Wix vs custom website — which is better for small businesses?

The honest answer

For most small local businesses in the UK, a professionally built, mobile-friendly, SEO-ready website costs between £500 and £2,000 when built by an experienced freelancer. That covers everything — design, copy, basic SEO setup, and launch. At that price point you are paying for quality work, not an agency's account management team.

What affects the cost

The biggest factors are the number of pages, whether copy is included, and whether SEO foundations are built in from the start rather than added as an afterthought. A five-page brochure site with copy written for your business and locally targeted title tags is genuinely all most small businesses need to rank well locally.

What to avoid

• Monthly platform subscriptions — Wix and Squarespace cost £10-30/month forever. A well-built static site has no ongoing fees.
• Cheap template sites — £200-300 websites are almost always generic templates with placeholder copy. Google can tell.
• Agency markup — large agencies charge £5,000-20,000+ for work that smaller freelancers deliver for a fraction of the price.

What Wordwise charges

Wordwise builds websites for local UK businesses from £750 for a five-page Foundation site to £2,000 for a full Growth build with location pages, SEO articles, and Google Business Profile setup. No monthly fees, no platform subscriptions, no surprises. See the full website design pricing page.