Why not Wix, indeed?
Wix, Squarespace and others are fine products in some circumstances.
The cost of entry is low and an entirely adequate website can be created in a few hours by pretty much anyone. If all that's required is some information, a few photos and basic contact information this can be a perfectly sound solution.
Unfortunately, once features are added the cost can go up quickly.
Most people are going to want a little more:
- An event calendar.
- A weblog.
- A more comprehensive photo gallery.
- Search engine optimization.
All of these 'extras' raise the cost, and users can quickly wind up with a much larger monthly bill than anticipated.
Once a site needs real metrics for budget and advertising, more complex forms to accept recurring payments or gather information, geolocation and mapping or properly managed search engine optimization, your Wix site will no longer be adequate.
It won't even be viable.
This where consumers of commodity web services can run into one of their biggest hurdles.
Vendor lock-in.
Often when stakeholders decide to move away from their Weebly or Wix sites they run into difficulty extracting their data.
Images have been compressed into hard to work with formats, arcane proprietary code is everywhere, and it is all minimized, obfuscated and compressed to the point of incomprehensibility.
It can be a tough realization that the site that's been fine for years is no longer meeting their needs. Especially after sinking thousands of dollars into monthly fees for 'extras'.
If you have registered your domain through your provider it can add another layer of complexity.
The upside.
A custom site can solve these problems. First and foremost, you own your files and content and are free to do with them what you will.
Other advantages include:
- No more monthly fees. When we are done we don't bill you anymore and you are free to use the host of your choice -- we'll even install and configure it for you.
- Better performance. We use proven frameworks and best practices to ensure that your site is accessible to all people on all devices. We benchmark everything and if you host with us (free for a year) we'll do all security updates and keep everything humming along on a DigitalOcean VPS configured for your application. We only host sites we build so hands on attention is assured.
- Easier editing. While we work with Drupal, WordPress and others, our preferred content management system is Craft CMS. Craft offers an unparalleled editing experience and makes it easy for non technical people to manage the site.
- Us. We're not a faceless conglomerate. If you have a question, we'll give you an answer. If you have a problem, we'll help find a solution. Quickly and in plain English.
We've found that often the cost of a custom hand-coded site is recouped surprisingly quickly while improving the experience for both users and editors.
If you agree, or want to find out more, please let us know.