Small business3 min read
How to choose a web designer (and what to ask them)
Ten questions. The answers to three of them tell you almost everything.
Building it yourself on a builder costs $0 to $300 plus $16 to $40 a month. A template-based site built for you costs $349 to $1,290. A fully custom design and build starts around $2,500. Most local shops, salons and trades need the middle option, and the biggest hidden cost in the DIY route is 20 to 60 hours of your own time.
| DIY builder | Template, built for you | Custom | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront | $0 – $300 | $349 – $1,290 | $2,500+ |
| Monthly | $16 – $40 | $0 – $99 | $0 – $99 |
| Your time | 20–60 hours | About 2 hours | 5–15 hours |
| Live in | Weeks, your pace | About 1 week | 4–9 weeks |
| Looks unique? | Not really | Reasonably | Yes |
| Best for | Tight budget, spare time | Most local businesses | Brand is the differentiator |
A $200 website is not automatically bad. A $200 website where you do not own the domain and cannot leave is a rental with an exit fee attached.
Compare the cost against what one new customer is worth to you.
| Cost | Typical |
|---|---|
| Domain name | $12–$20 a year |
| Business email | $6–$7 per person a month |
| Hosting | $0–$25 a month |
| Photography | $0 if you shoot it, $300–$800 if not |
| Content writing | $0 if you write it, $300–$1,500 if not |
| Ongoing maintenance | $0–$99 a month |
Photography and content are the two that hold projects up most often. Neither has to cost money if you are willing to do them, but both take time you should plan for.
It can be, if it is honest about being a template and you own the domain. Be careful of anything at that price that locks you in or where you cannot take the site with you.
They are usually quoting custom design, discovery and multiple revision rounds. That is real work and it suits some businesses. For a local shop it is often more than the job needs.
Either works. Just make sure that if you stop paying, you keep the domain and can take the site elsewhere. A monthly fee you cannot leave is the arrangement to avoid.
Setting up your Google Business Profile properly. It is free, takes an afternoon, and for most local businesses it brings in more customers than the website does.
ROVQIX Growth
SEO & growth team, ROVQIX
The ROVQIX growth team handles technical SEO, Core Web Vitals and AI-search visibility for the sites we build. Recommendations here are the ones we apply to client projects and to rovqix.in itself.
ROVQIXdesigns and builds production web platforms — Next.js front ends, Node.js APIs and the infrastructure behind them. Tell us what you're building and we'll scope it with you.
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