One of the more interesting things about working in web design is that people assume I’m always going to push for hiring a professional. They expect me to clutch my pearls at the phrase, “I think I’m just going to build it myself.”
But honestly? Sometimes I agree.
Not every business should hire a web designer right away. Not every business needs a custom website, an SEO strategy, six automations, and a homepage that rivals Apple’s. Sometimes the smartest thing a business owner can do is open a website builder, pick something reasonably clean, and get themselves online.
The problem isn’t DIY websites, but that people often stay in DIY mode long after it has stopped serving them
There is a point where building your own website shifts from being practical and cost-effective into becoming expensive, exhausting, and all-consuming. Most business owners don’t notice that transition happening until they’ve already spent six weekends rearranging sections and arguing with a contact form.
So if you’re trying to decide whether to build your own website or hire someone, here’s the framework I usually use.
Start by Being Honest About What Stage Your Business Is Actually In
One conversation I’ve had over and over through the years goes something like this:
A person reaches out wanting a website quote. We talk through goals, business stage, services, audience, budget…the usual things. Somewhere in the conversation I ask how they’re currently getting customers.
And the answer is often something like:
“Well… I haven’t launched yet.”
Okay.
There’s a difference between needing a website and needing a business. If you’re still validating your offer, figuring out pricing, determining whether customers actually exist, or changing direction every three weeks because somebody on YouTube told you to pivot into luxury hamster consulting, then dropping a huge amount of money into a custom website may not be the highest-value move.
This is where DIY can shine.
A simple website can force clarity. It can help you stop endlessly preparing and start talking to real humans. It can give you a place to send people, collect inquiries, explain what you do, and learn what questions people actually ask. More importantly, it can reveal which parts of your business matter and which parts only existed because they sounded good in your notebook.
I think people forget that websites are not businesses.
Websites support businesses.
If your site is currently acting as a business card, credibility builder, or place for people to learn more after meeting you somewhere else, then perfection is probably not the goal. Movement is.
That’s why I rarely tell brand-new businesses they need to hire a designer. Sometimes just getting out there is enough, and a DIY site is perfect for that.
But DIY Is Not Free…It Just Sends a Different Invoice
Where people get themselves into trouble is assuming the opposite must also be true: that because hiring costs money, building it yourself costs nothing.
That’s one of the more expensive myths in small business.
DIY websites absolutely cost something. They simply charge in different currencies.
They charge in evenings after work. They charge in weekends. They charge in energy and attention and context switching. They charge in opening your laptop to “quickly update one thing” and emerging three hours later having somehow rebuilt your footer while forgetting to answer the inquiry email sitting in your inbox.
At first, those costs might feel reasonable.
Building your own website can actually be fun. There’s satisfaction in creating something yourself. You start seeing your business take shape visually. You learn new skills. You feel capable and invested because now it isn’t hypothetical anymore. It exists.
But there’s a point where that healthy investment starts becoming something else.
This reminds me of a client conversation I’ve had more than once. Someone tells me they’ve been “working on the website” for six months. They give me access and I take a look:
Three pages. Half-finished copy. A homepage they’ve rewritten fourteen times.
And what they’ve actually been doing is making and remaking decisions. They didn’t know what they needed to move forward; they think design is the important part.
It isn’t.
Websites contain hundreds of tiny decisions: structure, wording, images, colors, buttons, sections, navigation, forms, priorities, mobile layouts, platforms, plugins, hosting, SEO, analytics, and approximately eleven thousand settings whose labels appear to have been written by people who actively dislike humans.
Eventually decision fatigue sets in.
And when it does, many business owners don’t realize they’ve become mired into website hell instead of building a business asset.
Also… We Need to Talk About the Myth of the “Simple Website”
I say this with love because I hear some version of this constantly:
“I just want something simple.”
And to be fair, I almost always understand what people mean when they say it.
They aren’t asking for a Fortune 500 website. They don’t need a customer portal, advanced automation, multilingual support, a booking engine, custom-coded features, and an app that notifies customers every time Mercury enters retrograde. Usually they mean something much more reasonable: a clean website that explains what they do and helps people contact them.
Totally fair.
Where things start getting sideways is that people often use simple when they actually mean small.
Small websites absolutely exist.
Easy websites… less often.
This reminds me of conversations I’ve had with prospective clients who tell me they only need a one-page site, usually with the assumption that this means the project should be relatively quick. Then we start talking, and within twenty minutes we’ve uncovered fifteen services, three audiences, an email list, a lead magnet, testimonials, a gallery, booking functionality, SEO goals, and a desire to “maybe sell a few products later.”
At that point, the website isn’t a simple, one-page site anymore.
Also, reducing page count doesn’t reduce decisions. In some ways, it increases them.
When you only have one page, every section has to work harder. Your messaging has to become clearer because visitors have fewer places to orient themselves. Your calls to action matter more because there aren’t multiple opportunities to guide someone. Even your content becomes more demanding because every paragraph is competing for limited space.
And underneath all of that is the invisible work nobody thinks about when they picture a website.
You still need hosting. You still need domain setup. You still need backups, forms, mobile responsiveness, image handling, performance considerations, security, analytics, and at least basic SEO foundations. Someone still has to decide what pages exist, what content matters, how users move through the site, and what happens after somebody clicks Contact.
That’s the part most people don’t think about.
The page itself is often the smallest piece of the project.
Once people realize that, the conversation shifts from: “Why would I pay someone for one page?” to something much more useful:
“How many decisions would this remove from my plate?”
And in my experience, that’s usually the moment people stop evaluating websites by page count and start thinking about them as systems.
That shift tends to lead to better decisions, whether someone ultimately chooses DIY or hires help.
So… When Should You Actually Hire?
I don’t think people should hire simply because somebody else has a prettier website. I also don’t think doing everything yourself deserves some kind of entrepreneurial merit badge. The goal isn’t self-sufficiency for its own sake; the goal is building a business that actually moves.
What I tend to look for is a different question entirely:
Has your website become the bottleneck?
Has it started consuming more energy than it returns?
I’ve seen this happen in a few predictable ways. Business owners stop reaching out because they want to “fix the homepage first.” They avoid publishing content because the site still feels unfinished. Updating one service turns into an entire evening because they forgot how everything was set up. Or my personal favorite: the business itself has evolved dramatically, but the website is still introducing version one of the company from eighteen months ago.
That’s usually the signal: change.
The person who needed to wear every hat at the beginning of the business is not necessarily the same person who should still be wearing every hat once growth starts happening.
And for what it’s worth, hiring does not have to mean handing over the keys and disappearing.
Some of my favorite projects happen somewhere in the middle. Clients write their own content and I shape it. Clients launch version one and bring me in later for structure and growth. Clients DIY because they need speed, then invest later because now they have data and direction.
That middle ground doesn’t get talked about enough.
Final Thoughts
Building your own website doesn’t make you cheap.
Hiring a designer doesn’t make you lazy.
Both choices can be smart. Both choices can also become expensive mistakes if they happen at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons.
What I hope people take away from this conversation is that websites are tools, not milestones. They exist to support the business, not become the business.
If building your own site gets you moving, fantastic.
If hiring someone gives you the space to focus on growth, also fantastic.
The only thing I’d question is staying in a mode that no longer fits.
Because if you’ve spent the last month adjusting section spacing, rebuilding the homepage, researching themes, and reorganizing your navigation while neglecting the work that actually brings in customers…your business is going to suffer.
I can help you fix that.