The Real Cost of a DIY Website Builder for a Local Business

The subscription is the number everyone quotes. Wix is $17 to $46 a month. Squarespace is $19 to $39. Those are the published rates for their website plans, checked September 6, 2026, and they are cheap.

They are also the smallest number on the bill. Here is the rest of it.

The subscription is the smallest number

A builder sells you an editor and a place to host whatever you make in it. Those are real things, and the price is fair for them.

What the price does not include is the website. You still have to make one, and then keep it. That is where the money goes, and it never appears on a statement, so most owners never add it up.

Cost one: the domain after year one

Paid builder plans usually include a domain free for the first year. In year two you pay the renewal, at whatever price the company that registered it sets.

The fix is the same on any route. Buy the domain yourself from any registrar, usually $10 to $20 a year, keep it in your own name, and point it at whichever site you have. A domain in a vendor's name is the one thing you cannot walk away with.

Cost two: the pages you never write

This is the big one.

A local business website that works has a homepage, a page for each service, a contact page, and a page for each neighborhood you serve. On a builder, every one of those pages is written by you, on a weeknight, after a full day of work.

So most owners write the homepage and stop. The site launches as one page that mentions everything at once, and the plan was always to add the rest later.

Later does not come. And a page that never gets written brings in nobody. Someone searching for "hot towel shave" finds the shop with a hot towel shave page, not the homepage that mentions it in a list. We went through why in service pages vs a one-page website.

That is the real bill for DIY. Not the hours you spend, but the customers the unwritten pages would have brought in. It never shows up anywhere, which is why it is so easy to keep paying it for years.

Cost three: the updates that never happen

A website is not a project. It is the thing that is supposed to be correct when someone checks you at 9pm on a Tuesday.

On a builder, every change is yours to make. New hours. A holiday closing. A price that went up in March. A service you stopped offering. A new review you would like on the page.

Each one is five minutes. Each one is also a login, an editor, and an evening you would rather spend elsewhere. So the site drifts. The listing says one thing and the site says another, and the person who trusted the site ends up at a locked door. Why your website and Google listing must say the same thing covers what that costs you with every system that reads both.

Cost four: learning what Google needs

The builder gives you a blank page. It does not tell you what to put on it.

What a search needs from a page is a real skill. A heading that names the service and the place. Plain text that answers the questions people call to ask. An address and hours that match your Google listing to the letter. Reviews on the page as text a machine can read, not a screenshot.

None of that is hard. All of it is something you have to learn, on top of the trade you already know. Skip it and the pages you did write do less than they should.

A real DIY site, graded

Grove Batu Barbershop in Coconut Grove had a Wix site. When we rebuilt it from the Google listing, the reviews, and the old site itself, we ran the same checks on both and put them side by side.

The old site scored 75. The new one scored 100. Nothing on that card is exotic. It is the pages that exist, the facts that match the listing, the text a machine can read. It is the work a builder leaves for you to do, done.

Add it up for your own business

No one can put a number on your hours but you. Here is how to do it in ten minutes:

1. Count the pages. One for each service you would name on the phone, one for each neighborhood you serve, a homepage, a contact page. Write the number down.
2. Guess the hours per page, honestly. Writing it, finding a photo, checking it on your phone, fixing what looks wrong.
3. Add the upkeep. Hours changes, holidays, price changes, new reviews, a new service. Guess the hours per month, then multiply by twelve.
4. Multiply by what an hour of yours is worth. Your rate at the counter, not zero.

Then add the subscription and the domain renewal. That total is the price of the DIY site. For most owners it is the first time they have seen it.

When DIY is the right call

If you like this work, do it. Some owners enjoy building pages and keep the site current because it is a hobby that happens to pay. For them the builder is the cheapest route by a mile, because their labor is the product and they are glad to give it.

The test is not whether you can build the site. It is whether you will still be updating it in month seven.

What done-for-you costs against it

This is the route we sell, so read it as that. For $49.99 a month, 30 Second Sites builds the site from your Google listing and your reviews, writes a page for every service and every area, hosts it on your own domain, and keeps it current. Hours, phone and services follow your listing the same day you change them. New reviews land as they come in. New pages and articles come to you as an email, and you approve each one with one tap.

That is the subscription and the hours in one price, with the hours removed. Website design and management lists exactly what is done for you, and the full cost breakdown puts all three routes side by side.

See the difference for your business

Type your business name at 30secondsites.com and see the site built from your Google listing, with the pages a builder would have left for you to write. Looking is free. No card, no login, no email until you want to keep it.