Do it yourself when you have the evenings, enjoy the work and will keep the site current. Have it done for you when your time is worth more on a job than at a keyboard. The honest test is not the build - it is whether the site still tells the truth a year from now. Titan is the done-for-you option that is free to see, built from your Google listing in 10-15 minutes.
DIY means a website builder: you pick a template, drag boxes, type your own words, find your own pictures, and pay a monthly subscription for the tool. Done-for-you traditionally means a designer or an agency: you answer questions, they build the pages, you pay for the hours. Both end in a site with your name on it. The difference is who did the work and who does the next round of work when something changes.
There is now a third shape, which this page comes back to: automated done-for-you. A system builds the site from information that already exists about your business, you look at it, and you only pay if you keep it. It is done for you in the sense that you never touch a layout, but it is priced closer to a builder than to an agency.
The subscription is the small part. The real cost is evenings. A small business owner who has never built a page will spend several of them getting a first version up - choosing a layout, sizing photos, writing a services list, working out where the phone number goes. Some people enjoy that. If you are one of them, DIY is cheap and you keep full control. If you are not, the first version tends to stop halfway, and a half-finished site with a wrong number on it does more damage than no site.
The second cost is that a template does not know your trade. A handyman needs the list of small jobs near the top and a form that takes a whole honey-do list. A painter needs cabinets as their own section, not a line under interior. An epoxy contractor needs a photo of every flake blend. A blank template gives you none of that, so you either learn what a trade site needs or you ship something generic. The handyman website design, painting company website design and epoxy flooring website design pages on this site show what those sections look like when they are already in place.
A designer takes the evenings off your plate, and for a business with a shop, a booking system or a big custom portfolio, that is the right buy. The build fee is what you hear first, and it varies enormously between a freelancer and an agency. Ask instead about what comes after: hosting is usually a separate monthly line, and changes are usually billed by the hour or the ticket and wait on the designer's calendar.
That last part is the one to sit with. Your prices move. You drop a town that is too far to drive. You add a service. Every one of those is a change to the site, and if each change is an email, an invoice and a wait, most owners stop sending the email. The site quietly goes out of date. The kitchen remodeling website design page here has a section on how a remodeler's process changes with each season; that section is only useful if the owner can change it the same week.
Forget the build for a moment and picture a Tuesday night a year from now. Your phone number changed, or you stopped doing one service, or you hired a second crew and started taking bigger jobs. Who changes the site, how long does it take, and what does it cost? With DIY, it is you, if you remember how, and it costs an evening. With a designer, it is an email, a wait and a bill. Whichever of those you will actually do is the right choice, because a site that lies costs you a wasted call and a bad review.
Be honest about your own habits. Plenty of owners choose DIY for the control and then do not touch the site for three years. Plenty choose a designer and then never send the change request. The option you will keep current beats the option that looked best on the day you signed up.
Titan is the third shape. You type your business name, the site is built from your Google listing - your services, your town, your hours - in 10-15 minutes, with the trade-specific sections already where they belong because the template was built for your trade. It is free to see, no card. If you want it, $97 today (first week of hosting free), $97/month starts one week later, 30-day guarantee. Hosting is included. Changes are made by typing a sentence into your dashboard - "add gutter cleaning", "drop Riverside from the service area" - with 50 of those a month included.
That answers the Tuesday-night question without an evening or an invoice. What it does not give you is a person across a table, and it does not build a shop, a booking calendar or a large custom portfolio. If you need those, hire a designer. If you like building pages, a builder may suit you better. If you want the site done, want to see it before you pay anything, and want to change it yourself in a sentence, the demo is the fastest way to find out.
Here is a quicker way to decide than a spreadsheet. Write down three changes your business will make in the next twelve months - a price, a service, a town, a second crew, whatever is likely. For each option, ask what it would take to put those three changes on the site: how many evenings, how many emails, how many dollars. Add up the twelve months, not the first week. The option with the smallest total is the one you will actually keep current, and a current site is the only kind that earns a call.
If the answer is a builder, start tonight and do not stop at page one. If it is a designer, get the after-build costs in writing before you sign. If it is the automated route, the demo takes less of your evening than reading this page did. The full list of trade pages is on the websites for contractors page, and if the question is specifically a builder versus a designer, the Wix vs a web designer guide goes deeper on that pair.
Titan fits the owner who wants the site done for them, wants to see it before paying a cent, and wants to change it themselves by typing a sentence rather than learning a builder or waiting on a designer. If your business is a phone number, a list of services and a service area - which is most small service businesses - the demo shows you in 10-15 minutes whether it is enough.
Titan does not fit the owner who enjoys building pages and wants full control of every pixel, and it does not build online shops, booking calendars or large custom portfolio sites. If you need any of those, a designer is the right call, and if you have the evenings and like the work, a builder costs less on paper. Be honest about the evenings, then choose.
It can be, if it is finished and kept current. A DIY site with the number on every screen, every service on its own line, a working form and a written-out service area does the job. The tool is rarely the problem; the unfinished second page and the number that changed last spring are. If you have the evenings and the habit, DIY works. If not, it becomes an out-of-date page with your name on it.
From a designer, there is no single number - a freelancer and an agency can differ by a multiple for the same pages, and hosting and changes are usually billed separately. Ask for the build, the monthly hosting and the price of one small change, and compare three years, not one invoice. Titan's number is on this page: free to see, $97 today (first week of hosting free), $97/month starts one week later, 30-day guarantee.
Yes, and it happens often. Your words and photos come with you; the pages are rebuilt in the new tool. The cost of switching is the time you already spent, which is why it is worth deciding on the three-year picture now. With Titan the demo is the actual site, so looking costs nothing and switching later is one dashboard, not a rebuild.
Type your business name and see your own site, free, before you decide anything.
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