Wix, Squarespace or a Web Developer: Which Should You Choose in 2025?

When you decide to create or redo a website for your business, you quickly face the same question: should you use a tool like Wix or Squarespace and do it yourself, or should you hire someone to build it for you?

Both paths can work. Both can also go wrong. This article gives you an honest picture of each option — costs, limitations, what you actually own, and when to choose which — so you can make an informed decision rather than an expensive mistake.

What Wix and Squarespace actually offer

Wix and Squarespace are website builders — platforms that let you create a site by dragging and dropping elements on a screen, without writing a single line of code. They host your site, take care of updates, and give you access to templates.

Their pitch is compelling: no technical skills required, start today, cancel anytime.

They are genuine products used by millions of businesses worldwide. The question is not whether they work in general — it is whether they are the right choice for your specific situation.

The real costs of DIY website builders

The word "affordable" gets used a lot with these platforms, but the full picture is more nuanced.

Monthly subscriptions add up. Wix plans for businesses range from around €14 to €35 a month. Squarespace runs from €16 to €49 a month. Over five years, you are looking at €840 to €2,940 — just for the platform, not counting the time you spend building and maintaining it yourself.

You do not own your site. This is the most important hidden reality of DIY website builders. The site lives on their servers, using their technology. If Wix changes its pricing, discontinues a feature, or raises rates, you adapt or you leave. And leaving means rebuilding from scratch, because you cannot export a Wix site to another platform. You have not built an asset — you have been renting one.

E-commerce fees bite. Both platforms charge transaction fees on sales on lower-tier plans. Squarespace charges 0% only on its Commerce plans, which start at €33 a month. Wix has similar structures. For a retailer processing real volume, this matters.

SEO limitations are real. This is where many small business owners get a nasty surprise. Wix has improved its SEO significantly over the years, and it is no longer the disaster it once was. But it still has structural limitations: page load speed, code bloat, limited control over technical SEO elements. For a business trying to rank on Google — especially for local SEO in a competitive area — these limitations can cost you visibility that translates directly into fewer clients. I explain why speed and technical quality matter so much in my article on understanding SEO.

Templates are seductive but constraining. You start with a beautiful template, but within a few months you hit a wall — you cannot get the layout to look quite right, the font options are limited, or a key feature requires a third-party app that costs extra. Many business owners end up with a site that looks slightly like three different templates stitched together.

When DIY website builders make sense

Being honest means saying this clearly: Wix and Squarespace are the right choice in some situations.

If you are testing a new business idea before committing serious money, a Squarespace site costing €16 a month is a perfectly sensible way to validate whether there is demand before investing in something more substantial.

If your site is genuinely simple — one page, a few photos, a contact form, a city where you face no real competition — a website builder can serve you well at low cost.

If you are comfortable with technology, enjoy maintaining your own site, and have time to learn the platform deeply, you may get good results with DIY tools.

If your budget is very tight and you need something online within a week, a builder is faster than hiring someone.

The mistake is not using these tools — it is using them when your business has grown past the stage where they serve you well, or when you need real SEO performance, a unique user experience, or a site that behaves exactly the way your workflow requires.

What a professional web developer actually gives you

Hiring a freelance web developer is not just paying someone to do what you could do yourself. It is a different product.

You own the result. A site built by a developer is yours — hosted on infrastructure you control, exportable, transferable, not dependent on any one platform's continued existence or pricing decisions. This is an asset on your balance sheet, not a recurring rental.

Performance and SEO from the ground up. A developer who cares about their work builds for speed, for Core Web Vitals, for clean code that search engines can read efficiently. This is not an afterthought — it is baked in from the start. The difference in Google rankings can be substantial, especially for local businesses in competitive categories. You can read more about the technical side in my article on the importance of quality web hosting and securing your website.

Built around your business logic. A plumber who wants clients to describe their problem before booking, a restaurant that needs a custom reservation flow, a retailer with a specific product catalogue structure — these things are built properly, not worked around with plugins.

A long-term relationship. A good freelance developer is not just someone who hands you a finished site. They become a technical partner who can advise on improvements, add features, and help you understand what your site data is telling you. That ongoing relationship is hard to put a price on. I talk more about this in my article on why to choose a freelance.

The honest comparison in numbers

Let us take a concrete example. A baker in a mid-sized French city wants a professional site with five pages, a photo gallery, an online order form, and reasonable local SEO.

Wix Business plan over 3 years: roughly €900 in subscriptions. Add the owner's time to build it (realistically 20 to 40 hours for someone learning the platform) — time that has a value. And the site still has SEO limitations.

Professional custom site: one-off investment of €1,500 to €3,000 depending on scope. Hosting separately costs €5 to €15 a month (€180 to €540 over 3 years). Total over 3 years: €1,680 to €3,540. The baker owns the site, it loads fast, it ranks better, and it does not need rebuilding if the platform changes its pricing.

The gap is smaller than most people expect, and the professional option often wins on total cost of ownership over 3 to 5 years — especially when you factor in the SEO value of better rankings.

Questions to ask yourself before deciding

Before you choose, answer these honestly:

• Do I have 20 to 40 hours to build a site myself, plus ongoing time to maintain it?
• Is my business in a competitive area where Google ranking matters for client acquisition?
• Will I need specific features — booking, payments, multilingual content, a client portal?
• Am I testing an idea, or building something I expect to use for 5+ years?
• Do I want to own an asset, or am I comfortable renting a service?

If most of your answers point toward complexity, longevity, and SEO performance, a professional developer is almost certainly the better investment.

If you are genuinely starting out, testing an idea, or keeping things extremely simple, start with a builder — and revisit the decision in 12 to 18 months when you know more about what your business actually needs.

The middle path: a developer who works within your budget

One thing worth knowing: freelance developers are not all the same price. A solo developer based in the South of France has much lower overhead than a Paris agency and can offer serious quality at realistic prices for small businesses. The conversation is worth having before you assume it is out of reach.

Whether you are comparing quotes, wondering if WordPress vs a custom build is right for your project, or just starting to think about your options, clarity on what you actually need makes every conversation easier.

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Want an honest assessment of what kind of site makes sense for your business, with a clear quote and no pressure? Visit my services page — I work with small businesses and tradespeople across France.