Let’s take a guess, you went onto Google, typed in “How to make a website,” and were greeted with a website builder, like Wix or Squarespace. These website builders lull you in with their “ease of use” and drag-and-drop interface. While this seems like a good way to make a website, there’s a lot more going on under the surface that they don’t want you to know about.

Limited Control

What’s more annoying than really wanting to make something look some way, only to find out that you can’t? When you use a website builder, you’re limited to the tools and features provided by the platform. Often, this means that you are stuck to a limited set of templates or design options. This is especially prevalent with Wix—once you choose a template/design, you can’t go back and change it.

If you ever want to expand on the functionality of your website, you’ll often find yourself getting stuck facing walls that you can’t climb over. It’s always better to have full control over everything, and unfortunately, that’s just not possible when using a website builder.

Bad SEO

If you don’t know what SEO is, we’ll save you the headache: it stands for Search Engine Optimization. Essentially, having good SEO means that search engines will favor your website and rank it above others. Some website builders might come with SEO limitations that might prevent your site from ranking well. Granted, Wix has become better with SEO management (although the same doesn’t go for all website builders), and it’s now fully possible to rank well with a Wix website. However, this still doesn’t prevent…

Messy Code

Website builders are notorious for leaving behind spaghetti code, especially Wix. While this does not seem like a problem for you (after all, you aren’t dealing with any code), it harms your website loading times.

The minimum recommended loading time is 3 seconds. Most people click off after that. Additionally, Google has admitted to ranking slow websites with bad code lower (so having bad code isn’t good for SEO!)

Locked in

So, you made your website with Wix. After reading this article, you decide it’s a good idea to ditch Wix. You want to migrate your website to something like WordPress, only to realize that you can’t. Wix is a walled garden. You can’t download your website, you can’t export its contents, and you can’t even embed it. Unless you feel like remaking your website from scratch, you are stuck in Wix’s garden—except it’s not a garden, it’s a prison cell.

Expensive

Here’s a popular tactic amongst website builders: they brand themselves as free. Let us assure you, they are anything but. You’ll be stuck with a subdomain, such as yourname.wixsite.com. If you ever want a custom domain, you can forget about it. They also display ads all over your website. At this point, is it even your website?

If you do decide to purchase a paid plan, you’ll be greeted with some of the most outrageous prices you’ll ever see. For a basic website, Wix charges $44 CAD a month! The price hikes up even more if you want an eCommerce website. Everything that’s in the most expensive plan can be obtained for $2.99 with a good web host, such as iFastNet. Or, depending on your website size, it’s obtainable for free.

Website builders get away with such absurd prices because their target audience is beginners. Someone starting out for the first time wouldn’t know what a fair price for a website is, making themselves an easy target to get ripped off by website builders.

So, what’s the right way to do this?

First and foremost, you want to find proper webhosting. Instead of offering a website builder, web hosts give you dedicated space to host the files and databases that make up your website. This might sound scary, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.

If you don’t want to pay, you can always find free web hosting. Gilect offers this completely free and doesn’t display ads on your site. And, you can use your own domain. If you don’t mind coughing up a few dollars, you can get great deals with iFastNet. We’ve researched and reviewed iFastNet to determine whether it’s right for you or not.

Next up, if you don’t know how to code, you can use a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress, which powers nearly 40% of all websites. WordPress is a highly flexible platform that is completely open source and installed on your own web space. Don’t worry, this is easier than you probably think it is, and can be done automatically.

The great thing about WordPress is that you aren’t limited to anything. There are thousands upon thousands of great themes that you can choose and you can change them at any time. You can even create your own themes (if you know how to code) or hire an expert to do it for you.

WordPress has almost unlimited functionality. There are over 60,000 plugins made by third parties that can do just about anything. Whether you want to start selling stuff, improve your SEO, or use analytics to find out how people are using your site, there’s a plugin for that.

Hold on, doesn’t Gilect offer a website builder too?

Yes, as ironic as it is, Gilect does also offer a website builder. The difference between our website builder and Wix is that ours is self-hosted. All of your website files are easily accessible to you and can be exported at any time.

Comparison Chart

Provider	Wix Free	Wix Paid (No ads)	Gilect	iFastNet
Cost	Free	$15 – $44 /month CAD	Free	$2.99 – $5.25 /month
Has ads	Yes	No	No	No
Storage	500 MB	500 MB – 35 GB	Unlimited	Unlimited
Bandwidth	1 GB	1 GB – Unlimited	Unlimited	250 GB – Unlimited
Supports WordPress	No	No	Yes	Yes
Website builder	Yes	Yes	Optional	Optional
Locked in	Yes	Yes	No	No
Free domain	1-year	No, forced to use subdomain	No, use your own domain or optional subdomain	1-Year paying monthly, Forever paying yearly

Even if you’re an absolute beginner, you should always steer away from website builders before they trap you and lock you in. Website builders limit your creativity, they don’t let your website rank on Google, and they are overpriced. Make sure that you do things the right way by signing up for a web host and using a CMS.