01
You have no customers yet
Pre-revenue, testing whether anybody wants it. Spend the £1,950 finding that out instead. A builder gives you an address while you look for evidence.
A website builder, a cheap monthly deal, or a developer
It gets put as two options, which hides the one most small businesses actually buy. Here are all three: what a builder costs you in weekends, what the bundled monthly market does not mention until you try to leave, and what a developer buys that a platform cannot. For a good few readers the answer is not me.
- My floor is £1,950, 2–3 weeks
- Builder plans, roughly £12–£40/mo
- Self-build: 45–90 hours, estimated
- Under £1,950, use a builder
Three options, not two
The usual framing deletes the middle of the market, where most small businesses end up: a cheap build, either a few hundred pounds as a one-off or a monthly deal wrapping the build, the hosting and the support into one fee. Three products, three sets of trade-offs.
My bias has a shape and you should know it. My floor is £1,950, so a budget below that rules me out before anything else does, and the facts and caveats page puts the refusal line at about £1,500, below which I say no rather than sell a thinner version of the work. Either way there is a large band of businesses I am not for, and telling them otherwise would suit me and cost them.
The three, side by side
Rough figures, and mine rather than a survey’s. Check any subscription price on the day you decide, because platform plans move.
- Money in year one
- Builder, £150 to £500 with a domain and a paid plan, plus your own hours. Cheap build, a few hundred, or nothing up front. Developer, from £1,950.
- Money in year three
- Builder, the subscription twice more. Monthly deal, the same fee indefinitely: multiply the one you were quoted by thirty-six and set it against a build you would own outright. Developer, hosting.
- Who owns what
- Builder, the domain and the words, never the platform. Monthly deal, ask, and get it in writing. Developer, code, database, every account.
- If you stop paying
- Builder, offline, with a partial content export. Monthly deal, usually down, because the build was never paid for outright. Developer, nothing stops.
- Moving it elsewhere
- Builder, a rebuild not a migration: words and images travel, the site does not. Monthly deal, see the ownership answer. Developer, hand over the files.
- Who answers in year two
- Builder, a support queue, fine for platform faults and useless for yours. Monthly deal, whoever is on the rota. Developer, one named person.
Use a builder, and get on with it
The honest half of the page. Recognise yourself in any of these six and the answer is Squarespace, Wix or a decent WordPress theme.
02
It is genuinely one page
Who you are, what you do, where, when, how to reach you. A builder does that in an evening, and I could add nothing worth paying for.
03
Everyone arrives from a marketplace
If the work comes through Etsy, Airbnb, Checkatrade or a local Facebook group, the site is a credibility check, not a channel. Spend where the customers are.
04
It is a hobby or a side thing
A club, a newsletter, a portfolio, a weekend trade. The right amount to spend is the smallest amount that gets it online.
05
You actually enjoy doing it
A builder site tended weekly by somebody who cares beats a bespoke one nobody has touched since launch. Hiring me removes that and bills you.
06
It may not exist in a year
Mid-pivot, testing a second trading name, waiting on a decision that changes the offer. Building bespoke in front of an unmade decision is how you pay twice.
A builder site is not free. It costs weekends
People compare a subscription against a build fee, and that is not the comparison. The subscription is the smallest number in the decision. The real cost is your own time, and it stays invisible because nobody invoices you for a Sunday.
My estimate for five pages, done properly by somebody who has not done it before, is 45 to 90 hours. That comes from watching people do it rather than measuring it. At £30 an hour the middle of the range is about two thousand pounds, near enough my £1,950 floor, and I am aware how convenient that is: hence the workings below, which add up, and the word estimate. Weekend hours are not billable hours either, and losing them is not the same as losing money. The numbers on my pricing page are not estimates.
- Writing the copy
- 15 to 30 hours, and where most self-builds stall. Few people have a page about their own business already written.
- Photographs
- 5 to 15 hours, or a photographer's day rate. Stock images of somebody else's office are the clearest sign a site was assembled.
- Learning it, laying it out
- 15 to 30 hours. Builders are genuinely easy now, which is not the same as quick, and it falls apart on a phone at least once.
- The unglamorous half
- 10 to 15 hours. A form that actually arrives, a privacy notice, cookie consent, analytics, the domain, and twenty small corrections.
- Total, estimated
- Roughly 45 to 90 hours, over three weekends to six months. The elapsed time usually hurts more than the hours.
The middle option, and the six questions that decide it
The sub-£500 build and the bundled monthly deal are one market in two hats: the build cost is either cut to the bone or spread into a subscription. Plenty of people running these do sound work, and the catches are mechanical rather than moral. If all six answers come back straight, buy it: it costs a fraction of what I do, and for a great many businesses it is the right product rather than the compromise. The questions only separate those providers from the ones counting on nobody asking.
Whose name is on the domain?
Ask, then check the registrant on a WHOIS lookup: it should be your business. The contact email is not public any more, so ask to log into the account too. A domain in somebody else's account can hold a whole site hostage.
What happens when you stop paying?
The build was never paid for outright, so the site usually comes down. Arithmetic, not a trick, and a problem only when nobody says it before the term is signed.
What exactly leaves with you?
A copy of your text and images, or files and a database export that runs elsewhere. Both are legitimate. Ask which, in writing, while you have a choice.
How many others have this template?
Fair question, fair answer: reuse is how the price works. What matters is whether a competitor in your trade and area has the same one, because two near-identical sites help neither.
Who holds the admin login?
You should, even if you never use it. Then ask what a change costs and how long the queue is. Unlimited changes means unlimited requests, not unlimited hours.
