You need a website for your business. Someone told you Wix is easy. Someone else swears by WordPress. A neighbor paid a freelancer $3,000 and now can’t reach him. And now there’s a newer category — “done-for-you” managed services that build and maintain the whole thing for a flat annual fee.
So which one actually makes sense for a plumber, dentist, café, dental clinic, or landscaping company in 2026? The honest answer: it depends on how much time you have, how comfortable you are with tech, and how much you want to think about your website after it launches. Below is a fair breakdown of each option — real strengths, real weaknesses — so you can pick the one that fits your situation, not the one a blog post is trying to sell you.
What actually matters when a local business picks a website
Forget what tech blogs argue about. When you’re running a real business, the things that matter are simpler:
- Total real cost over 2–3 years — not just the launch price.
- How much of your time it eats — now and every month after.
- Whether it still works if you never touch it again.
- Whether it looks trustworthy on a phone, where most of your traffic will come from.
- Whether Google can actually find it for the searches your customers use.
- Whether someone will fix it when it breaks — because eventually it will.
Keep those six in mind as you read.
Wix and Squarespace (DIY drag-and-drop builders)
These are the “sign up, pick a template, drag some blocks” builders. Millions of businesses use them and they’ve genuinely gotten good in recent years.
- Pro — Fast to start: You can have something live the same day.
- Pro — Predictable pricing: Around $16–$30/month depending on the plan.
- Pro — Templates look decent: In 2026 the defaults are better than 90% of what freelancers built five years ago.
- Pro — Everything in one place: Hosting, SSL, editor, email — one login, one bill.
- Pro — Real support: A human on chat or phone when you’re stuck.
- Con — You’re the webmaster: Hours change, prices change, you add a photo — that’s your job forever.
- Con — Design lock-in: Templates are hard to escape. Migrating away later is essentially rebuilding.
- Con — SEO ceiling: Fine for basics; harder for competitive local searches versus a properly structured site.
- Con — Add-ons add up: Bookings, forms, email marketing, e-commerce — each nudges the monthly bill up.
- Con — Recognizable look: A trained eye can often tell it’s a template, which can dent trust in industries like law, finance, or luxury services.
Real annual cost: roughly $250–$500/year once you add a domain and one or two apps.
Self-hosted WordPress (with a theme or freelancer)
WordPress runs a huge share of the web. It’s the most flexible option — and the option where things go wrong most often for non-technical owners.
- Pro — Total flexibility: If someone can build a website, they can build it in WordPress.
- Pro — You own it: Files, database, content — you can move to any host at any time.
- Pro — Enormous plugin ecosystem: A plugin for almost anything you need.
- Pro — Better SEO ceiling: With the right setup, WordPress can compete for harder keywords.
- Pro — One-off cost path: Pay a freelancer once, then run it cheaply if you’re careful.
- Con — Maintenance is real: Core, theme, and plugin updates every few weeks. Skip them and you get hacked or the site breaks.
- Con — Freelancer risk: The person who built it may not answer the phone in 18 months. That’s the most common horror story we hear from local owners.
- Con — Hidden monthly stack: Hosting + premium theme + backup plugin + security plugin + page-builder license. Often $400–$800/year just to keep it healthy.
- Con — Steeper learning curve: The dashboard is not intuitive for non-technical owners.
- Con — Breaks silently: A plugin update can take the site down at 2am and you won’t know until a customer tells you.
Real annual cost: $500–$1,500/year on maintenance and hosting, plus $1,500–$5,000 upfront if you hire someone to build it well.
Done-for-you managed website service
A newer category. Someone builds the site for you, hosts it, keeps it updated, and handles changes for a flat yearly fee. BBH sits here, and so do a handful of others.
- Pro — Zero DIY time: You send info once. The site gets built for you. Edits are requested, not done by you.
- Pro — Flat, predictable cost: One annual fee, no add-on creep, no surprise renewals.
- Pro — Someone maintains it: Updates, uptime, SSL, backups — handled without you thinking about it.
- Pro — Built to convert, not just exist: A good managed service designs around calls, bookings, or quote requests — not just “having a site.”
- Pro — Human team on the other end: When something needs changing, a person handles it — not a chatbot or a ticket queue.
- Con — Not instant: A human building it properly takes a few days, not twenty minutes.
- Con — Less “play with it yourself” freedom: You’re not dragging blocks around at midnight. Some people love that; most business owners don’t.
- Con — Quality varies by provider: The category is young. Ask who actually maintains the site, how edits work, and what happens if you cancel.
- Con — Not ideal for complex custom apps: If you need a heavy custom booking system or a shop with 500 SKUs, a specialist build still wins.
Real annual cost: typically $100–$400/year all-in. BBH is $129/year with the build itself free.
Which should you actually choose?
Pick Wix or Squarespace if: you genuinely enjoy tinkering with your own site, you have time to be your own webmaster, and you’re okay with the monthly bill creeping up as you add features. Solo creators, side projects, and hobby businesses fit this well.
Pick self-hosted WordPress if: you have a specific technical need — a custom shop, a membership area, a niche plugin — and you have a reliable developer relationship you trust for the long haul. Not a random freelancer you found once. A real relationship.
Pick a done-for-you managed service (like BBH) if: you run a real local business — trades, food, health, professional services — and your time is worth more than fiddling with a website builder. You want a site that looks professional, gets found on Google, and someone else handles the boring parts. This is where most local businesses actually land once they add up the true cost of the other two options.
The honest bottom line
There’s no universal winner here. Wix and Squarespace are legitimately good if you want to be hands-on. WordPress is legitimately powerful if you have the right person maintaining it. Done-for-you services win on total cost and time for the average local business owner who just wants a working site and their evenings back.
The right question isn’t “which is best.” It’s “which fits how I actually want to spend my week.” Answer that honestly and the decision usually makes itself.