Do I Need a Website? Wix vs WordPress vs Custom

Why have a website at all?

Maybe you’ve done fine without one. Your work comes from people who know you, and that’s worth a lot.

That still works. A neighbor mentions your name. That night, the person they told looks you up on their phone. Whatever they find is your first meeting, and you aren’t in the room.

What it does for that person

It answers what they’d feel awkward calling to ask: what you do, where you work, and roughly what it costs.
It shows your work, in photos and your own words.
It gives them one clear next step, like a call button or a short form, at any hour.

Good reviews send people there too. In 2026, BrightLocal, a company that sells local-search tools, asked 1,002 U.S. adults what they do after reading good reviews. The most common answer, at 54%, was visiting the business’s website (people could pick more than one).¹

AI assistants look you up too

Some people now ask ChatGPT, Claude and other AI assistants for a recommendation. When they search the web, these assistants build answers from the pages they find and link to them.^{2, 3} Google’s AI answers in Search link to web pages too.⁴ A website gives them a page about you, in your own words.

Having a site isn’t always enough, though. These tools can only use what they’re allowed to read. Some sites tell their search crawlers (the programs that read pages for them) to stay out. Some pages carry a tag like noindex or nosnippet. Either way, the site can be left out of their answers while looking fine to people.^{5, 2, 6} Google also says not every crawler can run JavaScript, so words that only appear after a script runs can be missed.⁷ You can check your own site in a few minutes.

Social media is rented space

Social media is a great place to be seen. But it’s rented space, and the owner sets the rules.

Who sees your posts. Instagram says it tries not to recommend posts that break its recommendation rules to people who don’t follow you. Your followers can still see them.⁸ People call this a shadowban, though Instagram doesn’t use that word. TikTok can keep a whole account out of For You, its feed of recommended videos, for a while after repeated rule breaks. It tells the creator, who can appeal.⁹
Mistakes. In May 2025, Pinterest admitted that an “internal error” had shut down people’s accounts by mistake. It said it had restored many of them.¹⁰
What you can link and earn. In December 2025, Facebook began testing a limit on how many links some Pages can post, unless they pay for Meta Verified, its paid subscription.¹¹ YouTube can turn off ad earnings for a channel that breaks its rules.¹²
Whole products. In 2024, Google shut down the free websites businesses had built with Google Business Profile.¹³ In January 2025, because of a U.S. law, TikTok went dark in the U.S. for about half a day before coming back.¹⁴

None of this means you’ll be banned. It means one company’s decision shouldn’t be the only way people can find you.

One home for everything you do

Keep your social pages and listings. They’re useful, and free. Put your web address on all of them, and on your card and truck. From there, people can reach every shop, channel and booking page you use.

On your own site, you can link to every place you are, as often as you like. Your name, colors and voice stay the same there, whatever each app changes. Your site can be your link-in-bio, too: the one link in your profile that leads to everything else.

Patreon, which sells memberships that connect creators and fans, surveyed U.S. creators in August 2024. More than half (53%) said it’s harder to reach their own followers than five years before.¹⁵ Add an email sign-up to your site, and fans can hear from you without waiting on a feed.

It isn’t rule-free. Your site still answers to your web host, your domain company and the law. Your web address has to be renewed, too.^{16, 17} Search engines still decide when to show your site to strangers. But anyone with your address can reach you, whatever one app’s algorithm (its formula for who sees what) or ban decides. And once your site is paid for, its files are yours, so you can move it to a new host anytime.

Or just for fun

A website doesn’t have to sell anything. Make one to relive your wedding, with the photos, the vows and the story of the day. Surprise someone on their birthday. Keep your family’s stories in one place. Or Rickroll your friends: send a link that secretly plays Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” People have pulled that prank since 2007.¹⁸

Planning apps make handy wedding sites for before the big day. The Knot’s help page says its wedding websites “were not meant to be legacy sites” and suggests saving screenshots as keepsakes.¹⁹ A site you own can stay up as long as you renew its address and keep it hosted.

In October 2026, a .com web address cost about $11 a year at one company we checked.²⁰ That’s only the address: building and hosting the site cost extra. Fun endings like .wedding, .party and .lol are real, too.²¹ Ask for the yearly renewal price, not just the first-year sale. Got an idea, big or silly? Tell us about it.

When you might not need one yet

If referrals keep your calendar full and you aren’t trying to grow, start smaller. Set up your free Google Business Profile, keep your hours right, and ask happy customers for reviews. That helps people find you on Google Maps.²² When you want more, a website is the next step. Our smallest is the Special Website: 1 to 3 pages for $500.

Four questions tell you most of it

Does it load fast on a phone? Does it show up when someone nearby searches for what you do? Can everyone use it, including people on a keyboard or a screen reader? And if you parted ways with your web person tomorrow, could you take the site with you?

