Sometimes it is, and sometimes it is money you do not need to spend yet. A flat yes or a flat no ignores your situation, so here is how to tell which side of the line you are on. If you are weighing whether to hire someone to build a website for you, the answer turns on what you are left holding afterwards.
When doing it yourself is the right call
A website builder such as Wix is a perfectly good answer in three situations.
- You are trying something out. If you do not yet know whether anyone wants what you sell, a page you can change on a Sunday afternoon beats a polished site for something that may not survive the month.
- There is genuinely no budget. A live page today is worth more than a perfect one you cannot afford.
- You enjoy it and have the hours. Building your own site is a real skill. If you are willing to learn it, you will end up understanding your own business better.
The cost is modest. At the time of writing, Wix's plans run from £9 a month on Light to £16 on Core and £25 on Business, on a yearly plan paid in full and before VAT. That is a fair price for what you get. The thing to know in advance is that it is a running cost: it carries on for as long as the site does, and Wix vs paying once adds the plans up over five and ten years.
What you are really paying for when you pay someone
Not the software. The software is cheap or free. You are paying for four things that a builder does not give you.
- Your time back. A first site takes most people far longer than they expect, and the hours come out of the work that earns the money.
- Decisions already made. Structure, wording, what goes where, what a visitor should do next. A page that looks fine and a page that brings in enquiries are different things.
- The unglamorous parts. Speed on a phone, search basics, security, a form that actually reaches you.
- Someone accountable. Someone answerable for finishing it: a named person, or a product with a published scope.
What it costs
MoneyMagpie, one UK guide, puts a brochure site of four to six pages at £1,500 to £3,500; what UK web designers charge explains why that is a marker rather than an average. It is usually a one-off fee for the build, but hosting, edits and updates are sometimes priced separately, so ask what the quote includes. That is where a one-off fee can turn into a monthly one.
Our own route is a published price. The Lite build is £1,950 excluding VAT, paid once, and the tiers above it are on the cost page, line by line, including the running costs. The only guaranteed running cost is your own domain renewal, at cost.
Should I pay someone to build my website? What to check before you hire
If the answer is yes, a few checks do more than comparing quotes.
- Scope in writing. How many pages, what each does, how many rounds of changes, and what counts as an extra. Vague scope is where budgets stretch.
- What the price includes. Copy, images, search basics, hosting, the content system, training. If a line is missing, it is either free or it is coming later. Ask which.
- Logins and the domain. Ask, before you pay, that everything is registered in your name from day one.
- If they disappear. Could another developer pick the site up from your accounts and code alone? If it depends on one person's laptop or goodwill, it is a risk.
Who to pay is a separate question. A freelancer is usually the most personal and the most dependent on one individual. A small agency brings more people and more process, and sometimes a monthly retainer. A product like ours trades bespoke flexibility for a fixed scope and a published price. None of the three is wrong, and each has a different failure mode, so match it to how much certainty you need. Website builder vs web designer sets the options side by side.
The test that decides it: who owns it afterwards
Price is the question everyone asks first and the least useful one. The question that decides whether paying someone was a good decision is what you are holding once they have finished.
Ask four things, whoever you are thinking of paying, builder, freelancer or agency:
- Whose name is the domain registered in?
- Whose account is the hosting in?
- Where does the code live, and can you get at it?
- Whose email address is on the content system and the Google accounts?
If the answer to all four is "yours", paying someone is a purchase: you bought an asset and you can take it anywhere. If the answer to any of them is "ours", it is closer to a rental, whatever the contract calls it. We go through each account in who owns your website, and it is worth five minutes before you sign anything.
This is also the honest weakness of a builder. You run the site, but it lives on the builder's platform, and moving off a builder generally means rebuilding the site rather than lifting it across. Check the builder's own help pages on exporting before you commit, because the options change. That is fine for an experiment. It is a bigger deal for the website your business depends on.
So, is it worth it?
- Do it yourself if you are testing, short of money, or happy to put in the hours, and accept that you are renting the tool.
- Pay someone if the site is how people find and trust you, if your time is worth more than the fee, and if everything ends up in your name.
- Be wary of any option, cheap or dear, where you cannot say who holds the domain, hosting, code and logins.
Onlineify is built for the second case: a fixed price printed on the page, a one-time build fee and nothing recurring to us.