuinely be sufficient.
If you enjoy the tinkering and your needs are simple, stop reading and go use it. Keep your money.
The three real trade-offs
1. You cannot take it with you
This is the important one and it is rarely mentioned upfront.
A Wix site exists on Wix. You cannot export it and host it elsewhere. If you outgrow the platform, or their pricing changes, or you simply want to move, you rebuild from scratch. Your domain and your content come with you; the site does not.
A custom site is files. They belong to you, they can move to any host, and any developer can pick them up.
For a five-page site that may never matter. For a business planning to be around in ten years it is worth understanding before you start.
2. The template ceiling
Templates are why builders are fast, and also where they stop.
You can adjust a lot within the template's assumptions and very little outside them. Most people meet this ceiling not at launch but eighteen months later, when the business has changed and the site needs to do something the layout was never built for. The usual outcome is a compromise nobody is happy with, or a rebuild.
This matters more if what you do is unusual, and less if you are a business whose website has the same shape as every other business in your trade.
3. Your time is the actual price
The subscription looks like the cost. It is not.
Most people we have spoken to who tried a builder spent several evenings on it, produced something acceptable, and quietly disliked it. Some never finished. If your time is worth anything — and it is worth something — a weekend of it plus the subscription is not obviously cheaper than paying someone.
Be honest with yourself about whether you will actually do it. Half a website is worse than none.
How to decide
Use a builder if: your needs are simple, you want to start now, you enjoy this kind of thing, and you want to change things yourself constantly.
Pay someone if: you would rather spend the weekend on your business, you want it to look like it was designed rather than assembled, you want to own what you paid for, or you have already tried a builder and stalled.
A note on cost. Builder subscriptions are ongoing, and over several years the total is more than people expect. Compare like with like: the subscription over three years against a one-off build plus its running cost, not against the build price alone.
Where we sit
We charge $499 to build and $49 a month to run, live in three working days. The monthly fee covers the domain, hosting, the certificate, updates and small changes — so you get the "someone else handles the boring parts" benefit without the platform lock-in. Ask and we hand over the code and transfer the domain, free.
We do not build online shops or booking systems at that price, and for those a builder with the feature already included may genuinely serve you better.