Speed, and what the scores mean

Lighthouse: the lab test

Lighthouse is Google’s free test. It loads a page once on a simulated phone and a slow connection, then scores it out of 100; 90 and up shows green. Run it twice and the score can move a little.²³ It’s good for finding problems, but it isn’t what real visitors experience.²⁴

Core Web Vitals: real visitors

For ranking, Google looks at Core Web Vitals, measured on real Chrome visitors over the past 28 days.²⁴ They cover how fast the main content appears, how quickly the page answers a tap, and whether things jump around while it loads. Good means under 2.5 seconds, under 200 milliseconds and a shift score under 0.1. A site passes when at least three in four visits are good on each of the three.^{25, 26}

Does speed help you rank?

Some. Google says Core Web Vitals are used by its ranking systems, and also that it will show the most relevant page even when the experience is poor.²⁷ Speed won’t lift a page that doesn’t answer the search. Its bigger payoff is the person waiting for your page to appear.

Our own numbers are public and dated on Case Zero.

The bottom line: Lighthouse is the practice test. Core Web Vitals is the real exam, taken by your actual visitors. We build for them.

Custom, Wix, Squarespace or WordPress?

Builders are fast now. Here’s the share of sites on each platform, among those with enough Chrome visitors to measure, that passed Google’s Core Web Vitals on phones in August 2026:²⁸

Passing Core Web Vitals on phones: selected platforms, worldwide, August 2026 (HTTP Archive)

Duda86%
Wix81%
Shopify77%
Squarespace72%
Webflow71%
All websites53%
WordPress49%

HTTP Archive, which publishes these numbers, is careful to call them correlation, not a grade of the platform.²⁸ A well-built WordPress site can be fast: HTTP Archive found its speed depends more on how it’s set up than on WordPress itself.²⁹ So speed alone isn’t a reason to leave a builder.

Who can make changes?

Builders: you can, any time, in their editor.
WordPress: you can, in its editor.
Custom: usually your web person, unless an editor is built in.

Can you take it with you?

Wix: the site has to run on Wix’s servers, so leaving means rebuilding. Some data, like store products, exports as a spreadsheet.^{30, 31}
Squarespace: exports some pages and one blog’s posts, but not the design, the store, or several page types.³²
WordPress: a self-hosted site can move to another host.
Custom: depends on your contract. With us, the files and the domain are yours to host anywhere.

What does it cost over time?

Builders: a monthly plan for as long as the site is live, with hosting, security updates and support included. Squarespace starts at $19 a month, paid yearly.³³
WordPress: hosting, often paid themes or plugins, and someone to keep it all updated.
Custom: you pay for the build, then hosting and your domain each year. Changes you can’t make yourself cost extra.

Who keeps it secure?

Builders: the platform handles updates for you.
WordPress: you or your web person. In 2025, Patchstack, a company that sells WordPress security, logged 11,334 new flaws: 91% in plugins, six in WordPress itself. Almost half had no fix yet when they went public.³⁴
Custom: depends how it’s built. A static site like ours has no plugins or database to break into, so there’s very little to patch.

Who’s watching your visitors?

Most of the web: around 90% of pages load something from another company’s servers, and about three in four include trackers.^{35, 36}
Your site: you decide what gets added. We set up analytics in your own account, or leave it out if you’d rather have none. This site runs none.

What can it do?

Builders: what their templates and app store offer.
WordPress: a huge library of themes and plugins.
Custom: whatever you dream up. Bring an idea, a spark, or a few words about your business, and we build it with you, down to effects like the ones on our Experience pages. If one piece would take far more time than the rest of the project, we’ll say so and work out the best way there together.

So which is right for you?

The bottom line: a builder is like renting. It’s quick to move into and repairs are handled, but you can’t take the walls with you. A custom site is like owning, and with us you hold the deed: the files and the domain are yours.

A builder is a good choice for a simple site you want to edit yourself, quickly and cheaply. WordPress suits a site with lots of content, or one plugin you can’t do without. Custom makes sense when your website is a real part of how you win work and you want to own it outright. If a builder would serve you better, we’ll say so. And a custom site is only as good as the people who build and look after it. Our custom builds and their prices are on Websites & software.

