Should you build it yourself, or hire someone
Doing it yourself is a real option — here is the honest tradeoff.
When doing it yourself is the right call
If you have a few evenings, one simple page, and a name people already search for, a builder like Squarespace can carry you a long way. Plenty of businesses launch this way and are right to. If that is you, spend the money elsewhere and come back when the site is holding you back.
What tends to break six months in
The site launches, then quietly stops keeping up. Search rewards specifics a template rarely lets you add. Pages that felt fine start feeling slow. And every fix routes through you, so you become the tech support for a thing you built to save time. None of it is dramatic; it just adds up.
What you are actually paying a person for
Not typing skills. Judgment about what to say and cut, a site that stays fast and findable, and a name to call when something breaks so it is not your Saturday. What you are buying is the problem staying solved for good, and a set of pages is only how that gets delivered.
These are the searches this page is here to answer.
Building it yourself is a real option, and worth understanding before you pay anyone. There are three honest routes. None is wrong. They just trade money, time, and control differently.
Squarespace · Wix · GoDaddy
Pick a template, drop in your words and photos, and hit publish. No code, and the hosting is handled for you.
Good for
Getting online this weekend with one simple page, if you have a few evenings and a name people already search for.
The catch
A monthly fee that never stops, a template you fight the moment you want something specific, and a slower site that is harder to rank. Squarespace looks the best of the three; GoDaddy's builder is the weakest.
Lovable · v0 · Cursor · Claude
You describe the site in plain English and an AI writes real code for it. It can look custom, with no monthly builder tax.
Good for
A truer-to-you result and real control, if you are comfortable being a little technical and patient with rough edges.
The catch
The AI hands you a car, not driving lessons. You still host it, connect the domain, and catch it when it is quietly wrong about speed, forms that actually send, or how Google reads the page. Those parts do not announce themselves.
Vercel · Netlify · a domain
Where your site actually lives so the world can reach it. Builders hide this from you; vibecoding hands it to you.
Good for
Understanding even a little, since it is the step most guides skip and the reason a 'finished' site still is not online.
The catch
Domains, DNS, certificates, and the 'why won't it update' panic all live here. Easy enough after your first time, and the part no guide warns you about.
How to make it actually good
Say you go for it. Here is the gap between a site that is merely live and one that works, and it is the same list whether you use a template or the tools I use. The tool was never the hard part.
Get high-fidelity photos
Sharp focus, real resolution, good lighting, and framing that shows what you do at a glance. Stock works in some cases, but show your face if you can, especially if you are service based and people need to trust you. Your working environment, a real moment of your day, anything that lets the customer picture how this will work for them.
Leave a lot of space
It is so hard to do, because we are passionate and want to say everything we can about our business. Slim it down to as few words as possible anyway. These sites are proven the most successful. What do you do, and why are you the best at it for this customer?
Hold one style
Choose a couple of fonts and a couple of colors and use them everywhere. A fresh look in every section reads as thrown together. Most of what 'professional' means is simply staying consistent.
Size images for the screen
A photo that is crisp on your laptop can be a five-megabyte download on a phone. Serve a version scaled to the device, or the person on a weak signal stares at a blank box and leaves.
Build for a weak connection
Run your site through Google Lighthouse for a rough idea of how long it takes to load on mobile and desktop. It also grades accessibility, like whether your contrast holds up and the page is easy to get around and interact with. Bad scores hurt where you show up on Google, and they are particularly tough to fix on a template.
Pick one action
Decide the one thing this site is for, whether that is calls, bookings, orders, or directions. Make that button impossible to miss on every screen and repeat it at the bottom of the page. When everything asks for attention equally, nothing gets pressed.
Everything on one scroll
Most people just scroll to see what you have. Your homepage is your introduction, so include a little about everything that might excite the customer or be relevant to them, in as few words as you can, and let them click into any of it for the depth. A platform or a larger business can be different, so match the structure to your size.
Never let it go stale
Old hours, a closed location, last year’s prices: an outdated site costs more trust than no site would. Whatever changes in the business has to change here the same week.
The honest part
None of this is hard to grasp. Doing all of it, every time, while keeping the site fast, findable, and current, is the actual work. The tools sit in everyone’s hands now. The judgment about the thousand small calls they do not make for you is the part you are hiring.
Still deciding?
Tell me what you are working on and I will give you a straight read on what your site should do, before you spend a dollar.