Tradesman Website vs Wix & Squarespace: Should You DIY?

The quick answer

Let's get to the point. Wix and Squarespace are decent tools, and this is not a snobby "never touch a website builder" lecture. If your choice is a neat DIY site or no website at all, build the DIY site.

But the real question most tradespeople are asking is different: spend a weekend or three doing it yourself on a builder, or pay a professional to do it once, properly?

The honest answer hangs on what you want the website to do. A builder is excellent at getting something live, and only average at making that something bring you work.

Whether your site actually generates quote requests usually comes down to the parts a template cannot do for you, and those are exactly the parts DIY leaves on your shoulders.

What Wix and Squarespace actually cost

Let's start with the honest numbers, because cost is not where DIY loses. On annual billing in 2026, Wix's paid plans run from about £9 a month for the Light plan to £16 for Core and £25 for Business, with the top Business Elite tier higher again.

There is a free option, but it stamps Wix's own branding across your site and hands you an awkward web address, which is no good for a business asking people to trust it with their home.

Squarespace is pitched much the same: from around £12 a month for Basic and £17 for Core on annual billing, more if you pay month to month, and its Core plan skims a 3% fee off anything you sell. Both give you a free trial rather than a genuinely free site.

So yes, purely in pounds per month, a builder is cheap, cheaper than a one-off professional build. If cash leaving your account this month is the only thing that counts, DIY wins that round cleanly. It is the next few rounds where it comes unstuck.

The cost DIY hides: your time

Here is what the monthly price leaves out entirely. On a builder, you are the designer, the copywriter, the photographer and the SEO person, all squeezed into the evenings after a full day on the tools.

That time is not free. If you charge a day rate to customers, the two or three days you lose to wrestling a template, rewriting the same page five times and fighting to get the logo to sit straight are days you either did not earn or did not get to rest.

And it is rarely a one-and-done job. Builders invite endless fiddling: a tweak here, a fresh photo there, a nagging sense it still is not quite right.

Plenty of tradespeople start a Wix site full of good intentions and end up with a half-built draft that never goes live, because the tool is only ever as good as the hours you can feed it.

A professional build lifts that whole task off you. You answer a few questions, hand over your photos, and it gets finished while you keep working and earning.

Template vs bespoke: what really decides whether you win jobs

Website builders sell you templates, and templates are the root of the problem. Thousands of other businesses use the very same ones, so your site ends up looking like a lightly rearranged copy of everybody else's.

In a trade where trust wins the job, blending in with the crowd rarely helps you beat the other three quotes a customer is collecting.

The bigger issue is what the site is built to do. A template is designed to look tidy, not to turn a visitor into a booked job. A professionally built trade website is shaped around how you actually win work: the services you want to push, the areas you cover, real proof of your jobs, and an obvious next step on every page.

That gap between looking nice and converting is the single biggest reason DIY sites underperform, and we get into it properly in our guide to the reasons a trade website fails to bring in work.

It is a difference our trade clients feel. FRM Electrical, a South Yorkshire electrician we built for, said the finished site "far exceeded my expectations" and that they were "blown away by how slick the site has ended up". That is not something anyone tends to say about a template they wrestled together on a wet Sunday. You can see the work in our portfolio.

Getting found on Google, where most DIY sites go quiet

You can build a perfectly smart site on Wix or Squarespace and have almost nobody ever lay eyes on it. Turning up for "electrician in your town" is not something a builder does on your behalf; it takes real local SEO, which means pages built for each service and area, a fast-loading site, a fully set-up Google Business Profile and a steady drip of reviews.

Most DIY trade sites skip all of that, which is why they sit unseen on page five. We showed what doing it right looks like in our case study on how a South Yorkshire plumber doubled enquiries with local SEO, and covered the review side in our walkthrough on earning more Google reviews.

A done-properly build has that groundwork baked in from day one; a DIY one leaves every bit of it to you.

Ownership and the lock-in nobody mentions

There is a quieter catch with builders too. Your site is constructed on their platform and it lives there for good.

You are renting the foundations for as long as the website exists, and if you ever decide to move, you cannot simply lift the site and carry it elsewhere the way you can with one built on open, standard foundations.

It is not a trap as such, but it pays to go in clear-eyed: on a builder you are a long-term tenant, never the freeholder.

Wix and Squarespace DIY vs a professional trade website

So which should a tradesman choose?

Lay the money side by side and DIY is honestly cheaper on paper. A builder might set you back a couple of hundred pounds a year; a professional build is a bigger one-off, and we lay out the figures in full in our full breakdown of trade website costs. But price is only half the sum.

Add in the days of your own time DIY swallows, and the jobs a template quietly loses, and the maths often tips the other way.

For a working tradesperson, one or two extra jobs a year from a site that genuinely ranks and converts tends to cover the difference and then some.

So here is the honest rule of thumb. If your budget is truly nothing and you have time on your hands, a careful DIY site is a fair place to start.

If your time is your money and you want the website to bring in work rather than simply exist, paying to have it done properly is almost always the smarter trade.

When DIY genuinely makes sense (the honest bit)

In fairness to the builders, there are cases where doing it yourself is the right call:

• You are brand new with no budget and just need something online this week. A basic DIY site now beats a perfect one you cannot yet afford.
• You actually enjoy this kind of thing and have the evenings spare. Some people take to a builder happily, and if that is you, crack on.
• You only need a simple placeholder: one page saying who you are, what you do and how to reach you, with no ambition to rank or grow just yet.

Outside those situations, once you are established and want your website earning its keep, the lost time and the missed jobs usually turn DIY into a false economy.

Frequently asked questions

Is Wix or Squarespace good enough for a tradesman?

They can be, for a basic presence. Both will put a tidy site online cheaply. Where they fall short for a trade is the parts that actually win jobs: standing out from templates, turning visitors into quote requests, and ranking on Google for your services and towns. Good enough to exist, often not good enough to earn.

How much does a Wix or Squarespace website really cost?

The subscriptions are modest: Wix runs from about £9 to £25 a month and Squarespace from around £12 to £17 on annual billing, with more on monthly terms.

The real cost is your time building and looking after it, and the work a generic site fails to win. Cheap in pounds does not always mean cheap in results.

Is it cheaper to build my own website on Wix?

In pure cash, yes. A DIY builder is cheaper up front than paying for a professional build. But once you count the hours you spend making it, the subscription that never ends, and the jobs a template site tends to miss, that gap narrows quickly, and for a busy tradesperson it often closes altogether.

Will a DIY website rank on Google for my trade?

It can, but not by itself. A Wix or Squarespace site ranks the same way any site does: with proper local SEO, service and town pages, a fast build, a Google Business Profile and reviews.

The builder does not do that part for you. Skip it and even a smart-looking DIY site can stay invisible in search.

Should I build my own site or pay someone to do it?

If you have time, a tight budget and only need a simple presence, building it yourself is reasonable. If your time is better spent earning and you want a site that ranks, converts and looks like a proper business rather than a template, having it built properly usually pays for itself in the work it brings.

Torn between doing it yourself and having it built? Get a free, honest quote and we'll tell you what a professional trade website would cost you, what it could realistically win you, and whether, in your situation, a builder would genuinely do the job instead. No hard sell, just a straight steer.