If you’re in the process of launching your new business, you’ve likely given a lot of consideration to creating a new website and how you plan to market your business online. During your research you’ve probably come across—or are familiar with several DIY platforms such as Weebly, WIX, or Squarespace. These platforms are heavily marketed across social media channels and promote themselves as the easiest way to get your business website up and running.

While this might sound like a great way to save money by simply building your website with a do-it-yourself tool, there are several drawbacks and considerations before you decide to use one of these platforms.

Learning curve

Even though these platforms are easy to use, you will still need to commit a lot of time to learning the interface, features, and tools necessary to build your website from scratch. Furthermore, it isn’t just the time to create the website but you’ll also need to allocate hours to understanding how to optimize your website for search engines, set up your business email, or add necessary third-party features to your site that are critical for providing the best user experience for your customers.

As a small business owner, your time is one of your most precious assets. Do you really have the time to dedicate to creating your own website and maintaining it?

Lack of flexibility

Another feature promoted by these platforms is the templates they provide. These templates are intended to give you a starting point to easily drop in your content and images and launch your new site quickly and easily. However, what you might discover is a lack of flexibility with these templates—or a limited selection to choose from—that will allow you to build your pages and frame your content the way you want. Another drawback is that these templates are available to all of their users which means your brand may lack the originality and individuality that sets you apart from your competition.

Site performance

DIY platforms overall lack the detailed access necessary to promote your website so it can be found in search. While they do offer the ability to integrate Google analytics code, they don’t offer access to on-page optimization such as meta-tags, descriptions, focus keywords and other critical optimization methods. Further, their servers can be notoriously slow which affects your site load time and also has an impact on your search position. You also won’t have direct access to your server which can also complicate your ability to enhance the performance of your website.

You’re trapped

All of these platforms are built within their own dedicated ecosystems which means your site is completely dependent on this infrastructure while locking you in to a monthly or annual commitment. While you do own your site content and assets, you do not own the infrastructure that your website was built within, or the template you used to create your design. This means if you ever decided to cancel your subscription and move your website to another provider, you’re stuck.

None of these platforms give their users an easy way to download their site content. So if you decide to move your website somewhere else, you will essentially be starting over.

It’s not cost effective

All of the marketing from these DIY platforms is focused on a low price point which is generally their entry-level subscription plan. And, as you might expect, low price often comes with limited features, flexibility, and options. It’s very likely your business will require features not available in an entry-level plan, or you will simply want access to a greater number of design templates to choose from.

When you start to add all these additional features or à la cart items your business requires, your monthly costs and annual commitment can quickly add up.

It can hurt your brand

You’ve probably visited websites that have a small badge that says “Built with Wix” or “Built with Squarespace” somewhere on every page of the website. This is a marketing tool used by these platforms to grow their businesses through your site traffic, and is generally a fixed item in all of the base accounts that can’t be removed. This is a trade-off you must be willing to accept as the price for a low-cost website. But the hidden cost of not being able to remove this from your website can have long-term implications for your brand, and the professionalism your business needs to project.

A better alternative

If you’re just testing the waters with a new business idea and need to get something up quickly, maybe a DIY solution would work great for you. However, if you have a fully-developed business plan and a long-term strategy for success, you need to consider all of the shortcomings above before deciding on a plan to build your business website.

The best option for most businesses—whether you’re a start-up or establish business looking to re-develop your existing website—would be WordPress. (see 5 Reasons You Should Be Using WordPress In 2021)

WordPress is a free, open source platform that has become the industry leader in website development and content management solutions. With nearly endless available themes, plugins that add features and functionality, and a global user community that continually contributes to—and improves the software, it’s no surprise that nearly 25% of the top 10,000 global websites use the WordPress platform.

Before you invest your time, effort, and money, make sure you explore all of the options available to you for a long-term successful website, to avoid getting started down the wrong path.