How Google decides who shows up

For local businesses, Google weighs relevance (do you offer what was searched), distance (how close you are) and prominence. Prominence, which Google also calls popularity, is how well known you are, including your reviews and how many sites link to you. You can’t pay Google for a better local ranking.²²

Titles and descriptions

Each page should have a title and a short description. Google writes the search result itself, drawing on your title and the page, and uses your description only sometimes. Keep both accurate, not stuffed with keywords.^{37, 38}

Things that don’t move rankings

Google ignores the old “meta keywords” tag, so paying someone to fill it in buys nothing. Heading order doesn’t change your ranking either, though it matters to people using screen readers.³⁹

Structured data and sitemaps

Structured data is a label in the page’s code that tells Google “this is a business, with these hours and prices.”⁴⁰ It can earn a richer listing, though Google doesn’t guarantee one.⁴¹ A sitemap lists your pages for search engines. It helps, but it doesn’t guarantee they’re indexed, and a small site that links its pages well may not need one.⁴²

Backlinks

A backlink is another website linking to yours. Google uses links to find pages and judge what they’re about.⁴³ The links worth having are ones someone had a reason to give, like a chamber of commerce listing or a story in the local paper. Buying links to lift your ranking breaks Google’s rules.⁴⁴

It can take months

Google says some changes show in hours and others can take several months.³⁹ Anyone promising page one by Friday is guessing.

Can everyone use it?

Accessibility means someone using a screen reader, a keyboard or large text can still read your site and book with you. The guidelines are called WCAG; the latest version is 2.2, and level AA is the usual target.⁴⁵ Most of the web misses it: in February 2026, 95.9% of the million most popular home pages had failures an automated checker could find. The most common was low-contrast text, on 83.9% of them.⁴⁶

It carries legal risk too: more than 5,000 digital accessibility lawsuits were filed in the US in 2025, nearly 70% of them against online stores. One-click widgets don’t fix it; UsableNet saw no meaningful drop in lawsuits against sites using them.⁴⁷ It has to be built into the site. Here’s how we do it: we build to WCAG 2.2 AA.

Who owns it?

Three questions to ask whoever built your site:

Is the domain registered in my name?
Can I have a copy of the site?
What happens to it if I stop paying you?

With us: yes, yes, and it stays yours.

Check any site yourself

PageSpeed Insights: paste a web address to see real-visitor results (when the site gets enough traffic) and the Lighthouse lab score.
On your phone, search Google Maps for what you do and your town. Note who shows up above you.
WAVE flags accessibility problems on any page.
Put the mouse away and press Tab. Can you reach every link and button, and always see where you are?
ICANN Lookup shows which company a domain is registered through and when it expires. Owner details are often hidden for privacy, so ask your web person to show you it’s in your name.
Add /robots.txt to the site’s address to see which crawlers it turns away. It shouldn’t block the search crawlers: Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT), Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot. Blocking GPTBot, ClaudeBot or Google-Extended only opts out of AI training.^{2, 6, 48, 49}
On Cloudflare, set AI training to “Disallow AI Training,” not “Block.” Cloudflare says that since 15 September 2026, Block also stops Google’s and Bing’s search crawlers.⁵⁰

Run them on our site too.

Words you’ll hear, decoded

Plain meanings for the words you’ll hear, so you can ask any web professional good questions and understand the answers.

Alt text: A short description of an image, read aloud by screen readers and shown if the image doesn’t load.
Analytics: Software that counts visits to a site and where they came from, like Google Analytics.
Automation: Software doing a routine step for you, like texting a caller you missed or asking for a review after a job.
Backlink: A link to your site from someone else’s.
Call to action: The one thing a page asks a visitor to do, like call, book or ask for a quote.
Canonical URL: The one official address for a page that could be reached several ways.
Citation: A listing of your business name, address and phone number on another site, like Yelp or a local directory.
CMS: Content management system, the editor behind sites like WordPress.
Core Web Vitals: Google’s measures of how fast and steady a page feels to real visitors.
CRM: Customer relationship management: software that keeps track of every lead and customer, where each one stands, and what happens next.
Deceptive pattern: A design trick that nudges you into something you didn’t mean to do. Think fake countdown timers, boxes ticked for you, surprise fees at checkout, or a cancel button you can’t find. Some people call it a dark pattern.
Domain: Your address on the web, like honeyblooms.org. You renew it, usually each year, and it should be registered in your name.
Google Business Profile: Your free listing on Google Maps and in local results, with your hours, photos and reviews.
Hosting: The computer that serves your site to visitors.
HTTPS: The “https” at the start of a web address. It means the connection between a visitor and your site is encrypted.
Lighthouse: Google’s free lab test for speed and quality, scored out of 100.
NAP: Your business name, address and phone number. They should match everywhere you’re listed.
Search Console: Google’s free report on which searches show your site, and any problems Google finds with it.
SEO: Search engine optimization: making a site easy for search engines to understand, and worth showing.
Sitemap: A list of your pages for search engines.
Static site: A site made of finished pages, with no database or plugins running behind it. Fast, and little to break into.
Structured data (schema): Labels in your page’s code that spell out facts for search engines, like your hours and prices.
WCAG: The international guidelines for making websites usable by people with disabilities. Level AA is the usual target.

Still curious?

Ask us anything about your website, even if you never hire us. Send a question.

Sources

Numbers checked against each source on 29 September 2026; the sources for “Why have a website at all?” on 8 October 2026.

Websites, explained.