Building a Website yourself: Is it Worth it?

Sooner or later, most entrepreneurs and small businesses come to the conclusion that they need a website. But what are the next steps? Looking for a web design studio can take a lot of time. Besides, their services often cost an arm and a leg. Aiming at individual web designers seems risky to many — who knows what you will get as a final product? Both cheap and expensive services have their respective disadvantages; it can be challenging to trust your brand’s image to a stranger.

However, if you’re still on the fence about hiring a web designer, you should know that you don’t necessarily have to do that. You can build a website yourself. Website builders provide all the tools needed for beginners to create their first website with no problem whatsoever. You can use pre-made templates to establish the overall look of your website or ask AI to help you. This way, you have full creative control over every aspect of your website.

Naturally, any decision has its pros and cons. Should you build a website yourself, or is it better to hand this task to the professionals? Every case is different. Let’s look into different aspects of this problem.

Hiring a Web Designer vs Building a Website Yourself

It’s easier to make a weighted decision when the advantages and disadvantages of possible choices are neatly organized. Let’s go through them one by one.

Hiring a Web Designer

This solution is perfect for large businesses with big budgets that don’t have time or human resources to build a website from scratch. It’s more efficient for them to hire a professional rather than bother with looking for the right tools. A lot of people don’t want to be involved in the process, either because they are busy or they don’t estimate themselves to be competent enough to make decisions regarding web design.

However, it’s not ideal for a small startup or an individual entrepreneur with a limited budget. Moreover, if you’re not an expert in web design, you might encounter a risk of being scammed or presented with a poor-quality product. This issue can, of course, be worked around by hiring someone through personal recommendations, but it doesn’t guarantee a successful outcome.

In the end, you get what you pay for, and a professional web designer’s time is precious.

Building a Website Yourself

Building a website yourself has its fair share of benefits. Firstly, it’s always cheaper than hiring a web designer. After all, you don’t have to pay for another person’s time, effort, and skill — instead, you invest your own. Secondly, you don’t have to come up with detailed explanations and a way to properly communicate them to a web designer. Sometimes, communicating ideas really is the hardest part. You can change your website however you want or scrap it completely and redo it without losing any money in the process.

More than that, you gain an opportunity to acquire a new set of skills which might prove to be advantageous in the future.

Unfortunately, building a website yourself is not all sunshine and rainbows. Learning how to use new software takes time, and if you’re not a particularly fast learner adept with technology, it can be a bit tricky and frustrating. But it also depends on the tools you choose to use. There are more accessible options rather than creating HTML code for your website from scratch.

CMS vs Website Builders

When it comes to building a website with limited knowledge in coding, you mainly have two possible options: CMS and website builders.

CMS means ‘Content Management System’. Popular examples of CMS are WordPress and Joomla.

CMS is an open-source technology, so it is possible to customize every element of a website for free as well as implement your own code. Some CMS offer pre-made elements, such as design templates and basic building blocks, which makes it similar to website builders. However, that’s where the similarities end. Figuratively speaking, CMS only provides its users with an empty canvas and some brushes, but you have to find the frame, the colors, and the wall to hang it on yourself. So, everything from a hosting server to a domain name you need to buy separately, as well as advanced plugins.

To utilize a CMS to its fullest, some coding knowledge is still helpful. Otherwise, it is difficult to navigate for beginners and, therefore, is not recommended when your time is limited.

Website builders often operate on a freemium model, meaning that you get a baseline kit and functionality for free, but have to buy a subscription to access more features, such as custom domains, e-commerce, etc. However, to offset that, website builders come in packages with their own hosting servers, customer support, and other benefits. For example, Site.pro has a free mailbox that comes with every plan, a real-time collaboration function, integrations with an accounting system, and an AI website generator.

You can create a website and launch it all in one place. Besides, because of the drag-and-drop technology, no technical skills are needed for website creation. A user can simply move building blocks of a website, add text, images, videos, and different pages. Website builders are more suited for beginners but often are also more expensive overall. For instance, a subscription to the popular website builder Squarespace costs around \$192/year, to Wix — \$84/year. Site.pro is one of the few website builders that provides a free plan not limited by time nor the number of websites, and its paid plans start at \$1.20/year.

Overall, CMS offers more freedom, but requires skill, while website builders are aimed at facilitating building websites for everyone and are easier to use.

So, Should You Hire a Web Designer?

TL;DR — it depends! If you seek maximum quality and are ready to delegate the whole process to another person — you could consider it. But keep in mind that a lot of web designers are using website builders themselves and are not creating websites from scratch, so you should be careful when hiring a stranger. You can end up getting a generic template and be charged hundreds of dollars for it, while you could build a website like this yourself for a much lower price.

Conclusion

This article isn’t meant to convey the idea that no one should ever hire web designers. Instead, it is meant to say web design in general has become more accessible, and right now anyone can make a website with the help of user-friendly tools.