If you frequent the most popular social media websites such as Twitter & Facebook, you will most likely have been bombarded by an onslaught of adverts promoting ‘do it yourself’ websites from online applications that provide you with pre-built templates that you can modify with drag and drop elements.

At first glance these types of website may look like a fantastic idea, as these types of site builders are aimed at saving you time and effort. In reality, however, things are a quite different. Below are 6 reasons why a bespoke, custom coded website is better for you.

Keeping control of your website & the hosting

A website built on a site builder must stay hosted with that same company. There is no easy way to extract your page content out as it is converted into metadata. If you want to change to an alternate hosting provider, you will need to start again from scratch and re-build all of your pages again.

“Free” website builders aren’t truly free

While yes, you can have a website hosted with a site builder for free there is usually a catch. These website hosts often have severe restrictions. Don’t want adverts on your website? You will have to pay to remove them. Want access to the best features of the WYSIWYG site builder? You have to pay. Want you have your own domain name (rather than a sub domain?) That’s right; you have to pay extra again. These costs all add up, and will end up costing more than normal website hosting.

You will never get exactly what you want

You will never truly have the website that you really want. As all you can do is create a simple website from pre-set templates, you will never have the options available to fully customise your website to get it looking exactly the way you want it.

Your website will never be original

A problem with popular click & drag template builders is that they are, well, popular click & drag template builders. With so many other people using these website, and with only a limited amount of templates available, your website will never be unique or original as many, many others out there will be using exactly same template as you. This can potentially mean fewer customers as they won’t see your website as offering anything different from any of the others.

A Custom website will be more efficient

While they may seem really easy and simple to use, the WYSIWYG site builders have a lot more going on behind the scenes. They need to cater for different parts of different template, often containing many URL instructions to piece the website together. Not to mention, if it’s a free site there will be extra code added for displaying adverts. Depending a lot on external links increases the chance for a technical problem to occur, as there are all elements that you have no control over whatsoever.

A custom website will be built and customised specifically for your website – no unnecessary code, unwanted dependencies or external problems.

Custom websites are more secure

On a site builder, there are hundreds if not thousands of websites out there that are built from exactly the same code. A hacker would only need to breach the code on one of these websites to potentially gain unwanted access to every single website using the same template builder. Because of this, economies of scale make these types of website a very attractive target. A custom built website will likely be left alone – it’s just not worth it.

Alex Induchny

Director

Alex is the creative mind behind all the projects that run through the business. With over 8 years creative experience he is driven and passionate about everything!