Choosing between options
Website builder or web designer: which does a small business need?
A website builder gives you a tool, and the building, the writing and the search work are still yours to do. A web designer does that work for you. If the website has to bring in enquiries, have it built: Google does not rank a site by the tool that made it, it ranks the pages.
The short version
- A website builder is a tool. You still build the site, write it and do the search work yourself.
- Offer prices rise, some builders take a cut of sales, and on several the site cannot be moved.
- If the website has to bring in enquiries, have it built. With Fixr that starts from £1,200.
What is the difference between a website builder and a web designer?
A website builder is software you pay for by the month. Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy and Lovable are examples. You choose a template or type a prompt, then you build the pages and write the words.
A web designer builds the website for you. At Fixr Systems that means we plan it, research it, write it and build it, and you approve it.
Even the builders sell a service where they build the site for you. GoDaddy lists one on its pricing page. The tool was never the hard part.
What a website builder really costs in the UK
The price on the advert is the starting price. On several builders it rises after the offer ends, tax is added on top, or the builder takes a cut of what you sell. On several, the website cannot be moved if you leave.
Each figure below was read from that builder's website on 8 October 2026.
| Starting price | What changes later | Can the site leave? | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wix | From £9 a month on annual billing, tax extra | Not stated | "Your site must run on Wix's servers" |
| Squarespace | £12 a month, paid annually | A 2% fee on shop sales on this plan | "Not everything will export" |
| Shopify | £1 a month for the first 3 months | £19 a month paid yearly or £25 paid monthly, plus 2% and 25p on card sales | Products export as a file, without their images |
| WordPress.com | £3 a month paid annually, or £8 paid monthly | Free sites show WordPress.com adverts | The export leaves out the theme and the design |
| Hostinger | £2.99 a month, paid as 48 months upfront | Renews at £10.99 a month | The design, the shop and the forms do not export |
| IONOS | £1 a month for 12 months, VAT extra | Full price shown as £16 a month | "Cannot be used outside the IONOS infrastructure" |
| GoDaddy | From £7.49 a month on an annual term | Not stated on its pricing page | Not stated on its pricing page |
| Lovable | £22 a month for 100 credits | More credits are bought as top-ups | The code can be copied to GitHub |
How long does it take to build your own website?
Longer than the advert suggests. Choosing a template takes an evening. Writing every page, finding the photos, setting up the forms and getting it to look right can take weeks, and for some owners it takes months.
Those are hours taken from the work that brings money into the business. A plumber building a website is not fitting a boiler.
We built the whole SV Autos website in one day, 70 pages in all, while James got on with launching his business.
Will a website builder site rank on Google and in AI search?
Only if you do the search work yourself. Google's John Mueller has said its search systems do not look for any particular website tool. So the tool does not decide where you rank, and what is on the pages does.
A builder does not tell you what your customers search for. It gives you a home page, an about page and a contact page. In a market with hundreds of other businesses, a site with no research behind it is unlikely to be found.
We research the searches before a page is written, then build a page for each service and each place. For SV Autos, the first lead came through the website about a week after it went live. That is the work in our web design and SEO.
What about AI website builders like Lovable?
Lovable builds a website from a written prompt. It is quick, and the result depends on what you know to ask for.
Without a plan and a designer's eye behind it, a prompted site tends to look like every other prompted site. People have started calling that look AI slop, and customers notice it.
How your business looks is part of how it is judged. Several of SV Autos's customers have told James how good his website looks.
Who fixes a website builder site when something goes wrong?
You do. A form stops sending, a page drops out of Google or the site breaks on a phone, and nobody tells you. A builder's support team helps with the tool, not with whether your phone rings.
With Fixr, the person who built the site looks after it. We find the problem and fix it, and every month you see how the site is doing.
Website builder or web designer: what you get with each
| Website builder | Fixr Systems | |
|---|---|---|
| Who builds the site | You | We do |
| Who writes the pages | You | We do |
| Research into what customers search for | Not included | Done before a page is written |
| Google Business Profile | Not included | Set up with the site |
| SEO and AI search every month | Yours to do | One plan, from £500 a month |
| When something goes wrong | You find it and fix it | We find it and fix it |
| Your content and customer data | Held on the builder's platform | Always yours |
Which does a small business need?
If the website is there to bring in enquiries, have it built. Your time goes on the business, and the site is planned, written and built to be found.
We do all of it, from £1,200 with a fixed price in writing before anything starts. Tell us what the business does.
Tell us what the business does, and we respond to enquiries within two working days.
Before you ask
Is it unprofessional to use a website builder?
Customers judge the website, not the tool behind it. What they notice is whether it answers their question, shows a price and makes it easy to get in touch. We build every page around those three things.
Is it worth paying someone to build a website?
If the website has to bring in enquiries, yes. You get the research, the writing, the build and the search work done for you, and your time stays on the business.
How much does a web designer cost in the UK?
With Fixr a new website starts from £1,200, with a fixed price in writing before anything starts. Our guide to website costs in the UK covers the wider range.
Sources
- Wix, exporting or embedding your Wix site elsewhere, checked 8 October 2026
- Wix, best website builders UK (its UK starting price), checked 8 October 2026
- Squarespace, pricing, checked 8 October 2026
- Squarespace, exporting your site, checked 8 October 2026
- Shopify UK, pricing, checked 8 October 2026
- Shopify, exporting products, checked 8 October 2026
- WordPress.com, pricing, checked 8 October 2026
- WordPress.com, export your site's content, checked 8 October 2026
- Hostinger UK, website builder pricing, checked 8 October 2026
- Hostinger, how to export content from its website builder, checked 8 October 2026
- IONOS UK, website builder pricing, checked 8 October 2026
- IONOS, website builders: overview of export options, checked 8 October 2026
- GoDaddy UK, plans and pricing for websites, checked 8 October 2026
- Lovable, pricing, checked 8 October 2026
- Search Engine Journal, Does the CMS matter for search rankings? (John Mueller of Google, July 2022), checked 8 October 2026
- Fixr Systems case study: SV Autos, checked 8 October 2026
Photo: Amper on Unsplash
About the author
Ben Criddle founded Fixr Systems and has been building for UK small businesses since 2024: web design, SEO and AI search, AI automation and custom software. He builds every project himself, and writes and checks every guide on this blog against the sources listed with it. Recent work includes a mobile mechanic's website that reached page one of Google for 394 keywords within nine weeks of launch, measured in Search Console, and a WhatsApp CRM that has brought more than 17,000 leads into one system for a courier training business.
Where to go next
- Web design for small businessesTell us what the business does, and we respond to enquiries within two working days.
- Every starting price, published
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