Hosting Your Own Website Vs. Using A Website Builder

Need a website? Gone are the days where there are only one or two ways to get one onto the web. With the proliferation of website builders and other tools, not only is the process generally easier and significantly less expensive… but you can tailor the experience to your cash flow and skill level.

It's worth noting that anyone will have an easier time building a website if they have a basic grasp of HTML, CSS, and simple image editing. But there are plenty of ways to get a website up which require absolutely none of those talents. Generally, most agree that hosting is the option for the more savvy individual, but that's not necessarily entirely the case. For example, anyone who can post an image to Facebook can use the most common website builders, but those on a significant time crunch might find that a better option than going the traditional route with their own hosting.

What to Expect

Why does anyone pay for a guided tour in a museum? Because it helps them understand far more than they would on their own, helping them to get the most out of displays, artistic installations, and more. It's a great analogy for a website builder: with a website builder, you're benefitting from someone else's expertise to help you gain the most from your attempt to build a website. You're paying for someone else to present you with all of the tools and know-how to make a great website, and to skip over learning most of the elements of coding and design.

Individuals brave enough to eschew taking guided tours are expected to have enough knowledge to appreciate everything they see and stop at, which makes them rather analogous to individuals who choose the DIY website and web hosting route. They pick their own pace and route and, if needed, do their own research.

In the analogy, regardless of their approach, both parties are actually walking into the museum! In this respect, both need hosting to get their website online. But for those using a website builder, the hosting of the website is covered by the website builder. They take care of it all for you, and you never need to know if you need a specific kind of hosting for your website.

Website Builder Benefits

The biggest benefit for most website builders is that you need absolutely no coding knowledge or experience, and don't need to have a clue about design. The top 10 website builders are often no more difficult to use than PowerPoint, and website can be cranked out in less than ten hours.

With website builders, there are generally a few different coders, reducing compatibility issues, bugs, broken code. Similarly, the website builder has already worked to optimize performance of its products, meaning you can usually expect any website you make to be fast, responsive, and seo-friendly right out of the box.

Also, you never need to worry about maintenance! Your website builder will take care of that for you, meaning all you need to concern yourself with is your website's content. Most website builders will help guide you through building everything from a portfolio to a shop to a blog with ease.

But there are some limitations! You'll have a specific number of available themes or templates for your website, and if you don't like any of them, you're stuck. You can't customize many of the functions, so if you find out midway through that the theme you selected just won't work, you might be in the position of losing all your work and needing to start back at ground zero. Most website builders also don't have very scalable websites, meaning that it can be very hard to get a large volume of pages or products.

DIY Website Benefits

Wanting to host your own website? You have absolute and total freedom over the visual design and how it handles. You can also optimize your code down to the letter for security and speed. You are absolutely unlimited in the amount of functions you can add, and you can also very easily scale your website to handle large amounts of traffic, pages, and products. But that's all likely to take time, often well over 20 to 40 hours.

The Bottom Line

So, both options ultimately include hosting- website builders and DIY websites. And the cost to do either can often come out rather comparable, when you compare the cost of your own annual hosting to the cost of a website builder and its perks. If you assign a monetary value to your time, website builders can often come out cheaper… but if you're extraordinarily picky about design and functions, a website builder may not give you a product you're in love with.