Why not just use Wix or Squarespace instead?

Short answer (TL;DR)

For solo consultants or hobby sites, Wix at $18/month is fine. For a serious small business, three cases where custom pays back fast: bilingual EN and ES with proper hreflang (Wix handles this badly), mobile load speed under 1 second vs 4-6 seconds for Wix templates, and Google Ads Quality Score penalties on slow Wix sites that can lower your CPC by 30-60 percent.

Extended answer

"Why not just use Wix?" is a fair question we hear every week. Our honest answer: for some businesses, those platforms are the right choice. If you're a solo consultant, a Wix one-pager at $18/month is probably fine. We'll tell you that for free.

But there are three cases where DIY builders will cost you more in the long run — directly measurable, not theoretical.

Case 1: You need proper bilingual English and Spanish

Wix's language switcher duplicates content badly, generates duplicate URLs that Google penalizes, and often fails to serve the correct version in search results. The hreflang tag is the technical standard for telling Google "this is the English version, this is the Spanish version, show the right one to the right user." Wix implements hreflang incorrectly or not at all. We hand-code reciprocal hreflang on every page. For an LA business, this is the difference between showing up for "diseño web Los Angeles" or being invisible.

Case 2: Mobile load speed under 1 second vs 4-6 seconds

Wix templates average 4 to 6 seconds First Contentful Paint on 4G mobile. Our custom builds average under 1 second. For a service business, that difference is directly measurable in bookings — Google's own research shows that every 1-second delay drops mobile conversions by 20 percent. If a Wix site converts 3 out of 100 visitors and a fast site converts 4 out of 100, that's 33 percent more leads for free.

Case 3: Google Ads Quality Score penalties

If you're running Google Ads to drive traffic to your site, Google penalizes slow landing pages. Quality Score affects your Cost Per Click directly: a QS of 10 pays 1/5 what a QS of 2 pays for the same keyword. A custom build at 100 PageSpeed can lower your CPC by 30 to 60 percent compared to a Wix site at 40 PageSpeed. For a business spending $2,000/month on ads, that's $600-$1,200/month in savings — which pays for the entire website build within one to two quarters.

The hidden fourth case: ownership

Covered in our "do I own my website" question, but worth repeating: Wix is rent. You stop paying, you lose everything. Custom code is yours forever.

When Wix IS the right call:

- Pure hobby site with zero revenue depending on it
- Solo consultant with no bilingual, no ads, no SEO ambition
- Testing a brand-new business idea for 30 days before committing capital
- A microsite for an event or one-off campaign

If none of the three cases above apply to your business, use Wix. If any of them do, call us.