DIY vs Done For You: The Real Math

Over three years, a 3 to 6 page business website costs about $36 to $183 if you prompt an AI and host it yourself, $576 on a mainstream visual builder, $387 with us, and $2,180 upwards with a freelancer or an agency. The cash column is only half the bill. The other half is hours: on the cheapest of those routes, prompting an AI and hosting it yourself, at least 60 more of them. This guide puts both halves in one table and works out the hourly value where the answer flips.

Want the numbers for your exact situation instead of the example? The free website cost calculator asks five questions and itemizes all five paths. It shows the result on the page and asks for nothing to do it.

Every website has two prices, and only one of them is on the invoice

The cash price is easy to compare, so that is the one everybody compares. The second price is your hours: learning the tool, building the pages, writing the copy, wiring up a domain, and then coming back every time something needs changing. Those hours are real even when nothing leaves your bank account.

Nobody can tell you what your hour is worth. But you can, and once you have that one number the comparison stops being an argument and becomes arithmetic.

What each path actually costs over three years

Example: a 3 to 6 page site for a local business that shows what you do and lets people get in touch. Three-year horizon, because a one-year comparison flatters whichever option front-loads the work. Every figure below comes from our own published pages, linked underneath.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

Sources, all ours and all public: builder and freelancer and agency prices from the 2026 cost comparison and the website cost guide; build hours from the cost calculator; the DIY-with-AI cash line is a domain at $12 to $25 a year, free-tier hosting at $0, and optional email at your own domain at up to $36 a year, which our comparison guide rounds to $50 to $200; our own $129 a year (€110 if you are billed in euros) from our pricing. None of these are survey averages or borrowed statistics.

The break-even: what your hour has to be worth

Take the cheapest DIY path, prompting an AI and hosting it yourself, against the managed one. Over three years:

• Cash: we are $204 to $351 more expensive ($387 against $36 to $183).
• Hours: DIY costs at least 60 more of them. That is 35 to 60 hours to build and launch, plus the 10 hours a year our own guide calls the floor for keeping a site current, so at least 30 more across three years, against 1 to 2 at the start with us and under an hour a year after. There is no published ceiling on the upkeep figure, so the real gap is 60 hours or more, never less.
• Divide one by the other: $351 over 60 hours is $5.85 an hour, and that is the most favourable corner for DIY there is: the biggest cash saving against the smallest possible hour gap. Every other combination gives a lower number.

Read that carefully, because the direction matters. Above about $5.85 an hour, done for you is the cheaper option on any combination in these ranges. Below about $3.40 an hour ($204 over 60 hours, the least DIY-friendly corner), DIY comes out ahead as long as the job really does take you only the 60-hour floor. Between those two numbers it depends on where your own cash saving and your own hours actually land, and the more hours it takes you, the further it tips our way.

So the honest answer to "is it cheaper to build it myself" is: yes, if your time is close to free, and no, if it is worth more than about $6 an hour. Most owners already know which of those they are.

Here is the same thing without the division, so you can put your own number in:

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

The honest caveat on this table: an hour only costs you money if it had somewhere else to be. If the alternative was an evening in front of the television, the "cost" of those hours is not real money and the top row is your row. Use what you actually charge a customer, or zero. Do not use a number you wish you charged.

Against a visual builder there is no break-even

The AI path at least buys its hours with a lower cash price. A mainstream builder plan does not. Squarespace Personal and Wix Combo both come to $576 over three years at list price, against $387 for a managed plan, and you still spend the 30 to 50 hours building it and the 10 to 20 hours a year keeping it current.

That is more cash and more hours, so there is no hourly value at which it comes out ahead on price. Which does not make it a bad choice. It makes it a choice about control: you want to be the person holding the editor, changing a photo at eleven at night without asking anyone. That is worth paying for if it is what you want. Just do not pick it believing it saved you money, and compare the renewal price rather than the discounted first year.

What DIY genuinely gives you, and we cannot

Four real advantages, none of which show up in a price table:

• You own the files outright. An AI build sitting on your own hosting has no yearly fee to anyone but the registrar, and no supplier can put a subscription between you and your own site. The registrar can still raise the renewal price, and a free hosting tier can change its terms. With us, the site is hosted by us and the $129 a year is what keeps it live. If you ever want out, the full source is a one-time $599 and you take it anywhere. That is an honest asymmetry, not a footnote.
• No supplier in the loop. You change a price late in the evening and it is live minutes later, without a request, a queue, or a reply.
• You learn how your site actually works. The first build is the expensive one. The second takes a fraction of the time, and you can debug your own contact form for the rest of your life.
• The cheapest cash path on the internet is real. Free-tier hosting is genuinely free and a domain is $12 to $25 a year. Our own cost calculator ranks the AI-DIY path as the cheapest line on the page, below us, and it will keep ranking it there because that is what the numbers say.

When DIY is the right call

Concretely, and we would say the same thing on the phone:

• You are a developer or designer, or you simply enjoy the technical work.
• It is a hobby site, a portfolio, or a short-lived landing page, where the year-two maintenance question never really arrives.
• You have a requirement no managed service covers: a custom backend, a niche integration, something specific.
• You want full code ownership and you are willing to do your own security review. That last clause is the one people skip, and it is the one that matters.
• Your time genuinely has no better use this month, and you would rather spend a weekend than a budget.

