With technology progressively more complex by the minute, keeping your image and online identity afloat in these tumultuous, fast-paced times is next to impossible if you don’t own your own website, regardless of the industry you operate in. How, then, do you create a website?
Conventionally, you’d have to either hire a website designer, or create your own website from scratch. However, there is another option out there for those who don’t want to spend a fortune and don’t have the tech skills to create and launch a fresh website by themselves. We’re referring to using a website builder, of course. It’s a service that stands midway between custom-building and starting from zero.
There are two types of site builders: online and off-line.
With an online builder, you work on your website online from anywhere and at any time, without installing anything on your computer, without worrying about finding a web hosting service, or purchasing any software, and without the need to update software or carry out maintenance checks.
With an off-site builder, you need to install some files on your computer, but you have FTP access to your files even when you are off-line, so that you don’t have to depend on the web builder service as much.
The advantages of using a site builder are as follows.
Edit at Leisure
Paying for a custom website gives you an online that is very close to your aesthetic requirements. But when it comes to making any changes on your custom-built website, you need substantial funds and round-the-clock service from your website designer.
Given the costs of adding new features to the website, switching between custom designers from one stage of the business to the next, and maintaining and hosting your website, the site builder alternative becomes ever more popular.
When you use a site builder, on the other hand, you can make any changes whenever you wish for free or a very small fee and your changes are live instantly.
Perfect Result
Custom-built websites are made according to your specifications, but these requirements of yours are filtered by the designer and may eventually lead to something very different from what you had in mind.
You have to allow for designer bias when you go with the custom-built option, and that can prove to be a costly matter.
Every change to the mock website comes at a cost, and your initial estimates can be overturned by subsequent research into website functionality and customer preference. So instead of conveying your perfect website prototype to a designer, as skilled as he may be, why not try making the website yourself? It could be just the hands-on experience that brings you closer to your customers and your business.
Besides, the graphics you’d normally have to pay a graphic designer for are all built into the online platform for you to choose.
A site builder will usually offer hundreds of templates, and best of all, there’s no coding language involved, unless you absolutely insist on learning and using website coding.
Considerable Coverage
Site building services are created with search engines in mind. Provided you pay for search engine favors, like showing up on the first result page, your website will have full coverage on the search engines of your choice.
Aside from that, the product descriptions, image captions and specific keywords you need to upload, can be done with very little effort.
That being said, there are some disadvantages of using a site builder you should be aware of before you start building the website:
Limited Ownership
Depending on the site builders and the terms and conditions of the contract, you may not have ownership rights over your website, because you use their tools.
You should also look for site builder services provided by reputable companies, as user agreements usually state that in the event that these site builders go out of business, their liability toward you is limited, if not in-existent. You may be left without a website, in such a case.
Limited Flexibility
Most of the times, you can tell when a site’s been developed using a site builder. You’ll find that the look of it is very general, and that however much you try to edit the html code by yourself, you won’t really be able to leave your personal stamp on the website.
There’s also the issue of having deprecated code that is not cross-browser compatible, and this could potentially limit your reach with customers.
Added Costs
Always read the terms and conditions of your site builder contract. Most service providers will launch sales campaigns to offer unnecessary upgrades, back-ups, advertising perks, etc.
Wrap Up
In this article, we looked at the pros and cons of using a website builder. I hope with the information provided by this piece, you should be able to make a decision whether to use a site-builder to create your next website or hire a developer to it it done for you.