Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, Google Sites, and done-for-you — a fair look at who each one actually suits.
There isn't one best option — it depends on your budget, how comfortable you are building something yourself, and how much your own time is worth. Wix suits beginners who want the most guided experience. Squarespace suits people who want a better-looking result out of the box. WordPress suits anyone who wants full control and doesn't mind a learning curve. Google Sites is free but limited, and not well suited to generating leads. A done-for-you build suits anyone who'd rather spend that time on paying work.
Wix is built for people who've never made a website before. The editor is drag-and-drop, templates are ready to go, and it holds your hand through most of the setup. The trade-off is that the result can look and feel like a template unless you spend real time customising it, and moving away from Wix later — if you ever want to — isn't as simple as exporting your content elsewhere.
Squarespace's templates generally look more considered out of the box than Wix's, which matters if you don't have design instincts of your own. It's a bit less beginner-guided than Wix, so expect a slightly steeper first hour or two learning the editor. For a trade business wanting a clean, professional look without much fuss, it's a solid pick.
WordPress gives you the most control of any option here — plugins, themes, full ownership of the code if you're self-hosting. That flexibility comes with a real learning curve, and a self-hosted WordPress site also means you're responsible for your own hosting, security, and updates, which is exactly the kind of ongoing work that gets missed. Worth reading our guide on what should be included in a website package before going down this path, so you know what you're taking on.
Google Sites is free and about as simple as it gets, which makes it fine as a temporary placeholder. It's not built for converting visitors into leads — limited design control, no real SEO tools, and it tends to look exactly like what it is. Reasonable as a stopgap, not a long-term answer for a trade business trying to generate work.
A done-for-you build removes the building part entirely — a website designer handles design, copy, and setup, and you just review the result. This is the option most directly compared against DIY in our DIY vs. hiring a local web designer guide, which covers the fuller trade-off in detail.
Every comparison of these builders focuses on the monthly fee and skips the actual time cost. Building a site properly — layout, copy, testing on mobile, connecting a domain — takes most first-timers somewhere between 15 and 30 hours. For a tradie, that's hours not spent quoting, not spent on tools, not spent on the job in front of you. It's worth putting a number on your own hourly rate before assuming the cheapest builder is actually the cheapest option. Our full breakdown of this trade-off is in the website cost guide.
We build tradie websites for free, with the $199-a-month Care Plan only starting once you've seen and approved the finished site — which removes the time cost of DIY without requiring any money upfront. If you'd rather spend the evening quoting than learning a page builder, that's the gap we're built to fill.
Free to build, no lock-in, and you see the whole thing before you pay a cent.