Wix means you build it yourself on a drag-and-drop builder and pay a subscription; a web designer means somebody builds it for you and bills for the hours, then again for changes. For a contractor the deciding question is not the build - it is who changes the site in March when your prices, services or phone number move. There is a third option: Titan builds it from your Google listing, free to see, $97 today (first week of hosting free), $97/month starts one week later, 30-day guarantee.
Strip the brand names off and the choice is simple. On one side is a builder: a website tool with templates, where you drag boxes around, type your own words and pick your own pictures. Wix is the best known of these, and everything true of Wix here is true of any builder in the category. On the other side is a person: a designer or a small agency who asks you questions, builds the pages and hands you a finished site. One costs you time and a subscription. The other costs you money and a wait.
Neither is wrong. Plenty of contractors run a fine site on a builder, and plenty paid a designer once and never regretted it. The mistake is choosing on the build price alone, because for a working contractor the build is the short part. What matters is the next three years.
The appeal is obvious. You can start tonight, the subscription is small next to a designer's invoice, and nobody has to explain your trade to a stranger. Whatever Wix charges this month is on its own pricing page - check it there on the day you decide, because plans change and this page will not keep up with them.
The cost that is not on the pricing page is your evenings. A builder gives you a blank template and a hundred choices: which layout, which font, how big the pictures, where the phone number goes, what to write under Services. A contractor who has never made a web page will spend several evenings getting a first version up, and the internet is full of builder sites that stopped at page one because the owner ran out of evenings. If you enjoy that work, the subscription is the real price. If you would rather be on a job, the evenings are.
There is a second quiet cost. A template does not know your trade. It does not know that a plumber needs the emergency line on the first screen, that a roofer needs storm damage and insurance claims as their own section, or that a fence company needs a different picture for vinyl than for cedar. You have to know that, and build it, yourself.
A designer takes the evenings off your plate. You talk for an hour, send some photos, and a few weeks later a finished site arrives. The build fee is the number you hear first and it varies wildly - a freelancer at a kitchen table and an agency with an office quote very different figures for the same five pages. Either way, you pay for a person's hours, and a person's hours are the most expensive thing in the business.
The part to ask about is what happens after. Hosting is usually a separate monthly line. Changes are usually billed by the hour or the ticket, and they take as long as the designer's calendar allows. Ask the plain question before you sign: what does it cost me, and how long does it take, to change my phone number next Tuesday? The answer tells you more about the next three years than the build fee does. A good designer answers it happily. A quote that dodges it is telling you something.
A contractor site is never finished. You add a service. You drop a town that is too far to drive. You hire a second crew and start taking commercial work. Your prices move, your hours move, the number on the truck changes. Every one of those is a change to the site, and a site that does not change becomes a site that lies.
On a builder, you make the change yourself, if you remember how and have the evening. With a designer, you send an email and wait, and pay. Neither is terrible. But be honest about which one you will actually do at nine at night after a twelve-hour day, because the site that says you still do a service you dropped last year costs you a wasted call and a bad review. Choose the option you will keep current, not the one that looked best on day one.
The newer option is done-for-you automation, and Titan is one. You type your business name and the site is built from your Google listing - your services, your town, your hours - in 10-15 minutes, with the trade-specific sections already in the right places 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, and changes are made by typing a sentence in your dashboard - "add stump grinding", "change hours to 7 to 5" - with 50 of those a month included.
That answers the March question directly: you change it, in a sentence, the same night. What it does not give you is a person across the table, and it does not build a site with a shop, a booking calendar or a big custom portfolio. If you need those, a designer is still the right call.
Open three tabs. On the first, start a free trial on the builder and try to get your services, your number and one photo on a page in an hour. On the second, email one designer and ask for a build price, a monthly hosting price and the cost of a phone-number change. On the third, type your business name into Titan and look at what comes back.
Then judge all three on the same four things a homeowner needs: the phone number dials from a phone, every service you offer is on its own line, a form reaches your email, and the towns you cover are written out. The trade pages here show what that looks like when it is done - plumber website design, roofing website design, fence company website design and deck builder website design each open a live demo for that trade, and the full list is on the websites for contractors page. Whichever of the three tabs gets you to those four things with the least of your evenings and the least of your money, over three years and not one night, is the right answer.
Titan fits the contractor who wants the site done for them, wants to see it before paying a cent, and wants to change it himself by typing a sentence rather than waiting on a designer or learning a builder. If your business is a phone number, a list of services and a service area - which is most trades - the demo will show you in 10-15 minutes whether it is enough.
Titan does not fit a contractor who wants a designer to sit with them and hand-build something custom, and it does not build online shops, booking calendars or large portfolio sites. If you enjoy building your own pages and have the evenings for it, a builder costs less on paper and you may prefer the control. Be honest about the evenings, then choose.
It can be, if you build it well and keep it current. The builder is not the problem; the blank template and the evenings are. A contractor who knows what a trade site needs - number on every screen, services on separate lines, a form, the service area - and has the time to build and maintain it will do fine. A contractor who does not have the time ends up with a half-finished page, and that is worse than no page.
There is no single number, and anyone who gives you one without asking questions is guessing. A freelancer and an agency can differ by a multiple for the same pages. Ask three for a written quote that includes the build, monthly hosting, and the price of one small change. Compare the three-year total, not the build fee. Titan's number is on this page and does not change with who you ask.
Yes, but you start over each time. The words and photos are yours and come with you; the pages are rebuilt in the new tool. That is a reason to decide on the three-year picture now rather than the first month. With Titan the demo is the actual site, so if you look at it and prefer a builder or a designer, you have lost nothing but the 10-15 minutes it took to build.
Type your business name and see your own site, free, before you decide anything.
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