Wix, WordPress or a professional: which is right for you?

There are three broad ways to get a website, and each is right for somebody. Here's the honest version of the choice.

DIY site builders (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy)

Good when you're starting out, money is tight, and you have patience and a decent eye. You can get something respectable live in a weekend for under £30 a month.

The costs nobody mentions: your evenings. And the ceiling. Builder sites tend to be slower than well-made ones, the monthly fees never end, and if you leave, you usually can't take the site with you.

WordPress

Good when you want ownership and room to grow. It powers a huge share of the web and nothing about it locks you in.

The catch: WordPress is a toolkit, not a finished product. Themes and plugins need choosing well and updating forever. A neglected WordPress site becomes a slow, insecure one. It suits people who enjoy tinkering, or who have someone maintaining it.

A professional build

Good when the website matters to your income and you'd rather spend your hours on your actual business. You're paying for the invisible work: speed, mobile experience, search basics, security, and someone to call.

The catch: cost, and choosing well. A bad professional build is the worst of all worlds, which is why we wrote a separate guide on choosing a designer. The gap is also closing: at Optima Web Design a finished, professionally built site costs around what a year of DIY subscriptions does, and you see a preview before paying anything.

The honest test

Whichever route you took or are considering, the result is measurable. Run any live site through the free SiteMOT check and you'll see how it really performs where it counts. DIY sites sometimes pass beautifully. Expensive ones sometimes don't. The test doesn't care who built it, which is rather the point.