Wix vs. a Custom $299 Website: What's Actually Different?
An honest comparison of building your own Wix site versus a custom site built for you: cost over time, your hours, speed, Google, ownership and editing.
"Why would I pay for a website when I can build one on Wix myself?" It's a fair question, and I get it a lot. Wix is a good product, and for some businesses it's the right choice. For others, it quietly costs more time and money than a site built for them.
Here's an honest comparison from someone who builds custom sites for a living, including the cases where I'd tell you to use Wix.
The short version
- Choose Wix if you enjoy tinkering, have more time than budget, and want to change the site yourself every week.
- Choose a custom site if you'd rather spend your time running your business, want something that loads fast and ranks well, and want to own it outright.
The rest of this post explains why.
Cost: cheap to start, a subscription forever
Wix's free plan shows Wix branding and doesn't let you use your own domain. To look professional you need a paid plan, billed monthly or yearly for as long as the site exists. Check Wix's pricing page for current numbers, but expect a recurring bill, plus extra for some apps and features.
A custom site works the other way around: a one-time build fee, then basic hosting and your domain. Our $299 site, for example, is a single payment. After that you need hosting and a domain (roughly $12 a year for the domain and $5–15 a month for hosting if you arrange it yourself), or our optional Hosting & Care plan at $29 a month, which also covers updates and small edits.
Over two or three years, the totals are often closer than people expect. The real difference is what you get for the money.
Your time is the hidden cost
A Wix template looks great in the preview because it's filled with professional photos and copy. Replacing all of that with your own content, making it look right on phones, writing page titles, and fixing the layout when one block moves is where the weekends go.
If you'd charge a customer $60 an hour for your work, ten hours on your website costs $600 of your time. That's before the second round of changes.
Speed and Google
Website builders have improved a lot, but a page that has to load a whole drag-and-drop platform is usually heavier than a page built only for your content. Speed matters because visitors leave slow pages, and Google uses page experience as one of its many signals.
A custom site can be built lean from the start: only the code it needs, properly sized images, and clean page titles and descriptions for every page. For this site we test with Google PageSpeed, and our homepage scores in the high 90s on mobile.
To be fair, a well-built Wix site can rank fine for local searches. Most of local ranking comes from your Google Business Profile, reviews and good content, not from which platform you use. Speed and clean structure help, though, and they're easier to get right on a custom build.
Ownership: can you take it with you?
This is the difference most people discover too late. A Wix site lives on Wix. You can't download it and move it to another host. If you leave, you rebuild.
With a custom site, the code and the domain are yours. You can move to any hosting company, hire any developer to change it, or keep it running for years without being tied to one platform's pricing decisions.
Editing: the honest trade-off
Here Wix wins. You can log in and change a photo or a price in a minute, any time.
With a custom site, small edits usually go through your developer or a care plan, or the site is set up with simple editing for the parts you change often. Think about how often you'll really change it: most small business sites update a few times a year, not every week.
Design: template versus fitted
Thousands of businesses start from the same Wix templates. That's not a disaster, but it does make it harder to look different from the competitor down the road. A custom site is designed around your services, your photos and the one thing you want visitors to do, usually call or book.
So which should you choose?
Wix makes sense if:
- you're testing an idea and might change direction soon;
- you genuinely enjoy building and editing the site yourself;
- you need to change content several times a week.
A custom site makes sense if:
- you want a professional site live in days, without learning a tool;
- you care about speed, Google and looking different from competitors;
- you want to own the site and never be locked into one platform.
What our $299 site includes
Our Personal Website is up to 5 custom pages, mobile-friendly, with basic SEO setup, a contact form, Google Analytics and two rounds of revisions, live 48 hours after we get your material. Need more pages or lead forms? The Business Website is $499. Everything is fixed price, with a money-back guarantee if we miss the deadline.
Still deciding? Send me your current site or Wix plan and I'll tell you honestly whether switching is worth it.
