Should Your Fort McMurray Business Use a Website Builder or Hire a Designer?

Wix and Squarespace make it look easy. Here's what that actually costs you.

Fort McMurray small business owner attempting DIY website build

The drag-and-drop looked simple until the third hour.

Website builders have made it genuinely possible for a business owner with no technical background to put something online in an afternoon. Wix, Squarespace, and similar platforms have improved significantly over the years, and for certain situations they’re a reasonable option. The honest conversation is about which situations those actually are.

The case for a website builder usually comes down to cost and speed. If you need something basic online quickly and your budget is tight, a template-based builder gets you there faster and cheaper than hiring a designer. For a brand new business testing the market, or a side project that doesn’t need to make a strong impression, that tradeoff can make sense.

The case against comes down to what those platforms are actually built to do. Website builders are designed to make every type of business look presentable, which means they’re optimized for the middle - not for standing out. The templates are shared across thousands of businesses, the customization has limits, and the result tends to look like what it is: a template. For a business trying to communicate quality and professionalism, that’s working against you before a visitor reads a single word.

Comparison between template website builder and custom web design

Same template, different logo, different business - until it isn’t.

Time is the other honest cost. A business owner spending evenings and weekends learning a website builder, writing their own copy, sourcing their own photos, and troubleshooting layout issues is spending time that has real value elsewhere. The apparent cost saving of DIY disappears quickly when that time is accounted for honestly, and the result is still often a site that doesn’t do the job a professionally built one would.

The distinction worth making is between a website that exists and a website that works. A builder site can absolutely exist - it can have your hours, your phone number, and a contact form. Whether it communicates the quality of your work, ranks in local search, loads fast on mobile, and makes a visitor more likely to reach out than move on to a competitor - that’s where the gap between DIY and professional tends to show up most clearly.

What the finished version looks like when someone else handles the hard part.


For Fort McMurray businesses that are established, client-facing, and competing for work in a real market, a professionally built site is rarely the wrong investment. For businesses just starting out with minimal budget, a builder gets you online while you find your footing. Knowing which situation you’re actually in is the decision worth making clearly before you start.

Professional custom website design result for a small business

Mint Websites builds custom Framer websites for Fort McMurray businesses that have outgrown what a template can do. Get in touch to talk through what makes sense for yours.