An honest guide for founders and how to know when to stop DIY-ing

You need a website. Or the one you've got isn't pulling its weight anymore. Either way, you've probably Googled "best website builder" and landed in a swamp of affiliate reviews all telling you something different.

Here's the honest version, from a studio that builds websites for a living. We'll walk through the five main platforms, then help you answer the bigger question: should you build this yourself, or is your time better spent elsewhere?

Framer

Framer is the newest player here and it's genuinely impressive. Sites look sharp out of the box, animations and interactions that would take weeks elsewhere take minutes, and it publishes fast, responsive pages without you touching hosting or plugins. For founders who care about how their brand feels online, Framer produces the most modern-looking results with the least fuss.

Where it falls short: it's a younger ecosystem, so complex functionality (memberships, big e-commerce, deep integrations) can hit walls. And while the templates are beautiful, making one feel like your brand rather than a template still takes design judgment — good taste isn't included in the subscription.

In one sentence: Framer is the best choice for a fast, beautiful marketing site, as long as your needs are more "look incredible and convert" than "complex web app."

Webflow

Webflow sits somewhere between a website builder and a professional design tool. It gives you near-total visual control without writing code, its CMS is genuinely powerful, and the sites it produces are clean, fast, and SEO-friendly. Agencies and in-house teams love it because it scales — you can start with a landing page and grow into a full marketing site with hundreds of CMS-driven pages.

That power comes with a real learning curve. Webflow essentially asks you to think like a developer (classes, containers, breakpoints), and most founders who open it for the first time close it again fairly quickly. Pricing also gets complicated as your needs grow.

In one sentence: Webflow is a professional-grade tool that produces excellent results — in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.

Squarespace

Squarespace is the "it just works" option. The templates are tasteful, everything is included in one subscription (hosting, security, support), and you can genuinely get a decent-looking site live in a weekend. For service businesses, restaurants, portfolios, and anyone who wants a solid online presence without drama, it's a sensible choice.

The trade-off is rigidity. You're working within Squarespace's way of doing things, and the moment you want something the template doesn't offer, you're either compromising or fighting the platform. Sites can also end up looking like… well, Squarespace sites. When your competitors are using the same templates, standing out gets harder.

In one sentence: Squarespace is the safest DIY option for a straightforward site, as long as you're happy to colour inside its lines.

Wix

Wix has come a long way from its clunky early days. It's the most beginner-friendly platform on this list — drag anything anywhere, pick from hundreds of templates, and its app market covers most business needs from bookings to basic e-commerce. If budget is tight and you just need something online this week, Wix will get you there.

The downsides show up over time. That drag-anything freedom means it's easy to build something messy, sites can get sluggish as they grow, and you can't switch templates without rebuilding. It's also the platform where "DIY site that's become an unwieldy beast" happens most often because it makes starting so easy and finishing well so hard.

In one sentence: Wix is the easiest way to get online quickly, and the platform you're most likely to outgrow.

So… should you do it yourself?

Honestly? Sometimes, yes.

If you're early-stage, cash is tight, and you've got time on your hands, a template on Squarespace or Framer is a perfectly good starting point. Get something live, start talking to customers, move on.

But here's the pattern we see over and over with founders:

You start with a template. Then you tweak it. Then you add a page, then another, then a plugin, then a workaround. Six months later you've got a site that's slow, off-brand, and doesn't actually convert  and somewhere along the way you accidentally signed up to learn branding, UX, UI, SEO, and paid ads on the side. You became a part-time website designer when what your business needed was a full-time founder.

Here's the maths that matters: what's an hour of your time worth?

If you spend 60–100 hours wrestling a template into shape (a conservative estimate), and your time is worth even £50–100 an hour to your business, that's a £3,000–£10,000 project  for a site built by someone doing it for the first time. A professional with years of experience gets you to a better outcome faster, and frees you up to do the thing only you can do: run your business.

DIY isn't free. It's just paid for in your time.

Not sure which camp you're in?

That's exactly what our free strategy call is for.

30 minutes, no hard sell, honest advice. Sometimes we'll tell you "genuinely, just grab a Framer template and crack on" — and mean it. Other times, we'll show you what working with a studio would actually look like for your business.

Either way, you'll leave the call knowing your next step.

Book your free 30-minute strategy call →
https://calendly.com/hello-madmagpies/30min?month=2026-05

Mad Magpies is a brand and UX design studio working with founders across sport, sustainability, renewable energy, and luxury property. See our work at madmagpies.com.