As a busi­ness own­er, your pri­or­i­ty is to make your busi­ness more prof­itable and save mon­ey on unnec­es­sary costs. When it comes to online appear­ance, decid­ing on web­site fea­tures, and look & feel is one of the most impor­tant busi­ness deci­sions you have to make.  You want your web­site to be cost effec­tive and to appear pro­fes­sion­al and cred­i­ble at the same time. In this arti­cle, we will explain the main dif­fer­ences, and pros and cons of hav­ing a cus­tom-built web­site vs. using a web­site builder, and help you make the best deci­sion for your business.

The difference between website builders and a web development agency

Web­site builders are tools or soft­ware that allow web­site con­struc­tion with­out man­u­al code edit­ing. Web­site builders are usu­al­ly online tools that come with an out-of-the-box host­ing solu­tion. There are also builders that are offline soft­ware and have no host­ing require­ments. All web­site builders, online or offline, have a dif­fer­ent lev­el of sophis­ti­ca­tion and cus­tomiza­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties. The main advan­tage of using web­site builders is that they are sim­ple and fast, and cheap­er than cus­tom solutions.

Unlike web­site builders, a web devel­op­ment agency is a team of pro­fes­sion­als from dif­fer­ent fields. Usu­al­ly, an agency con­sists of web design­ers, web devel­op­ers, and UX and SEO experts. They pool their knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence to cre­ate unique web­sites that per­fect­ly fit spe­cif­ic require­ments for each business.

Websites built with online website builders

Online web­site builders can help you cre­ate a mod­ern look­ing web­site in a mat­ter of hours, with­out any knowl­edge of cod­ing or design skills. They do, how­ev­er, have many lim­i­ta­tions to pro­vid­ing excep­tion­al user expe­ri­ence or hav­ing con­trol over fea­tures and customizations.

For exam­ple, if you want to use a spe­cif­ic online mar­ket­ing solu­tion or advanced track­ing options, and your web­site builder does­n’t have an inte­gra­tion with your cho­sen tools, there is lit­tle or noth­ing you can do about it. You can only hope it might change in a future builder update.

Some of the most pop­u­lar web­site builder tools are:

• Wix
• Wee­bly
• GoDad­dy
• Square­space

The gen­er­al rule of thumb is that if you want a web­site that is built quick­ly, but have a lim­it­ed bud­get, web­site builders can be a great option. Before you start explor­ing more about what each web­site builder can offer you, below is a quick overview of pros and cons of using web­site builders in general.

Custom website design and development by purpleplanet

Unique design

Whether you are sell­ing prod­ucts or offer­ing spe­cif­ic ser­vices, you want your web­site to stand out. You want your web­site to be mem­o­rable, and your brand to be rec­og­nized. When using a web­site builder you are lim­it­ed to their default tem­plates. The result is a web­site that appears sim­i­lar to hun­dreds of oth­ers. By choos­ing pur­ple­plan­et you will get a unique design, specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to your busi­ness and prod­ucts or ser­vices you are offer­ing. Your web­site will be dif­fer­ent from every­one else’s and, most impor­tant­ly, stand out from your competitors.

purplenote:“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
~ Steve Jobs

Flexibility

Work­ing with pur­ple­plan­et will offer your busi­ness the most flex­i­ble web­site pos­si­ble. If you need a new fea­ture intro­duced you can count on our sup­port and expertise.

Content creation

Cre­at­ing con­tent is a major part of build­ing any web­site. When using a web­site builder, devel­op­ment can be faster but you still need to invest a lot of time on cre­at­ing con­tent. After that, you need to tai­lor the con­tent to fit the lim­i­ta­tions of the cho­sen tem­plate. With pur­ple­plan­et, con­tent cre­ation goes the oppo­site way; we advise you on best prac­tices in respect to SEO and con­ver­sion opti­miza­tion, and build cus­tom fea­tures that can sup­port all your con­tent requirements.

SEO

Web­sites built by pur­ple­plan­et are search engine friend­ly. We pri­or­i­tize the back­ground cod­ing and the web­site set­up to influ­ence your suc­cess in search engine rank­ings. After build­ing a web­site, we also pro­vide long-term on-site SEO sup­port and web­site main­te­nance. If you want to focus on devel­op­ing your busi­ness we can take care of your web­site’s health and per­for­mance at all times.

Scalability

When first start­ing a web­site it is hard to out­line your long-term goals and see the big­ger pic­ture. If you have a web­site built with a builder, there is a high pos­si­bil­i­ty your busi­ness will out­grow the web­site set­up very fast, and instead of adjust­ing the cur­rent site you will have to build a new one from scratch. With pur­ple­plan­et, you can count on any future changes and adap­ta­tions as your busi­ness evolves from where it started.

How to make the right decision

If brand­ing is not very impor­tant for your busi­ness, and you want a sim­ple infor­ma­tive web­site that is not like­ly to change much and does not require fre­quent updat­ing, web­site builders might be your best choice. How­ev­er, if you want qual­i­ty, brand recog­ni­tion and a web­site that per­fect­ly fits your busi­ness, it is bet­ter to choose pro­fes­sion­als who can not only build a pro­fes­sion­al look­ing web­site that will help your com­pa­ny stand out, but who also sup­port you long-term for pos­si­ble upgrades, main­te­nance, and troubleshooting.

If you would like to hear more about pur­ple­plan­et pix­el-per­fect pro­duc­tions, please vis­it our port­fo­lio sec­tion or con­tact us to sched­ule a free con­sul­ta­tion.