Yes, if you’ll enjoy doing it, the site is simple, and you’ll keep it up to date. No, if you want it done and never thought about again, or you need it found on Google and quick on a phone. The builder’s fee is the small cost either way; the real one is your hours.
We build websites for a living, so weigh what follows accordingly. Prices exclude GST unless marked.
Where the builders genuinely win
- You’ll enjoy it. Some people like fiddling with their site on a Sunday, and builders are made for them.
- The site is simple. One page with what you do, where you are, your hours and a phone number is a fine website, and a builder does it well.
- You’ll actually keep it up to date. A builder site with this month’s prices and this year’s photos beats a professionally built site nobody has touched since launch.
- You have very little to spend. If the choice is between a builder site and no site, have the site.
Wix vs Squarespace: which one?
Squarespace suits people with good photos and not much to say, like photographers and makers. Its cheapest plan, Basic, is NZ$19 a month paid yearly or NZ$26 paid monthly, plus GST, and it takes 2% of anything you sell through it.
Wix suits people who want to bolt on bookings or a small shop without asking anyone. Its cheapest paid plan, Light, puts the site on your own domain but won’t take bookings or payments; those start one plan up, on Core. Wix’s headline prices assume a year paid upfront. We checked both pricing pages in October 2026.
Both add New Zealand’s 15% GST at checkout, on top of the price they advertise. If your business is GST-registered, put your GST number in your billing settings and neither will charge it.
What it costs, in money and in hours
Either builder’s cheapest plan comes to a few hundred dollars a year, plus your domain once its free first year is up.
The first version takes a weekend if you’re quick and a few weekends if you’re honest with yourself. Both builders will now draft a site with AI from a few answers about your business, which saves time at the start and none on the changes after it. Then every change pulls you back in: the new service, the price rise, the page that stopped looking right on a phone after an update. None of it is hard, but all of it is you, on an evening, doing a job that isn’t yours. Count those evenings at your own hourly rate and the sum stops looking small, unless you’d do it for the pleasure.
Where the builders fall down
It looks like a template unless you’re good
The templates are handsome, and they’re the same ones everyone else chose. Fitting one to your business, rather than dropping your logo on it, is a design job whichever tool you’re holding.
Speed on a phone
Some builder sites are quick on a phone and plenty aren’t. On Google’s own research, a page that takes more than three seconds to load on a phone loses about half the people who tapped on it, and none of them ring to say so. Check yours on Google’s speed test, because it’ll feel quick on your own wifi whatever its score.
Leaving later means starting again
A Wix site can’t be moved to another host, and once it’s created you can’t switch it to a different template, so a new look means building a new site. Squarespace lets you export some of your content but not the design. None of that matters if you’ll stay, but it’s worth knowing before you put a few weekends into one.
Being found locally
On both builders, the title and description Google shows for each page are yours to write, and the site goes live whether you’ve written them or not. For a local business, though, the Google Business Profile usually does more for being found than which builder you picked.
When a build is the better buy
You want it done and the phone ringing, and you’d rather never open the thing again. Or you’ve caught yourself apologising for the site before you give out the address.
Paying someone comes in two shapes, and they don’t buy the same thing. A freelancer’s one-off build is paid once, with hosting and every change after launch billed on top (the going rates). Our plans start at $200 a month plus GST, with no build fee and a six-month minimum. For that, Emma designs and builds the site, Craig answers the phone and email, and we make every change you ask for, for as long as you’re with us. If your site will go up once and stay as it is, the one-off is the better buy.
When we’re not the answer
If you want to build it yourself and rearrange it whenever you like, we’re not it. Growth comes with an editor for the words and photos, but the building stays ours on every plan. If that’s the part you’d enjoy, use a builder.
Find out where yours stands
Already on a builder? Run the free report on your site. Google scores it out of 100, the report says in plain English what’s holding it back, and it usually arrives within five minutes. If your builder site is doing its job, that’s what we’ll tell you.