Should you build your own website, or pay someone?

What doing it yourself really costs

The price on a builder’s plan page is the smallest part of it. That monthly fee is real, and it carries on for as long as the site is up, but most owners who give up on a DIY site do not give up over money.

Before you pick a plan, read the plan table for three things. Is your own domain name included, or only a web address with the builder’s name in it? Does the builder’s own branding show on your site at that tier? And do online booking or a shop cost extra? Then check that the plan you are pricing is the one that does those things.

Then there are your hours. Nobody can tell you how many, because it depends on how many pages you want and how particular you are. What is reliable is where the hours go. Choosing a template is quick. What takes the time is everything after that.

Where people get stuck

• The words. A template gives you a box that says “Tell your story here.” Writing a services page that answers what a customer is actually asking is hard, and it is harder when the business is your own.
• The photos. The template’s demo pictures were shot by professionals. Yours were taken on a phone at the end of a shift, and the layout was designed around the professional ones.
• The phone layout. It is easy to build the whole site looking at a laptop screen, and most people who look you up are on a phone. A price list that looked tidy on a laptop can wrap into a mess, and the booking button can end up three screens down.
• Speed. A big photo straight off a phone can make the page slow on mobile data, and you will not notice on your home wifi.
• Google. Publishing the site does not set up your Google Business Profile, the listing with your hours and map pin. That is a separate account with its own verification, and it is where many customers look first.

The phone layout matters more than it looks. Google says it plainly in its own documentation on mobile-first indexing: “Google uses the mobile version of a site’s content, crawled with the smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking.” If something only works on the desktop version, it may as well not be there.

When doing it yourself is the right call

Sometimes it plainly is, and paying a designer would be a waste of your money.

• The business is brand new and you are still finding out whether anyone wants it. A cheap page now and a proper site once it works is a sound plan.
• You need one page with your hours, your number and a map, and nothing more.
• You enjoy this kind of work and have evenings free for it.
• Something on the site changes every day, and you want to change it yourself at midnight without asking anybody.

If that is you, go ahead. Keep the text short, put your phone number at the top, check every page on your own phone before you publish, and set up your Google Business Profile the same week. Before you start, ask the builder what you could take with you if you ever left: the pages themselves, or only your words and pictures. We compare the two routes side by side in website builders against a custom site.

A worked example: one salon owner, two versions of her first month

This is an example, not a real business or a Droom client. Picture Dani, who runs a two-chair hair salon and books most of her clients by text. She wants a website with her services, her prices and a way to book.

Version one: she builds it herself

In the first week she tries a few templates one evening and picks a dark, elegant one. Most of the next week goes on the services page, because she cannot decide how to describe a colour correction without it sounding like a price list. Her photos come from her phone, and the template makes them look darker than the salon is.

In week three she checks the site on her phone for the first time. The price list runs off the edge, and the booking button sits under four photos. She fixes the list and cannot find the setting that moves the button. She publishes anyway at the end of the month, pleased to be done. A week later a client mentions that her Google listing still shows her old hours, and she finds out that the listing and the site are separate things.

None of that is failure. She has a working page and paid very little for it. What she spent was a month of evenings, and the booking button is still in the wrong place.

Version two: she pays someone

In the first week she answers questions about the salon, by call or by email: who books with her, what they ask before they book, and what she wants more of. She sends the phone photos she has, and the designer tells her which ones will work and which shots are worth taking on a quiet morning.

In week two she looks at a direction, meaning the colours, the type and how the home page is laid out, and says yes or asks for changes. In week three she reviews the site on her own phone, asks for two changes, and the designer sets up her Google Business Profile before launch. Her part is a few conversations and one review. The cost is the designer’s fee, which is a real amount of money for a two-chair salon.

Neither version is right for everyone. The question is which one Dani would rather pay with: her evenings, or the fee.

What paying someone should buy you

If you hire, you are paying for the parts you would have got stuck on, plus someone to call when something breaks. A decent quote covers all of this, in writing:

• A fixed price, with what is included and what costs extra, before any work starts.
• The words written for you, from what you tell them about the business.
• A phone layout that is designed deliberately, not left as whatever the desktop turned into.
• Your Google Business Profile set up, with the same name, address and phone number as the site.
• The domain registered in your name, and the site’s files handed over if you ask.
• A clear answer to what happens after launch: who hosts it, who makes changes, and what that costs.

If a quote is vague about any of those, ask. What a fair price looks like in this market is laid out in what a website costs in Vancouver.

The risks of hiring badly

A person can let you down as badly as a builder can, and the three ways it usually happens have nothing to do with design.

The first is a designer who stops answering. The site keeps running until a bill lapses or something breaks, and then nobody can get in. If that has already happened, our guide to getting your site back when the designer disappeared walks through it step by step.

The second is not owning what you paid for. A domain registered in the designer’s name, or files kept on their account, means you cannot leave without their help. Five minutes with who owns your domain and who owns your website files will tell you where you stand, and both are worth reading before you sign anything.

The third is an open-ended price. With an hourly rate and no ceiling, a job that runs long is your bill. With a fixed price it is the designer’s problem.

How Droom does it

Droom is one person, Joe, in Vancouver, who builds sites for small businesses across Canada. The prices are public: $999 for up to five pages or $1,999 for up to fifteen, one time, in Canadian dollars before GST. Anything bigger is quoted in writing before work starts. The price is fixed and agreed in writing, so it does not grow while the site is being built.

Here is what that covers, set against the list of places people get stuck:

• The words. Written for you from your answers. You can write them yourself too, at the same price.
• The design. Drawn from scratch for your business, with two rounds of revisions included.
• The phone. Designed first, with a number that dials on tap, and checked from 360px up before launch.
• Google. Your Google Business Profile set up and verified before launch, plus structured data and an llms.txt file, which tell Google and AI assistants who you are, where you are and what you do.
• Booking. Your booking tool wired in and tested, included in the price. A shop adds $2,400. If you want to change prices, a menu or hours yourself, a spreadsheet you edit that updates the site adds $1,800.

It takes about three weeks from the day you approve the direction. Week one is structure and words, week two design and build, week three your revisions, Google setup and launch.

You own it. The domain is in your name and the handover files are free. After launch, Care is $99 a month for hosting, backups, security and two small edits a month, each back within 48 hours. It is optional: three months minimum, then 30 days notice, and the site stays yours if you cancel. Everything a website includes is on the websites page, and every price is on the pricing page.

Who Droom does not suit

If you enjoy building it, have the evenings, and need one simple page, use a builder and keep your money. The same goes for a site you want to rework yourself every day. Droom sites have no login, and changes go through Care or the spreadsheet.