Wix vs a built website: the honest comparison
A website builder costs a subscription and can have you online in an afternoon. A built site starts at EUR 600 to EUR 900 for a single page with a form and analytics, which is step 01 on our price ladder, and EUR 900 to EUR 1.500 for a mini-site of two to three pages at step 02.
Set against what a builder costs you over the life of the site, those numbers are close enough that the decision is not really about money. It is about what you are going to ask the site to do, and when.
The case for the builder, made properly
It is cheap while you are still guessing
If you do not yet know which service sells, which words your customers use, or whether the business is going to work at all, a builder matches that uncertainty. You are renting a website instead of buying one, and renting is the correct move when you might change your mind about the whole thing.
You are not waiting on anybody
A price changed, the opening hours changed, there is a photo you have started to hate. In a builder you fix it now. With a built site that is either your CMS or a message to whoever maintains it, and if nobody at your company will ever open a CMS, the builder's editor is a real advantage rather than a consolation prize.
It covers what a local business actually needs
A layout that works on a phone, a certificate, a contact form, a map, opening hours and a link to whatever you take bookings with. If your customers arrive from search, Maps and word of mouth, and they visit the site to check you are real and find the phone number, a builder has handled that visit.
So we will not pitch step 03 at EUR 1.500 to EUR 3.500 to somebody whose whole site is an address and a phone number. That is the wrong sale, and it would make the rest of this page not worth reading.
What makes people leave a builder
The site is slow and the slow parts are not yours
A builder ships the machinery for every feature its editor can produce, whether your pages use those features or not. You inherit that weight, and the code you would want to remove is not yours to remove. It shows on a phone on mobile data. Google measures how pages load and respond, and a builder leaves you very little room to move those measurements.
The template becomes a ceiling
A template is a set of decisions somebody made for an average business, and yours is not the average one. Early on that does not matter. Later, once you have photography, a way of speaking and an order you want things said in, you start pulling against the template, and the evenings go into fighting the editor. That time never appears on an invoice, which is how the cheap option stops being cheap without anyone noticing.
The business asks for something the builder does not do
A client login. Booking with your rules instead of the plugin's rules. A checkout that survives your shipping and tax cases. Stock that matches the system you already run on. Those are step 04 at EUR 3.500 to EUR 7.500, because they need accounts, an API, a dashboard or payments, and that is what step 04 is. A builder will get you a version of some of them. The gap between that version and one your staff can work with every day is where the rebuild comes from.
The platform is the landlord
Pricing, features and the roadmap belong to the platform. An export gives you content, not the site: the layout, the forms and their submissions, and anything built with the editor's own tools stay behind. With a built site you own the code, the repository and the database, so moving is moving files rather than starting again.
Builder and built, side by side
| What you need | Website builder | Built site |
|---|---|---|
| Online this week | Yes | Step 01 is 1 to 2 weeks |
| Cost at the start | A subscription | EUR 600 to EUR 900 at step 01, EUR 900 to EUR 1.500 at step 02 |
| Cost later | The subscription, at whatever it becomes | Hosting, plus Care at EUR 100 to EUR 300 per month if you want it |
| Looks like your brand and nobody else's | Within the template | Designed for you from step 01 |
| Speed on a phone | Whatever the platform ships | Controlled, and measured before launch |
| Logins, dashboards, payments | Not really | Step 04, EUR 3.500 to EUR 7.500 |
| Editing it yourself | Built in | A CMS from step 02 |
| Ownership | Your content on their platform | The code, the repository and the database are yours |
Which step fits, and how long it takes
Step 01, one page with a form, analytics and a responsive layout, is 1 to 2 weeks. Step 02, two to three pages with a contact flow and a basic CMS, is 2 to 3 weeks. Step 03, four to seven pages with a CMS, service pages and booking or contact, is 3 to 6 weeks. Step 04, the first step that carries a login, a dashboard, an API, CRM work, payments or a chatbot, is 6 to 12 weeks. Step 05, a custom SaaS platform from EUR 7.500, is quoted after discovery, since scope, auth, billing, admin and deployment are what discovery decides.
What moves a quote is how much already exists and can be kept, whether you need accounts and payments, how many languages the site runs in, and what happens after launch. Care is EUR 100 to EUR 300 per month for updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes, not redesign and not new features. SEO foundation is a one-off at EUR 450 to EUR 750 covering Console, analytics, indexation, technical hygiene, titles, internal links and a 3 to 6 month plan. The whole ladder sits on packages.
When to spend less
If the site is an address, a phone number and proof that you exist, then a builder or step 01 at EUR 600 to EUR 900 is the entire answer, and the rest of the budget belongs on photography or on whatever brings people to the page in the first place. Do not buy a CMS you will never open. Do not buy step 03 because more pages sounds more serious.
Common questions
Can you rebuild my builder site without losing my Google rankings?
Content and URLs carry the rankings, so we keep the URLs that earn traffic, redirect the ones that have to change, and move the content across rather than rewriting it for the sake of it. Any move can wobble. Planning the redirects before launch is what keeps it to a wobble.
Can I still edit the site myself?
Yes, from step 02, where a basic CMS is part of the build. It is not a drag-and-drop canvas. It is the fields that are meant to change, which is quicker for the person doing the weekly edits and safer for a layout you paid to have designed. How we build is on design and engineering.
Is a built site more expensive to keep running?
Hosting a normal marketing site is cheap and there is no platform fee per site. Whether we host it or you do is agreed per project. Care at EUR 100 to EUR 300 per month is optional and covers updates, monitoring, backups and small fixes. If you would rather look after it yourself, you can, because the code and the repository are yours.
My builder site works. Should I move?
Not yet. Move when something the business needs is blocked by the platform, or when the hours you spend fighting the editor are worth more than the build. Until one of those is true, spend the money on getting people to the site.
Tell us what the site has to do and what already exists, and you get a fixed quote after scoping. Start here.
Building something?
JP Studio designs and builds websites, storefronts and product interfaces.