Wix. Squarespace. GoDaddy Website Builder. Their ads are slick and the promise is compelling: build a professional website in an afternoon for $20 a month.
The question isn't whether you can build a site on these platforms. You can. The question is whether it's actually the right choice for a Central Oregon business that needs to attract customers and compete online. Let's look at the honest comparison.
What Website Builders Are Good At
Let's be fair. DIY website builders have legitimate use cases:
- Personal portfolios or hobby sites where traffic doesn't matter
- Event landing pages with a short lifespan
- Brand-new businesses that need anything online immediately while waiting for a professional build
- Side projects where budget is genuinely the only consideration
For an actual business competing for local customers, though, the story gets more complicated.
The Speed Problem — and Why Google Cares
Website load speed is a direct Google ranking factor. Google's research shows that 53% of mobile visitors leave a site that takes more than 3 seconds to load. And Wix, Squarespace, and similar builders are notoriously slow.
Why? These platforms load enormous amounts of JavaScript, CSS, and functionality that your specific site doesn't even use. A professionally built custom website — hosted on a fast server with optimized code — loads in under 2 seconds. A typical Wix site often hits 4–7 seconds, especially on mobile. That speed difference directly affects both your Google rankings and how many visitors actually stick around.
The SEO Limitations
Modern website builders have improved their SEO tools — you can now set title tags and meta descriptions on most platforms. But there are still meaningful limitations:
- Limited schema markup: Structured data that helps Google understand your business type, location, and services is either unavailable or heavily restricted
- Technical SEO depth: Custom robots.txt, advanced redirect control, Core Web Vitals optimization — these are either impossible or require expensive workarounds
- Code bloat: The extra code that powers the drag-and-drop editor loads even on the live site, hurting your performance scores
You Don't Own It
This is the point that catches the most business owners off guard. When you build your site on Wix or Squarespace, you're renting space on their platform. You don't own the underlying website.
If the platform changes its pricing, discontinues a plan tier, or changes its terms of service — your website is affected. Moving to a different platform means starting over, because your content, design, and custom functionality are locked into their ecosystem.
A custom-built website is yours. The code lives on a server you control. You can move hosts, switch agencies, or hand off to a new developer without losing anything.
The Real Cost Calculation
Builder platforms appear cheap at $20–$40/month, but over time:
- $35/month × 60 months (5 years) = $2,100
- Plus a separate professional email service
- Plus e-commerce transaction fees if you sell anything
- Plus the value of customers you didn't get because your site ranked lower or loaded slower
A professionally built site from Webb Productions typically runs $1,500–$4,000 depending on scope, with monthly hosting around $40–$80. You get a faster site, a better SEO foundation, full ownership, and design that reflects your actual brand — not a template 50,000 other businesses are also using.
The Honest Bottom Line
For a Central Oregon business that needs to show up on Google and convert visitors into customers, a DIY website builder is a false economy. You save money upfront and pay for it in rankings, speed, and lost customers over time.
If you're considering the investment in a custom site, reach out to Webb Productions for a free quote and honest consultation. We'll tell you what you actually need — not just what costs the most.