Wix, WordPress, or custom website: what does your business need?

If you’re looking at how to build a website for your business, you’ve probably come across dozens of options: Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, Durable, 10Web, Framer… And now AI builders that promise a website in 30 seconds.

With so many options, the important question isn’t “which platform is best” but “what does my business actually need”.

Option 1: Wix and Squarespace (DIY)

Price: €14–39/month Time required: 20-40 hours to build + weekly maintenance hours Best for: people with spare time who enjoy creating digital content

Real advantages

• Low entry price
• Intuitive visual editor
• Templates to get started quickly

Downsides they don’t tell you about

• You do everything. Design, copy, images, SEO, maintenance. If you don’t have the time, the website dies within a month.
• Mediocre speed. Average Wix website load time exceeds 4 seconds. Google recommends under 2.5.
• Limited SEO. While Wix has improved, SEO performance still lags behind custom websites. And you have to configure everything yourself.
• Generic design. Templates make your business look like thousands of others.
• You can’t export. If you want to switch platforms, you start from scratch. Wix doesn’t make it easy to leave.

Verdict: Wix gives you the tools. But if you don’t have 10 hours a week to dedicate to it, the website will end up abandoned. And an abandoned website is worse than no website at all. It gives a bad impression.

Option 2: WordPress (the “standard”)

Price: €5–50/month for hosting + €0-5,000 if you hire someone Time required: varies wildly, from hours to weeks Best for: businesses with a tech team or budget to hire a developer

Real advantages

• Extreme flexibility
• Huge plugin ecosystem
• Full control over code

Downsides they don’t tell you about

• Security. WordPress is responsible for 90% of all CMS hacks. Every plugin is a door for attackers.
• Speed. Without expert optimisation, WordPress websites are slow. Plugins, themes and databases bloat the site.
• Constant maintenance. WordPress core updates, theme updates, plugin updates… Skip them and the site breaks or becomes vulnerable.
• Agency dependency. If the agency that built your website disappears, you’re stuck with a site you can’t maintain. This happens a lot.
• High real cost. A professional WordPress website costs €2,000-10,000 to build + €50-200/month for maintenance. SEO is extra.

Verdict: WordPress is powerful, but it’s a tool for developers, not business owners. Without someone dedicated to maintaining it, it’s a ticking time bomb.

Option 3: AI builders (the shiny new thing)

Price: €0–30/month Time required: 5 minutes to create, 0 minutes to maintain (because you won’t) Best for: anyone who wants to see a website fast without worrying about quality

Real advantages

• Blazing fast creation
• Very simple interface
• Low or free price

Downsides they don’t tell you about

• Low quality. A website generated in 30 seconds can’t compete with a design built for your specific business.
• Zero differentiation. Your website looks AI-generated because it is. Your customers notice.
• Non-existent SEO. They generate pages, not strategies. Without regular content and optimisation, Google ignores you.
• No integrations. They don’t connect to your CRM, billing, or business tools.
• Content doesn’t write itself. The builder makes the website. Who writes articles every week? Who answers customer questions? Who updates the services?

Verdict: you can buy a piano for €500. That doesn’t make you a pianist. An AI-generated website is a starting point, not a finished website.

Option 4: Custom website with someone looking after it

Price: quoted after understanding the case. There is no catalogue rate. Time required: a 30-minute conversation to define the scope. Best for: businesses where the website has to generate enquiries, bookings or orders, and nobody on the team has hours to maintain it

How it works

• A website is designed and built for your business specifically, not from a template
• Content is published on a cadence agreed in writing
• Technical SEO is handled during the build, not bolted on afterwards
• It connects to the tools you already use (CRM, billing, bookings)
• Recurring technical maintenance sits with the team that built it

Why it’s different

• 95-100 on Google PageSpeed, against the 30-50 typical of Wix and templated WordPress
• Content on an agreed cadence, not a blog that dies in month three
• SEO built in. It’s not a separate line item, it’s part of how the site is built
• Genuinely multilingual, with content adapted to each market you sell in
• You own the code and the domain. Unlike Wix, everything is exportable

Each project is quoted from what it actually needs: number of pages, languages, integrations and content cadence. That’s why there’s no published price.

The honest comparison

The question that matters

It’s not “which platform is best?” but “who’s going to keep my website alive?”

If you have 10 hours a week to dedicate to creating content, optimising SEO, updating plugins, and managing website security, any platform can work.

If you’re like most business owners, with a 12-hour day spent working, serving clients, and running the company, you need someone to handle the website for you.

At serpixel we build custom websites for businesses that don’t have those hours: we handle the build, the technical SEO and the content, and you get on with the business.

If you want to pressure-test your own situation before deciding anything, book a 30-minute session. You’ll leave knowing which of the four options fits you, even if it isn’t ours.