Short answer: if your time is worth more than a few dollars an hour and you want a website that brings in customers, hiring a developer at a fixed price usually works out cheaper and better than doing it yourself. But DIY is the right choice for some businesses, and we’ll tell you which ones.
We build websites for a living, so of course we have a view. We’ve tried to make this page fair anyway, because the right answer depends on your situation.
A website builder can be a good choice if:
If that’s you, go for it. Pick a builder, choose a simple template and keep it short.
The price on a website builder’s homepage is rarely the full story. Here’s what tends to catch business owners out.
Choosing a template, writing every word, resizing photos, working out menus, testing on a phone, fixing what broke on the phone, connecting your domain and setting up email forms. Most people underestimate this badly. It usually means several evenings and weekends, often more.
Try this quick sum: take the hours you think it will take, double them (everyone underestimates), and multiply by what an hour of your time is worth to your business. For most business owners that figure is already well past $799, before they’ve spent a cent on the builder itself.
Website builders charge a monthly fee for as long as your site exists. Stop paying and your website disappears. Many also charge extra for removing their branding, for online booking, for more pages, or for email. Over a few years those monthly fees add up to a lot more than people expect.
With avissoft, the website costs $799 once, then $149 per year to keep it online. No monthly fees.
With most builders, your site is locked to their platform. If you want to leave, you usually have to start again from scratch. With us, once the build is paid in full, your domain and website belong to your business.
Templates look great with the demo photos and text. With your photos and words in them, they often don’t. Customers can usually tell a DIY website, and many quietly read it as “small operation, maybe not reliable”, which is the opposite of what you want.
Publishing a website isn’t the same as being found. Page titles, descriptions, site structure, speed, structured data and your Google Business Profile all affect whether you show up when customers search. Most DIY sites skip these, because most people don’t know they exist.
Contact form stopped sending? Domain expired? Site looks broken after an update? With DIY, you’re the support team. With us, you send an email.
| Do it yourself | avissoft | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | Builder plan, plus your time | $799 flat |
| Ongoing cost | Monthly subscription, forever | $149 per year from year two |
| Your time | Many evenings and weekends | About an hour in total |
| Design | A template you adjust yourself | Designed for your business and customers |
| Text | You write it all | We help write it |
| Mobile | You test and fix it | Built mobile-first and tested |
| Google and AI search setup | Usually skipped | Included |
| Who owns it | Locked to the builder | You do, once paid |
| Changes later | You do them | $25 per edit, or do nothing |
| Support | Help articles and chatbots | A real person: Tapan |
At the very cheap end, you can find someone online to build a site for very little. The risk is that they disappear after launch, the site is built on something only they can maintain, or nobody is there when it breaks.
At the other end, agencies typically charge several thousand dollars for a small business website, plus a monthly retainer. You’re paying for account managers, offices and processes designed for much bigger clients.
avissoft sits deliberately in the middle: a proper, professionally built website at a fixed price you can budget for, from a developer with 15 years of experience who will still be answering the phone next year.
The cheapest website is the one that pays for itself. If a $799 website brings you even one or two extra customers, it has usually done its job.
If you love building things and have the time, DIY can work. If you’d rather spend your evenings on your business, or with your family, and want a website that actually brings in customers, let someone who does this every day build it for you at a fixed price.
Not sure yet? Get a free homepage mockup. It costs nothing, and you’ll see exactly what you’d get before deciding.
Not usually, once you count your time and the monthly subscription that website builders charge for as long as the site exists. A fixed-price website from avissoft costs $799 once, then $149 per year.
Usually not completely. Most builder websites are locked to that platform, so leaving means starting again. With avissoft, your domain and website belong to your business once paid.
DIY can make sense if you enjoy design, have plenty of spare time, only need a single page, or are testing an idea and do not need to be found on Google yet.