Every Honest Way to Get a Website: Builders, AI, Freelancers, Agencies, or Custom

So you've decided to get a website, and now you're staring at a wall of options that all sound confident and none of which tell you the truth. This is the menu, laid out plainly: five honest ways to get a site, what each one actually costs you in money and time, how much control you keep, how far it can take you, and — the one nobody mentions — who owns the thing when you're done.

This goes deeper than the buyer's guide, which covers whether you need a site at all and the two things that matter more than which one you pick. If you haven't read that yet, start there. This page is for once you've decided to build.

One thing to hold onto before we start: for most small service businesses, the right answer is one of the first two options on this list. The expensive ones exist for real reasons, but those reasons rarely apply to an accountant, a broker, or an independent practice. Keep that in mind as the prices climb.

And hold onto one more thing, harder than the first: every option here — Wix, Lovable, Replit, a freelancer, an agency — gets you a website, and on its own a website does exactly one real thing for you. It gives you a name on the internet — a small piece of the web that's yours, with your name over the door. That's not nothing. When someone meets you — a referral, a handshake at an event — they look you up, and a clean, real site tells them good, this person actually exists, they're the genuine article. Legitimacy is worth having, and even the cheapest builder buys it.

But that's the whole of what a standalone site does. It's a shop built in the middle of nowhere: hand someone the address and they'll drive out and see you're real — but not a single soul ever passes by on their own. It confirms customers; it doesn't find them. If that credential is genuinely all you want, pick the cheapest thing on this list and go with my blessing. What actually brings people in — and turns that little patch of namespace into something powerful — is the system behind the site: getting found in the first place, catching every enquiry, following up, real reviews and real data wired together, turning one visit into a booking and one booking into a regular. A name on the internet says you exist; the system is what makes the name worth something. That's the real work, and it's where your money and attention belong. Don't mistake the door for the shop.

1. DIY builders — Wix, Squarespace, Google Sites

You build it yourself by dragging blocks around. No code, no developer, a free trial to feel it out.

• Cost: about a monthly subscription — the price of a couple of coffees a week. Google Sites is free.
• Time: a weekend if you're focused, longer if you fuss.
• Control: total and immediate. You change a price or a phone number yourself, in a minute, forever.
• Ceiling: you'll hit one if you need something genuinely custom — but most service businesses never get near it.
• Who owns it: you do, though you're renting the platform. Stop paying and the site goes dark, so it's less "owned" than it feels. Fine, as long as you know it.

For a clean, clear site that says who you are and lets people contact you, this is genuinely the right call for a lot of you. Not the cheap option you settle for — often the correct one.

2. AI builders — Lovable, Replit, and the like

Newer and moving fast. You describe the site you want in plain English and it generates one. It feels like magic the first time.

• Cost: low — a subscription, similar ballpark to a DIY builder.
• Time: minutes to a first draft, then real fiddling to get it right.
• Control: high, but it helps to be a bit technical when it misbehaves, and it will.
• Ceiling: rising quickly, still rough at the edges for a serious business site today.
• Who owns it: usually you get the actual code, which is genuinely yours — a real point in its favour. But code you can't read isn't much use if you can't maintain it.

Worth knowing about, worth playing with. I'd not yet bet a business that depends on its website on one, unless you enjoy the tinkering. Check back in a year; this is the option most likely to have changed.

3. A freelancer

A real person who builds it for you. The range here is enormous — in price, in skill, in whether they answer your emails.

• Cost: a few hundred to a few thousand, depending on the person and the scope.
• Time: a few weeks, mostly waiting on them and on you.
• Control: you say what you want, they make it; changes later mean going back to them, or learning to do it yourself.
• Ceiling: high enough for almost any service business.
• Who owns it: ask this out loud before you pay. You want the site, the domain, and the logins in your name — not theirs. A good freelancer hands you the keys without being asked. Get it in writing either way.

This is the sweet spot when you want it handled properly but an agency is overkill — which, for most of you, it is. The whole game is finding a good one: ask for recent work, talk to a past client, start small.

4. An agency

A team, a process, a polished result, and a contract. More hands, more meetings, more money.

• Cost: the step up is real — several thousand and up, sometimes well up.
• Time: weeks to months, with a proper back-and-forth.
• Control: less day-to-day; you're buying their judgement, which is part of the point.
• Ceiling: high. They can do things a solo freelancer can't.
• Who owns it: read the contract. Some agencies keep you on their platform so you can't leave easily. Make sure the site, domain, and content are yours to walk away with.

Worth it when the website is genuinely high-stakes — when it's the front door of the whole business and a weak one costs you real money. For most small service firms, that's not the situation, and an agency is paying for a tuxedo to mow the lawn.

5. Custom-built

A developer builds something bespoke from the ground up, for needs an off-the-shelf tool genuinely can't meet.

• Cost: the highest, by a distance.
• Time: the longest.
• Control: complete — it does exactly what you specified, because someone built exactly that.
• Ceiling: there isn't one. That's the whole reason to do it.
• Who owns it: you should own all of it outright. At this price, accept nothing less, and budget for someone to maintain it after.

Only worth it when a real, specific need can't be met any other way — a booking system with unusual rules, an integration nothing standard handles. If you can't name that need in one sentence, you don't have it, and you're about to overpay for a baseplate.

The honest bottom line

Walk the list and a pattern shows up: the price climbs fast, but for most small service businesses the value tops out early. A good DIY build or a solid freelancer will serve an accountant, an immigration consultant, or an independent practice beautifully. The agency and the custom build are real tools for real situations — just rarely yours.

And here's the part worth tattooing somewhere: whatever you spend, the site is the cheap part. The money is far better spent on the system behind it — the way enquiries get caught and followed up, the way a booking triggers a reminder, the way you actually get found in the first place. That's where the returns live. A gorgeous site that no one finds and nothing connects to is an expensive business card.

Two quick gut-checks before you pay anyone, on any tier:

• Get the keys. Domain, hosting, logins, content — all in your name. This is the single most common way people get quietly stuck, and it costs nothing to avoid up front.
• Spend on outcomes, not polish. It's easy to feel productive choosing fonts. But a prettier site isn't the goal — more leads usually isn't even the right goal. The goal is customers, and that comes from the system, not the shade of blue. The way to know the difference is to measure what's actually working — and the case for net lift shows why that distinction is worth real money.

Pick the simplest option that does the job, get it built without agonising, keep the keys, and put your real energy into everything that happens after someone lands on it.

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If you'd like a second pair of eyes before you commit — which option fits, what it should cost, and where your money's actually best spent — that's exactly the kind of thing I like looking at. Fifteen minutes, no pitch: you tell me how your business works, I tell you what I see. Have a look here.