A free website isn't free. It's just a different kind of bill.
A “free” Wix or Squarespace website costs between £144 and £348 per year once you remove ads and use a custom domain. Over two years, that's £288 to £696 — more than a properly built local business website that you actually own. Add a £29 Fiverr build on top, and you've paid for something nobody local will find on Google.
I'm not here to tell you that cheap is always bad. Sometimes a free site is the right move. But you should know the real costs before you decide, because the price tag on the tin is never the full number.
What “free” actually costs over two years
Every free website builder makes money the same way: the free plan is a demo. It shows their branding, limits your features, and gives you a URL like yourname.wixsite.com/site-1. No customer in Saltaire is typing that into their browser.
To get a proper domain, remove ads, and unlock basic features like forms and analytics, you need a paid plan. Here's what that actually costs.
| Platform | Free plan limitations | Cheapest usable plan | 24-month total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wix | Wix ads, no custom domain, limited storage | £12/mo (Light) | £288 |
| Squarespace | 14-day trial only, then paywall | £13/mo (Personal, annual billing) | £312 |
| GoDaddy | GoDaddy branding, one page, no SEO tools | £10/mo (Basic) | £240 |
| WordPress.com | WordPress ads, .wordpress.com domain | £7/mo (Personal, annual billing) | £168 |
| Fiverr build + hosting | N/A — one-off fee + you still need hosting | £29 build + £5/mo hosting | £149 |
| Pacavita Essential | N/A — fully built site, no restrictions | £349 one-off + £15/mo hosting | £619 |
The numbers are close. But the Pacavita site is built for your area, with your services, for local search. The Wix site is a template you wrestled with at midnight.
The SEO problem nobody mentions
Wix and Squarespace templates are used by millions of sites. Google has seen the same HTML structure, the same heading patterns, the same page speed issues, millions of times. You're not standing out — you're blending in with every other template user.
Worse, most builders add bloated JavaScript that tanks your page speed. A typical Wix site scores 30 to 50 on Google PageSpeed Insights on mobile. A properly built site scores 90+. Google uses page speed as a ranking factor. For a plumber in Shipley competing against three others, that speed difference is the gap between page one and page three.
Fiverr builds are a different kind of problem. The £29 developer doesn't know that you need “plumber Saltaire BD18” in your title tag, not “Welcome to My Plumbing Website.” They're building to a brief, not building for your market. Local SEO knowledge costs more than £29. I go deeper on this in the websites for local businesses pillar page.
Design limitations that cost you customers
Template builders give you drag-and-drop freedom, which sounds good until you see the results. Every decision — font size, spacing, button colour — is made by someone who isn't a designer. The result usually looks fine on a laptop and terrible on a phone.
Over 70% of local searches happen on mobile. If your Wix site has text that's too small to read, a menu that doesn't work with one thumb, or images that take four seconds to load on 4G, you're losing most of your visitors before they even see your number.
A café owner in Bingley showed me her Squarespace site. Looked great on her MacBook. On my phone, the menu overlapped the hero image, the contact form was cut off, and the Google Maps embed loaded so slowly the page felt frozen. She'd been running it like that for eight months without knowing.
No local knowledge built in
A template doesn't know that Bradford is in West Yorkshire. It doesn't know that BD17 covers Baildon and parts of Shipley. It doesn't know that “covering the Aire Valley” means something to your customers.
Local businesses rank locally because their websites mention local things. Service areas, postcodes, landmarks, the names of actual streets and neighbourhoods. A Fiverr developer in Manila can't add that. A template from California definitely can't.
The migration pain when you outgrow it
Every business that starts with a free builder eventually wants to move. And that's when you discover the lock-in.
Wix doesn't let you export your site. Squarespace exports a basic XML file that loses most of your formatting and all of your design. GoDaddy's export is similarly limited. You're essentially starting from scratch.
Any Google ranking you've built up is tied to your old URL structure. Move to a new platform without proper 301 redirects and you lose it all. I've seen businesses in Bradford drop off Google completely for two to three months after a botched migration. That's two months of no new enquiries from search.
When a free site is genuinely fine
I'd be dishonest if I said every business needs a paid website from day one. If you're testing an idea, haven't got your first customer yet, or genuinely can't afford £349 right now, a free site beats no site.
Use it as a placeholder. Get your Google Business Profile sorted (that's free and more important — here's my setup guide). Start collecting reviews. Then upgrade when you're ready.
But go in with your eyes open. The “free” plan isn't a long-term strategy. It's a landing pad.
The support void
When something breaks on your Wix site at 9pm on a Tuesday, you're searching help forums. When your Fiverr developer disappears after delivery (and they will — 80% of Fiverr gigs are one-and-done), you're stuck.
Local businesses need someone they can ring. Someone who knows their site, knows their area, and can fix something without a three-day support ticket. That's not a £29 transaction. That's a relationship. It's the reason I include ongoing hosting and support with every Pacavita site — £15 a month, and your website is looked after.
What to do this week
- If you have a free website, add up what you're actually paying per month (plan + domain + any add-ons). Multiply by 24. Write that number down.
- Run your site through Google PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev) and check your mobile score. If it's below 50, your site is hurting you.
- Open your site on your phone. Can you find your phone number in under three seconds? Can you read all the text without pinching? If not, your mobile visitors can't either.
- Search Google for your main service + your area (e.g. “plumber Shipley”). Are you in the top 10? If not, your site isn't doing its job.
- Compare your 24-month total to the cost of a properly built site. The numbers might surprise you.
Cheap websites aren't bad because they're cheap. They're bad because they pretend to be free while quietly costing you more — in money, in time, and in customers who never found you. The right question isn't “how little can I spend?” It's “what does the site need to do, and what's the cheapest way to do it properly?”