01
Three ways to get a website
Website builders like Wix, Squarespace or Canva let you put pages together yourself from a template, and you pay a subscription for as long as the site is live. They're quick to start and easy to change, but you're building inside their system, with their limits.
WordPress is free software that runs a huge share of the web. You pay for hosting, usually pick a theme, and add plugins for extra features. It's flexible and has an editing dashboard, but those themes and plugins need regular updates, and a site loaded with them can get slow.
A custom website is written from scratch in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, so every part of it is there because your business needs it. That's what I build. There's no page builder underneath and no template to fight, which is why people call these sites hand-coded.
02
Side by side: speed, cost, ownership and SEO
Here's how the three compare on what owners usually ask about. These are general patterns, not laws. A well-made WordPress site can be fast, and a careless custom site can be slow. But the tendencies are real, and they're worth knowing before you choose who builds your site.
The same goes for custom website design vs a template. A template is a design made for thousands of businesses and then filled in with yours. That's fine when you're starting out. But when a customer compares you with a competitor on the same template, you look interchangeable, and words alone struggle to fix that.
- Speed: builders and plugin-heavy WordPress sites carry code you never use; a hand-coded site loads only what the page needs
- Monthly fees: builders charge a subscription; WordPress needs hosting and sometimes paid plugins; a custom site has no page-builder fee, but still needs a domain and hosting
- Ownership: a builder site lives on the builder's platform; WordPress and custom sites are files you can take elsewhere
- Editing: builders are the easiest to change yourself; WordPress has a dashboard; a custom site is changed in the code
- SEO: all three can rank, because titles, headings, content and speed matter more than the platform (see SEO-friendly websites)
- Flexibility: a builder does what its templates allow; a custom site does what your business needs
03
When Wix or WordPress is the better choice
Honestly, sometimes it is. If your budget is very tight and you have the time to build it yourself, a builder gets you online this week. If you'll be changing prices, menus or photos every few days and want to do it without asking anyone, a builder or a WordPress dashboard makes that easy.
And if you need a full online shop with stock, payments and deliveries, use a platform made for that. I don't build online stores, and I'd rather tell you in the first conversation than sell you the wrong thing. So is it better to build your own site with a website builder? For some businesses, yes, and that's fine.
04
When a custom-built site makes more sense
A custom site earns its place when the website's job is to sell you. If people compare you with competitors before they call, the look, the speed and how clearly the site answers their questions all decide whether they reach out. That's what I build: advertising websites, whose whole job is to sell what you do. See small business websites for what's included.
It also suits owners who'd rather not maintain anything. There are no plugins to update and no page-builder subscription renewing in the background. I design around your business, down to the colour that suits a bakery and not a law firm, and I test it on a phone as well as a laptop, because most visitors arrive on a phone.
Wix vs a web developer comes down to tools versus decisions. A builder hands you tools. A developer makes the decisions with you. I studied web development, human–computer interaction and systems analysis, graduated top of a class of 200+, and I'll sit with you until the site feels like your business.
05
Who owns your website and your domain?
This catches more owners out than anything else. Your domain is your address online, like yourbusiness.co.za. If someone else registered it in their own name, it isn't really yours, and leaving them can turn into a fight. Before you pay anyone, ask whose name the domain will be registered in.
With a builder, your words and photos are yours, but the site itself lives on their platform, and moving it to another host usually means rebuilding it. A custom site is a set of files. When I build one, you own the site and the domain. I hand over the files, show you how it works, and stay reachable if you want changes later.
06
What a custom website costs to keep running
A website with no running costs at all doesn't really exist, and I won't pretend otherwise. Every site, however it's built, needs a domain name and hosting, which are paid to the companies that provide them. What a custom site removes is the page-builder subscription stacked on top of those.
The build is priced on what your business actually needs, so you get a personalised quote rather than a fixed package. The first conversation costs nothing. Tell me what you do, and I'll tell you honestly whether a website will help you and what it would take. If you'd like to know what working directly with the builder looks like, read hiring a freelance web developer.
