Who writes the copy: you, a copywriter or the studio

en 2026-09-27 7 min read

Writing your own copy costs you time and no money, and the build stays at its step price, from EUR 600 to 900 for a single-page landing to EUR 1.500 to 3.500 for a business website. A copywriter you hire charges their own rate on top of that, and copy written by the studio is agreed at scoping and shows up in the fixed quote as named work.

The harder part is what each option produces, and what it still leaves for you, because all three start from facts only you have.

The case for writing it yourself, first

You know what you sell, who buys it and what they want to know before they get in touch. A copywriter or a studio has to get that out of you before writing a word, and something gets lost in that handover.

It also sounds like you. For a physiotherapist, a joiner, a coach or a small bakery, the customer is choosing a person, and a plain paragraph in your own voice can do more than a polished one that could belong to anyone. Plain is fine. Vague is the problem.

Writing it yourself is the right call when:

• The site is a step 01 landing or a step 02 mini-site, so the whole job is one to three pages.
• You can already explain your offer out loud in a few clear sentences.
• You are the product, and your voice is part of why people pick you.
• Budget is tight and you would rather spend it on the build or on good photos.

The traps are easy to name: writing about the company instead of the reader, opening with the company history, giving every service equal weight, and burying the thing a visitor came to find. Check your draft against those four before you send it.

What each option costs and produces

With a copywriter, you are the link between two suppliers. Give them the page list and the layout before they start, because words written without the page in front of them get cut to fit later.

What moves the cost of copy, whoever writes it

• Pages. A step 03 business website has four to seven pages, and each service page needs its own text. Copy that says the same thing on every service page helps no visitor and gives search engines nothing to tell the pages apart.
• A second language. That means a translation of every page, button and email, or a separate writing job if the two audiences want different things.
• System texts at step 04. Login screens, password reset emails, dashboard labels, chatbot replies and payment confirmations all need words, and they are easy to forget until the build needs them.

A route between the three

You can split the work. You draft each page as plain bullet points in your own words, and a copywriter or the studio turns those into pages. Your knowledge stays in the text and the sentence work moves to someone whose job it is. If the studio does the shaping, it is agreed at scoping like any other copy work.

How it runs, and where it waits

A fixed quote always follows scoping, and scoping settles who writes what. From there the build runs to its step: 1 to 2 weeks for a single-page landing, 2 to 3 weeks for a mini-site, 3 to 6 weeks for a business website, and 6 to 12 weeks for an advanced site or web app. A custom SaaS platform, from EUR 7.500, is scoped in discovery before it gets a timeline.

1. At scoping, agree the page list and who writes each page.
2. Early in the build, the writer gets the page structure, so the words are written for the space they will fill.
3. Drafts come in page by page, and the design adjusts to real copy instead of placeholder text.
4. Before launch, you approve the final copy, and page titles and form messages are checked against it.

Whichever option you pick, this is the part that waits on you. If you write, it waits on your writing. With a copywriter, it waits on your briefing and on their files reaching us. With the studio, it waits on your answers and your approval. Design and engineering covers what happens on our side in the meantime.

When to spend less

If your site is one page, write it yourself. A step 01 landing at EUR 600 to 900 needs an offer, a reason to trust you and a form, and nobody knows the first two better than you. Paying someone to write it spends money on the one part you are best placed to do.

If you do not yet know what customers ask before they buy, do not pay anyone to write your copy, us included. Take the calls, answer the emails and write the questions down. That list is your first draft, and a writer who gets it will produce better pages than a writer who gets a blank brief.

Questions buyers ask

Is copywriting included in the step price?

The steps price the site: the pages, the CMS, the forms, and at step 04 the login, dashboard, payments and the rest. Who writes the words is settled at scoping. If the studio writes them, that work sits in the fixed quote as a named line, so you can see it and decide to write it yourself instead.

Can we use AI to write our copy?

You can use it to get past a blank page, or to tidy sentences you already wrote. It cannot supply the facts: your service, your area, your process and what your customers ask. Generic text makes you sound like every competitor, so delete anything you would not say to a customer in person.

Who owns the copy?

Copy the studio writes goes into a site you own: you own the code, the repository and the database the content sits in. With a freelance copywriter, check their terms for who holds the rights to the text, and get that in writing before you pay.

What if we do not like the copy we get?

Say which sentences sound wrong and why. "We would never say that" and "that is not what we do" are useful feedback, because they show the writer where your voice and your offer really sit. A rewrite built on that beats defending a draft.

Does SEO change who should write it?

Not much. Search needs pages that name the service and the place in the words customers use, and you know those words. SEO foundation is a one-off at EUR 450 to 750 that covers Search Console, analytics, indexation, technical hygiene, titles and internal links, plus a plan for three to six months. SEO growth, at EUR 500 to 800 a month, is the monthly line that produces service and location pages if you want someone else to keep writing them.

If you are deciding who writes yours, send us your page list and we will say which option fits.