The short answer
Build it yourself when the site is a few pages of information — who you are, what you do, how to reach you — and a template gets you 90% of the way there. Hire a developer when the site has to do something: take bookings, process payments, sync with your other tools, or rank against real competition.
Most new businesses should start DIY. A brochure site on a builder for a few hundred dollars a year buys you time to learn what you actually need before you pay someone to build it.
The real differences
| DIY | Hiring a developer | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | Builder subscription only | $1,500–$15,000 per project |
| Your time | Significant — you’re the builder | Hours of briefing and review |
| Time to launch | A weekend | Weeks |
| Custom features | Limited to what the builder offers | Whatever you can specify |
| Ongoing edits | You make them for free | You or a retainer |
| SEO & performance | Decent out of the box | Tunable to the last millisecond |
Where each one wins
DIY wins: brochure sites, portfolios, landing pages, and any business still figuring out its offer. If you can describe your whole site in five pages and it doesn’t need a database, a builder like Wix or Squarespace will do it — and you’ll understand your own site.
Hiring wins: custom booking flows, e-commerce beyond a builder’s limits, integrations with your CRM or accounting, migrations, and anything where site speed or search ranking directly drives revenue. At that point a developer’s fee is cheaper than the sales you’re leaving on the table.
The order of operations
Don’t hire before you know what you’re buying. Start DIY, run the business, and keep a list of every “I wish the site could…” moment. When that list has three real items — not vanity features — you have a brief worth paying for. A developer working from a clear brief and a live site costs far less than one hired to guess.
When you’re ready, write it down first with our project brief template, then compare a web designer and a web developer — they’re different hires. See the full range in the web development cost guide.