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 2 jobs of yours: this month's service runs $90 to $160.

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 sells by the hour

Ten to thirty hours is normal to get something live and decent the first time. With this month's service at $90 to $160, those hours cost more than the site.

And it does not end there. The evening you sit down to swap a photo is an evening the phone rings anyway, and answering wins every time.

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.
• Commercial contracts fill your route without residential. 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 this month's service.
• 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 the monthly price and your state license in plain sight 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 the phone number buried halfway down when whoever lands has an emergency, and having to pinch to read it on a phone. Colors and fonts are 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 selling the one-off service instead of the yearly plan, which is where the money is. The template knows nothing about pest control 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 the monthly price and your state license in plain sight, not whatever the template shipped with.