Custom website vs Squarespace: which is right for you?

The business websites page describes what a SkyerWorks build includes and the pricing page has every starting price.

The short answer

Stay on a builder if your site is new, small and mostly needs to exist. Move to a custom site when the template is costing you something you can name.

A builder gets a presentable site live quickly for a subscription. A custom site costs more up front and pays that back only when something specific is wrong: pages that are slow on phones, a design you keep fighting, search settings you cannot reach, or a site you cannot take with you. If none of those is true yet, a builder is fine.

Cost over three years

Over three years a builder is cheaper in cash: roughly $600 to $1,800 in subscriptions against a one-time build of $800 to $3,500. What you own at the end is different.

The domain is separate in every case, typically $15 to $20 a year, and should be in your name whichever route you take. The care plan is optional: on a SkyerWorks site your design, content and domain are yours after final payment, so the $79 a month buys hosting, monitoring, backups and software maintenance from the person who built it, not permission to keep using it. If the template is not costing you customers, the builder wins on price; if it is, the gap is small against what a customer is worth over three years.

Speed and Core Web Vitals, in plain English

Core Web Vitals are Google's three measurements of how a page feels to use: how quickly the main content appears, how quickly the page responds to a tap, and whether things jump around while it loads. Hand-coded pages have a structural advantage on all three.

A builder page carries the platform's scripts, its editor framework and often several fonts and widgets before your content arrives. A hand-coded page carries only what it needs. SkyerWorks sites are written by hand in HTML, CSS and JavaScript with self-hosted fonts and nothing loaded from third parties unless a feature needs it; skyerworks.com itself loads no analytics or ad pixels (the only cookies are Google’s, set by the spam check on the contact form), is installable as an app and keeps working offline.

Speed matters twice: to the visitor on a phone with one bar of signal, and to search engines, which use these measurements as part of how they rank pages.

SEO control

On a builder you control page titles and descriptions; structured data, redirects and sitemaps vary by plan. On a custom site you control all of it.

• Titles and descriptions. Both routes let you set them. On a SkyerWorks site every page gets a specific title and description as part of the build.
• Structured data. Code that describes your business, services and prices to search and answer engines. Builders generate generic markup; a custom site carries markup written for yours.
• Redirects. When an address changes, a redirect keeps the old link and its ranking working. Builders limit how many you can set and of what kind; a custom site does not.
• Sitemaps and crawl rules. A custom site gives you a sitemap and robots rules you control, down to which pages are indexed.

None of this guarantees rankings; content and reputation do most of that work on any platform. What a custom site removes is the ceiling.

Ownership and portability

On a builder the site lives on the platform and export is partial at best. On a custom site your design, content and domain are yours.

Builders generally let you export some content, but the design and anything that depended on a platform feature stay behind, so moving means rebuilding.

At SkyerWorks the domain stays in your name. After final payment your design, content and domain are yours; the shared map engine is licensed to you for your site, forever. Any third-party software or subscriptions are listed in the proposal, and you can host the site anywhere.

Design limits

A template is a design chosen from a catalogue and adjusted within its limits. A custom site is designed for your business from a blank page, and you approve a mockup before anything is built.

The limit shows up as friction: a menu that cannot do what your menu needs, a booking flow bolted on as a widget, a layout that looks like three other businesses in town. On a custom site the design starts from the question your customers arrive with. The work page shows what that looks like for a restaurant, a plumbing company, a dental practice and a yoga studio.

The free mockup is the test: after a short call, Wayne designs one first-pass homepage, free, so you see the direction before committing.

Maintenance effort

A builder updates its own platform and you edit in its editor. A hand-coded site has very little to update, and a care plan or an editing system covers the rest.

On a builder, upkeep is your time in the editor. On a SkyerWorks site, hosting, monitoring, backups and applicable software maintenance come with a care plan from $79 a month; the $149 and $299 plans add up to 1 or 3 hours of updates each month. If you want to edit menus, posts, services or galleries yourself, say so at the start and an editing system with a short training session becomes part of the scope. The guide What does a website care plan include? goes through what to check in any plan.

Who should stay on Squarespace or Wix

Stay if the site is new, small, cheap to run and not yet costing you anything.

• You are launching a first site and need it live soon on the smallest budget.
• The site mostly needs to exist: hours, address, a few photos, a contact form.
• You enjoy editing it yourself and change it often.
• Nothing about it is costing you customers yet.

There is a path from a builder later: a redesign moves your content across and keeps the addresses that matter working.

Who should move to a custom site

Move when you can name the cost of staying.

• Pages are slow on phones and you have run out of settings to change.
• You keep fighting the template to do something your business needs.
• You need search settings the plan does not expose: structured data, redirects, specific titles.
• You want to own the site, not subscribe to it.
• You need features a widget cannot do: a living menu, a booking flow, a property map, a room finder.
• You run a villa, resort or venue and guests need to find you and find their way around.

How a migration keeps your rankings

Rankings follow addresses. A migration keeps them by keeping the same page addresses where possible and redirecting the ones that change.

1. List every page that gets search traffic or has links pointing at it.
2. Keep the same addresses where possible; where one changes, set a permanent redirect from old to new.
3. Keep the titles and content that already rank. Improve them; do not reset them.
4. Set up structured data, a sitemap and analytics on the new site before launch.
5. Reconnect the tools that have to stay: booking systems, payment links, forms.
6. Launch, then check that old addresses redirect and the new sitemap is crawled.

A SkyerWorks redesign proposal covers all of this: moving your content, keeping important page addresses working with redirects, and reconnecting tools. The price follows the same starting points as a new site, from $800 to $3,500.

Questions about custom sites and builders