If you're about to sign up for Wix and wondering whether you should - this is that conversation, written down honestly. I run a small studio in Calgary that builds websites for local businesses, which means I have an obvious bias - so I've tried hard to be fair. There are real situations where a DIY builder is the right answer, and I'll tell you exactly what they are. There are also costs on both sides that never make it onto the pricing page. Those are the ones worth knowing before you spend a weekend on it - or four figures.
When building it yourself is genuinely the right call
Let's start where most web designers won't. The modern builders - Wix, Squarespace and the rest - are good tools. If any of these sound like you, DIY is a sensible choice, and you should make it with a clear conscience:
- You're brand new and still testing the idea. If you don't know whether the business will exist in a year, don't sign anything with the word "annual" in it. A simple DIY page is a perfectly good placeholder while you find out.
- There's genuinely no budget. A slightly wonky DIY site beats no site, every time. People who look you up and find nothing tend to assume you've closed.
- You actually enjoy this stuff. Some owners find building their site relaxing, keep it current, and do a great job of it. If fiddling with fonts on a Sunday sounds fun rather than draining, you'll be fine.
- Your needs are truly simple. If all you need is your hours, your address, and a phone number that dials when tapped, a one-page DIY site can carry you a long way.
No tricks here. If that's you, stop reading, go build it tonight, and put the money you saved into better photos - they'll do more for your business than anything else on this page.
The DIY costs you discover later
Here's the other half, which people usually learn about six months in.
Your evenings are the real price. The ads say "your website in an afternoon," and that's roughly true - for the first draft. Then comes the logo that won't line up, the mobile view that breaks, the domain settings, the email setup. The pattern is almost universal: the site takes a weekend to build and a year to still not be finished.
You're paying monthly anyway. The builder's plan, the domain, the business email - DIY isn't free after the first month, it's just cheaper. The honest difference between DIY and hiring isn't "pay vs. don't pay." It's "who does the work."
Nobody is doing the Google work. This is the one that actually costs you customers. A finished site is not a found site. When someone searches "plumber near me" or "best patio in Calgary," Google decides who shows up - based on your reviews, on whether your information is current and consistent, on how fast your site loads on phones, on whether anything about it has changed lately. That's ongoing monthly work, and on the DIY path the person assigned to it is you, at 10pm, someday.
The site quietly ages. Prices change, hours change, photos go stale, the "grand opening" banner turns two. Almost every site we've ever replaced had the same story: the owner knew exactly what needed updating and had been meaning to get to it for months. I don't say that as a criticism - you have a business to run. I say it because "I'll fix it someday" is the natural end state of DIY, not a personal failing.
What "hiring someone" traditionally means
The classic route: pay a designer or agency once, get a professional site. In Calgary, the one-off prices agencies publish generally look like this - around $1,000–$2,000 for a basic site, $2,000–$3,000 for an average small-business build, $3,000–$4,000 at the premium end, and $4,000 up to $20,000 for large custom projects. (Those are the ranges Calgary agencies themselves publish, not my numbers.)
For that you get real advantages: it's done for you, done properly, and done once. No evenings lost, and the result usually looks like a professional made it - because one did.
But the one-off model has honest problems of its own, and I'll name them even though it's my industry:
- The site starts aging on day one. A one-off build is a photograph of your business on launch day. Everything after that - new prices, new services, your newest reviews - is drift.
- Changes cost extra. Once the project closes, updates are billed by the hour or bundled into a maintenance plan. Owners hesitate to ask, so they don't - and the site ages faster.
- Ongoing help is priced for bigger businesses. Agency retainers make sense for companies with marketing departments. For a pub or a two-person trades company, they rarely pencil out.
- Nobody's accountable for whether you get found. The contract was for a website, and you got one. Whether Google ever shows it to anyone is officially not the builder's problem.
Not sure which camp you're in?
Send us your business name and we'll email you a free one-page audit: how you show up on Google today, what's broken, and what we'd fix. If DIY is genuinely fine for your case, the audit will say so.
One page, plain English, reviewed by a real person. No follow-up calls unless you ask.
The third option: pay monthly, everything included
Between DIY and the four-figure one-off, there's a model that's become common across Canada: a monthly subscription, typically somewhere between $75 and $300 a month, where the build, hosting, domain, email and updates are all one price - and someone stays responsible for the site after launch.
Let me do the math honestly, because this industry loves pretending subscriptions are magically cheaper. They're not. Our own entry plan is $99 a month, which works out to $1,188 over a year - right in the same territory as a basic one-off build. If you're purely comparing year-one totals, it's roughly a tie.
The difference is what the money buys:
- $0 today instead of a four-figure invoice before you've seen anything.
- Everything folded in - hosting, domain, business email and changes are the price, not add-ons you discover later.
- Someone accountable for the ongoing Google work - the reviews, the fresh pages, the current information - all year, instead of a site that starts aging the day it launches.
One thing a monthly service should never promise you: a ranking. New sites take months to climb Google for competitive searches, and anyone who guarantees you a spot or a timeline is guessing with your money. What you're actually buying is the work that decides who shows up - done every month, by someone whose name is on it.
The other thing to check is ownership. Some subscription services keep the site forever - stop paying, lose everything. Ask directly: what happens after year one? (Our answer: after 12 months, the site and the domain are yours to keep, even if you leave.)
Five questions that settle it
Skip the feature comparisons. These five questions decide it for almost everyone:
- What's easier for you to carry - one bill or a monthly one? A one-time $1,000–$4,000, or a monthly amount that behaves like a phone bill? Neither answer is wrong. Just be honest about which one your cash flow prefers.
- How many evenings will you really give this? Not this month - every month, from now on. If the honest answer is "none after the first burst," DIY slowly becomes the thing you feel guilty about.
- How much of your business comes from being found? If work arrives by referral and word of mouth, a simple DIY site covers you. If customers find you by searching, the ongoing work matters more than the website itself.
- Who updates it? Hours, prices, photos, your newest reviews. If the answer is "me, when I get a minute," go back and re-read question two.
- Do you want to own it? With a DIY builder, you rent forever. With a one-off build, you own it from day one - and maintain it from day one too. With a subscription, ask about year two before you sign.
If you came out "DIY" on most of those - genuinely, go build it. If you came out "hire someone," the last fork is one-off versus monthly, and that mostly comes down to whether you want a website, or a website plus a person doing the ongoing work.
Where we sit, for the record
Since you're reading this on our site, here's our version in three lines. Winsome is a small Calgary studio. We build the site and do the monthly Google work for one flat price: $99/month (Foundation - the website, hosting, domain, business email, and your newest reviews shown on your site automatically), $199/month (Growth - plus a new page every month aimed at what locals actually search for), or $299/month (Engine - plus lead capture and automatic review requests, for businesses that live on booked jobs). $0 upfront, changes done the same day you ask, 12-month minimum and then month-to-month - and after 12 months the site and domain are yours. The full breakdown is on our pricing page.
The restaurant and pub sites on our home page - IBU Restaurant & Bar, Penny Crown Tavern, City Pub, Pegasus Greek - are real working builds, not mockups. Click through and poke around; that's the fairest way to judge us against a template you'd build yourself.