Why Pay for a Web Developer When You Can Use Wix or Squarespace?

We’ve all seen the marketing for Wix and Squarespace promising you can build a DIY website in an afternoon, but is it really that easy to build a website without a web developer in 2025? The answer, of course, is a bit more complicated than a simple yes or no.

Let’s take a look at what’s actually possible in DIY, what you miss out on and what Web Developers can do for your business.

Where Wix & Squarespace excel…

Let’s tackle this first; because we don’t mean to attack these platforms as bad faith competitors, phoneys or red herrings. If you are just starting out, building a small portfolio, dipping your toes into freelancing, operating a small cafe or a small-time side hustle, then these DIY design platforms can be a really useful and cheap starting point.

For people who just need something up online initially, this approach can definitely work for a while. It will handle most of the design part, and for additional fees, it will also provide email, domains, forms and hosting.

But this solution starts to fall apart the moment you get serious.

Too good to be true…

While these platforms have very appealing marketing, anyone who has tried to run a business from one of these sites quickly realises that it’s not that easy.

The reality is that no matter how many times these companies say ‘no code’, the internet is built with an underlying mess of code, whose languages have rules and caveats that can’t be circumvented or managed without the help of those who understand it.

The first domino people notice falling is the design; while all the templates look professional, the moment you try to customise them or add in your own content, the design suddenly looks b-grade, the content disappears or looks wrong on different devices, and the branding colours and assets start to clash with the overall aesthetic. The reality is, the templates are not designed with your unique business in mind.

The next thing you will realise is that customising the way your site works (how you set up marketing, how you capture leads, how you boost your SEO and see your stats) is a never-ending battle against the platform. To achieve your goals, you will not only have to pay higher ongoing fees, but the platforms will often then retain and sell on your data to third-parties, and because they were designed to work for thousands of different businesses at the same time, they force you into a ‘one size fits all’ approach.

Furthermore, the SEO capabilities of these platforms are simply not up to scratch for most modern businesses and you will likely need to hire a developer anyway, to set up your requirements.

Ultimately, these platforms are just not conducive to building a unique business, because they don’t allow for the flexibility you need to use strategy and dexterity in your business decisions, especially if you don’t want to pay the ever-increasing monthly fee.

Hidden costs…

This brings us to the central question for any business; which direction is more cost effective?

Many of our clients at MOG have come to us having used these platforms for a while, they come to us either because of the rising costs and/or limits on functionality. These customers would have saved money and grown more steadily by building a proper website to start with.

While the upfront fee of web developers does seem like a lot more than the DIY approach, the fee is a one-off that ensures all your online platforms are set up for longevity, flexibility, platform agnosticism and scalability.

The DIY platforms by contrast, lock you into their architecture, slowly raise their prices each month, and charge for every add-on or customisation you need. So by the time you’ve been running for a while, you’ve paid for a professional website within these fees.

This is separate to the concern SEO and analytics are inferior on these platforms, missing out on a goldmine of professional search indexing, Google’s Analytics and the open-source plugin universe of WordPress. Many businesses start out on these DIY platforms only to realise that their leads and sales plateau and there’s little they can do to change tact.

At the end of the day, by going with these companies, you trade your freedom and data ownership for the convenience of a ready-made design and a drag & drop interface; something the open-source platform WordPress has offered for free for years.

So what does a Web Developer do differently?

Let’s go through it step by step, because the term Web Developer and Web Designer can be a bit misleading.

While we can’t speak for the workflow of every developer, here is what a typical MOG website package entails.

Firstly, MOG will start by speaking to the client to understand their business plan or model, and researching their competitors to develop everything from their branding design, customer journey, UI/UX design and marketing campaigns. Depending on what the client has in place we may just use their existing assets to set up the website, or we may actually help to create media assets like logos, photography, video, audio, branding and more.

Then we move onto the development of the site. Now that we know what their business needs, and how they want to grow it, we can develop a site with the required flexibility and scalability built-in. This allows our clients to expand their business in stages over time, retain all their stats to reveal new sales patterns, and customise and automate their site and customer journey however they want.

As part of this process, we build our sites with robust backend architecture; affordable Cloud Hosting with daily backups, Professional eCommerce with no monthly fees, Google Analytics dashboards, Premium & Organic SEO, Social Media management and complimentary WordPress training so you can maintain the website yourself.

Lastly, you get arguably the most important and least honoured service of all these days… tech support! We are always a quick phone call away for our clients, ensuring their sites keep going, are properly updated and maintained for security, keeping their websites running at super speeds and offering our professional advice at every stage.

This is a service the big multinational companies do not offer.

The wrap-up…

If you’re an artist setting up a portfolio, or a small cafe or similar startup, it’s probably worth using Squarespace or Wix to have a go at it. But if you are using these platforms to start a business or online service, or anything that relies on proper online marketing and serious strategy, you’re likely going to end up paying a lot more for a lot less.

This doesn’t mean you need to take the Silicon Valley tech startup approach and hire 30 developers upfront, but having at least one web expert in your back pocket will pay off in the long run.

If you’re interested, here are a couple of our client case studies, whose success speaks for itself:

Property Sharemarket Economics | An info-subscription service with now over 5000 yearly subscribers

The Studio Yarra Valley | A highly in-demand B&B who benefit primarily from free, organic SEO

Baby Sign | An Online Educator who recently migrated away from DIY website builders due to the ongoing fees and poor SEO performance