The DIY builders are genuinely clever tools, and there is no shame in starting on one. But the pitch hides three catches that matter to a tradesman in particular: your time, the generic result, and the fact that you are renting a platform indefinitely.
We weigh up the real costs of building it yourself versus a custom site: money, time, how it looks, and what you actually keep.
About this page
About this page: a comparison by LeadFly Websites. Builder pricing is cited and linked to current sources and changes over time; we use published entry-level figures. Our own price is a one-off £500 that you own. We build custom sites, so treat this as our informed but interested view. Last updated June 2026.
The key findings
- Wix starts from around £9 a month and Squarespace from about £12 to £16, rising to £79 on higher tiers (Wix, Squarespace).
- That fee never stops. Over five years even an entry plan is £540 to £960, and you are still renting the platform.
- The real cost is your time: hours of building, writing and fiddling that a busy tradesman does not have.
- Template sites tend to look like template sites, and your customers can tell.
- A custom site we build is a one-off £500, done for you, written for you, and owned by you.
The money is the smallest part
On price alone, the builders look cheap. Wix starts around £9 a month and Squarespace from roughly £12 to £16, climbing to £79 on higher plans. But that fee runs forever. Five years on an entry plan is £540 to £960, and you are still paying, still renting the platform, and you stop owning a working site the day you stop.
So even the headline saving is smaller than it looks. The genuine difference between DIY and custom is not really the monthly fee at all.
Your time is the real bill
Building a decent website yourself is not a quick job. It is choosing a template, wrestling it into shape, writing every word, sizing every photo, setting up the contact form, checking it works on a phone, and going back to fix it when it does not. For someone who is not a designer, that is many evenings.
A working tradesman's time is worth more on the tools, or with the family, than spent fighting a page builder. The custom route exists precisely so you do not have to. You spend fifteen minutes on a call and hand the rest over.
Template sites look like template sites
DIY builders give everyone the same starting points, so a lot of trade sites built on them share the same handful of looks. Customers may not name it, but they sense it: a slightly generic, slightly off-the-shelf feel that quietly says ordinary.
A custom site is built around your business, your photos, your services and your area, with no template fingerprint. For a trade where the website is doing the job of a showroom, looking distinct and considered is worth a great deal.
Where each one actually fits
To be fair to the builders, if you genuinely enjoy doing it, have the time, and want full hands-on control, a DIY site can absolutely work, especially as a first step. There is no need to overspend before a business is established.
But for most tradesmen the better deal is simple: pay once, have it built for you properly, own it outright, and get your evenings back. That is the gap a custom site fills, and for a one-off £500 it removes every one of the DIY catches at once.
Frequently asked questions
Is Wix or Squarespace good for a tradesman website?
How much do Wix and Squarespace cost?
Is a custom website better than DIY?
Want to skip the DIY and have it done?
We build custom websites for tradesmen, written and designed around your business, for a one-off £500 that you own. No templates, no monthly platform fee, no evenings lost. Based in Watford.