Who owns the Business Profile?
Often a local business's most valuable digital asset, and routinely created inside the builder's own Google account. It should be yours, with the provider added as a manager.
What a developer buys that a builder cannot
Not quality, and not bespoke design: a careful owner gets a good-looking, fast-enough site out of a builder. These six are capped or impossible on a closed platform.
01
The code, in your repository
Files, database, hosting, domain and every account in your name from the day the balance clears. Any competent developer can pick it up, including one who is not me.
02
Structured data you decide
A builder emits whatever schema its template author chose. On a build I write the JSON-LD, so the business, the services and the prices read as they should.
03
Headroom on Core Web Vitals
Closed platforms have a ceiling: you cannot remove the scripts they load on pages that never use them. On a build the constraint is my own decisions.
04
Content shaped like the business
Services, locations, staff and appointments as their own content types, with real relationships. Adding a service line becomes one entry rather than four pages rebuilt by hand.
05
Integrations rather than embeds
Talking properly to a CRM, a job-management system or a payment provider, instead of pasting in a widget that breaks when the vendor changes it.
06
Nobody can reprice you
A platform can move a feature you rely on into a higher tier, or take a cut per transaction, and you find out by email. You can leave in an afternoon.
Where the crossover actually is
Not a revenue threshold and not a page count. The crossover is where the site stops being a credibility check and starts being how customers find you and choose between you. If somebody searched, compared three firms and picked one, it is doing commercial work and is worth building properly. Enquiries from a marketplace or a recommendation make it a business card, which a builder makes well.
The second test is simpler. Everything a builder does, it does adequately; everything it does not do, it does not do at any price. Once the requirement is a booking that holds stock per date, a login with a permissions model, or a tariff you edit yourself, no subscription fixes it. Past that line it often becomes a web app rather than a website, from £7,500 after paid discovery.
What to read next
If you have landed on the third option, the stages and where the £3,900 tier sits are on the website design and build page, and custom WordPress and WooCommerce covers editing it yourself weekly. Still unsure, and you can score the site you have out of 100: no email address, and its top band says you may not need me.
Questions people actually ask
Is a website builder good enough?
For a lot of businesses, yes, and I would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Squarespace, Wix and Shopify produce competent, fast-enough, decent-looking sites, and a builder site tended every week beats a bespoke one nobody has touched since launch. The test is not whether the result looks professional, because usually it does. It is whether your requirements fit inside the platform feature set, and whether you mind never owning the code.
Why pay £1,950 when someone will build it for £399?
Because they are different products, and the cheap one is not a con. At £399 nobody can afford to read your business, write a structure, test on real devices and still answer an email in year two. It is a template with your logo on it, which for some businesses is exactly right. My floor is £1,950 because that is the least I can charge and still do work I would put my name to. If £399 is the budget, take it, and do not expect an answer in year two.
What happens if I stop paying a monthly website deal?
Usually the site comes down, because the build was never paid for outright and the subscription is what funds it. That is arithmetic rather than a trick. Ask three things before signing: whose name the domain is registered in, what the minimum term is, and precisely what you receive on the day you leave. If the answer to the last one is a copy of your text and images rather than files and a database export, that is worth knowing while you still have a choice.
How long does it really take to build my own site?
My estimate is 45 to 90 hours for five pages done properly, and it is an estimate from watching people do it rather than a measured figure. The software is the small part. Most of the time goes on writing copy about your own business, which is far harder than people expect, and then on discovering the layout falls apart on a phone. The elapsed time hurts more than the hours: three weekends is fine, six months of half-finished is a different experience.
Do you build on Squarespace or Wix?
No. I build on WordPress or Next.js, so if you specifically want a Squarespace site there are people who do that well and I am not one of them. It is not snobbery. I would be slower and worse at it than somebody who works in it daily, and you would be paying developer rates for platform work. I am happy to say which builder I would pick for your situation and then leave you to it.
Can you move my Squarespace or Wix site onto something I own?
Usually yes, and it is a rebuild rather than a migration. The words, the images and the page structure come across; the site itself does not, because no export produces a working site elsewhere. I price it as a build with a charge for moving the content, and I will tell you honestly whether it is worth doing yet. If the current site works and you need nothing the platform lacks, often it is not.
Is a builder site worse for Google?
Not inherently, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. A properly set up Squarespace or Wix site can rank perfectly well for a local business. There are two real constraints. There is a ceiling on how fast a closed platform can be made, because you cannot remove the scripts it loads on every page, and the structured data is whatever the template author decided rather than what you want said about you. Both matter more in a competitive town than a quiet one.
How do I know which of the three I am?
Two questions. Do customers find you by searching and comparing, or do they arrive from a marketplace or a recommendation? And is there anything you need that the platform simply does not do? Marketplace traffic and nothing missing means use a builder. People searching, comparing and choosing, plus a requirement with a shape of its own, means a build. Everything in between is a judgement, and I will give you mine on a call even when it costs me the job.
Tell me the situation and I will tell you which of the three you are.
Get a quote in four questions
hello@madebykestrel.co.uk · replies inside one working day
This page, measured in your browser
Your deviceLCPMeasuring…
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How long until the main content appears. Google wants under 2.5 seconds.
INPMeasuring…
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How quickly the page answers when you tap. Under 200ms is the target.
CLSMeasuring…
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How much the layout moves while loading. Under 0.1, ideally zero.
Real numbers from your device and connection, not a screenshot of a score I chose. Nothing is sent anywhere. The measurement happens in your browser and stays there. If one of these ever reads amber on my own site, you will see it, which is rather the point. I audit these for £650.