Should I build it on Wix or hire someone?

The math that actually matters

Wix and Squarespace are not free: about $200 a year, every year, and the first year goes into learning where everything is.

Our page is $299 one time, which in your trade is 5 jobs of yours: a cut runs $25 to $60.

Over four years the Wix route is at $800 and still charging; this one is at $299 and charging nothing. But that is the small part, because the cost of doing it yourself is not the subscription.

The expensive part is time, and yours is out on the job

Ten to thirty hours is normal to get something live and decent the first time. With a cut at $25 to $60, those hours cost more than the site.

And it does not end there. Every new job you want to show means photos, crops, and fighting the template again to get them straight.

Build it yourself if any of this is you

• You enjoy tinkering and a Sunday afternoon at a screen does not bother you.
• You are starting out and right now you have more time than money. That is a good reason and there is nothing to argue about.
• You only need somewhere for the Instagram link to land, with no ambition of ranking in Google.
• Your chair is full and the waitlist is long. In that case neither one: do not spend.

Have it built if this is you instead

• Your time is already sold. Every hour in the editor is an hour not spent on a cut.
• You tried once and it stalled halfway. That is the most common outcome and it is not your fault: templates are designed to look good empty.
• You need your own cuts, the address, and booking without a phone call to be visible, which is what decides the call and what templates put in the wrong place.

What goes wrong almost every time it is done at home

It is photos squeezed and cropped by the template, text that talks about the business instead of to the customer, and having to pinch on a phone. Color is almost never the problem.

Three concrete things, fixable in any template. If you are building it yourself, fix those and you are already ahead of most.

The detail that gives away who built it

A page put together in an afternoon from a template gives itself away one way: it repeats no real hours posted and no way to see how you take appointments. The template knows nothing about barbershops and gives you what it gives everyone.

It is not that Wix cannot do it right. It is that you have to know that needs fixing, and that in your trade what closes the job is your own cuts, the address, and booking without a phone call, not whatever the template shipped with.