If you are in that list, take the DIY route with our blessing and use our free tools while you do it. We wrote a longer, blunter piece on where the AI route breaks for everybody else: can you build a free website with ChatGPT.

What done-for-you actually buys, by flavour

"Paying someone" is three different products with three different prices.

A freelancer

$2,000 to $5,000 for the build plus $60 to $300 a year of hosting. You are buying design specificity and custom work: a particular look, a particular feature, a person who thinks about your business properly for the length of the project. Right call if you have a vision and someone you trust. Plan for year two, because most freelancers move on after launch and a custom-coded site is harder for you to edit than a builder would have been.

An agency

$10,000 and up, plus $500 to $2,000 a month. Research, design, build, and a care contract, and it can buy a genuinely better site. It is also over-specified for a single-location cafe, clinic or contractor, and we say so on our own cost guide. Agencies also sell the build with a retainer attached; going without one is rarely on the menu, so count the retainer in the price from the start.

A managed service, ours included

$129 a year, or €110 a year if you are billed in euros. The build, the hosting, the domain, SSL, maintenance and minor edits are one line. What you are buying is those 60 hours or more back, and someone else being responsible when something breaks at a weekend. What you are not buying is a bespoke design process or full independence from a supplier. We build it first and show you the finished site live before you pay anything, which is the only way we know to make that claim checkable rather than persuasive.

The costs people forget, on both sides

On the DIY side, from our own hidden costs list:

• Renewal pricing. A $36 a year intro hosting plan commonly renews at around $108.
• Add-on fees. Wix Restaurants at $24 a month, Squarespace e-commerce at $432 a year, WordPress premium plugins at around $300 a year.
• The domain renews every year, at $15 to $25, forever.
• Some cheap hosts still charge $50 to $80 a year for SSL, and backups are often $2 to $10 a month on top.
• Email at your own domain is $3 to $6 per user per month if you want it.
• Lock-in. Leaving a visual builder normally means rebuilding, because no export preserves your layout.
• Security review. AI-generated code ships the same mistakes a junior developer ships, with the same confidence and no review step. Hardcoded keys, unvalidated forms and no rate limiting are the common three.

On the paying side, and we are not going to pretend these are not real:

• With any hosted service, including ours, the yearly fee is what keeps the site live. Ask what leaving costs before you join, not after.
• With a freelancer, the build price is not the ownership price. Ask who fixes it in month eight and at what rate.
• With an agency, the retainer is the real number. The build fee is the deposit on a relationship.

How to decide, in four steps

1. Write down what an hour of your time is worth. If you cannot, use what you charge a customer for an hour. If you have genuine slack time and you enjoy this, write zero and mean it.
2. Pick your row in the first table and multiply its hours by that number.
3. Add the cash column.
4. Compare the totals. If they land within a few hundred dollars of each other over three years, price is not deciding this. Pick on what you want to be responsible for.

For the itemized version with your own page count and features, run the cost calculator. It gives you all five paths on one chart, tells you which parts of the estimate are published prices and which are our judgement, and puts us wherever the arithmetic puts us.

Frequently asked questions

Is building my own website actually cheaper?

It can be. The self-hosted AI route, prompting an AI for the site and hosting it on a free tier, costs about $36 to $183 over three years, for the domain plus email at your own domain if you want it. Our managed service is $387 over the same three years. A mainstream builder plan is $576, so that one is not cheaper in cash at all. In total cost it depends on what your own time is worth: the AI route costs you at least 60 more hours over three years. Above about $5.85 an hour, paying is cheaper on any combination in these ranges. Below about $3.40 an hour, building it yourself is cheaper as long as the extra time stays at that 60-hour floor. Between those two figures, or if the job takes you more than 60 extra hours, it comes down to your actual cash saving and your actual hours.

How many hours does a DIY website really take?

For a 3 to 6 page business site: about 30 to 50 hours to build it on a visual builder, or about 35 to 60 hours to prompt it, review it and get it live yourself with hosting, DNS and SSL. After launch, keeping it current is 10 to 20 hours a year on a builder and at least 10 hours a year on a self-hosted AI build.

Is a builder plan cheaper than a done-for-you service?

Not at list price. Squarespace Personal and Wix Combo both come to $576 over three years, against $387 for our managed plan, and you still do the building and the maintaining. Builders discount the first year heavily, so compare the renewal price rather than the sticker.

What happens if I want to leave a managed service?

Ask before you join. With us, the full source code is a one-time $599 and you host it wherever you like with nothing further owed; your content, your domain and your brand are yours from day one. On a visual builder, leaving normally means rebuilding, because there is no export that preserves your layout.

Should I hire a freelancer instead?

If you have a specific design vision, a budget for it and someone you already trust, yes. A freelance build runs $2,000 to $5,000 plus $60 to $300 a year of hosting. You are buying design specificity and custom work, not cheaper hosting. The catch to plan for is year two: most freelancers move on after launch, and a custom-coded site is harder to edit yourself than a builder.

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