What are the differences coding your own website vs using an online website builder?

I'm thinking about starting an online business offering paid services over skype/calls. I encountered that some website builders charge whilst others don't. May I know the reasons? I kind of get a feeling that they will eventually steal your website name if you've became successfully. Should I pay someone to code a website for me or should I use a free website builder/ paid website builder? like e.g. wix, sitebuilder, ehost, go daddy. if so, there are many choices which one should i use? I really need some professional advice as I have no experience in making a website whatsoever.

Will happily rep anyone who is willing to help :smile:

Reply 1

1682795

16

Original post by tutorscience

I'm thinking about starting an online business offering paid services over skype/calls. I encountered that some website builders charge whilst others don't. May I know the reasons? I kind of get a feeling that they will eventually steal your website name if you've became successfully. Should I pay someone to code a website for me or should I use a free website builder/ paid website builder? like e.g. wix, sitebuilder, ehost, go daddy. if so, there are many choices which one should i use? I really need some professional advice as I have no experience in making a website whatsoever.

Will happily rep anyone who is willing to help :smile:

I would recommend hiring someone because web designer might have better idea of what needs to be done. Unless, you have all this experience in web design.

Posted from TSR Mobile

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 2

Plagioclase

21

Original post by tutorscience

I'm thinking about starting an online business offering paid services over skype/calls. I encountered that some website builders charge whilst others don't. May I know the reasons? I kind of get a feeling that they will eventually steal your website name if you've became successfully. Should I pay someone to code a website for me or should I use a free website builder/ paid website builder? like e.g. wix, sitebuilder, ehost, go daddy. if so, there are many choices which one should i use? I really need some professional advice as I have no experience in making a website whatsoever.

Will happily rep anyone who is willing to help :smile:

There are some perfectly good free website builders around but remember that regardless of what you choose, you'll definitely need to pay for hosting and a domain name if you're starting a website as a business (although some services combine these). To make it clear, website building is the actual process of making the website (you can pay for a web designer if you really want but it will be expensive there are some very good, powerful website builders out there such as Squarespace), hosting is paying a company to host your website on a server so other people can access it, and a domain name is the URL people type into their web browser to access your website (you can get free domain names but they generally look highly unprofessional, e.g. websitename,wix.com, so it's strongly recommended that you pay for a custom domain name).

Most websites will generally charge more if you want to put an e-store on your website.

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 3

MedCrashCourse

OP

11

Original post by Impressive

I would recommend hiring someone because he might have better idea of what needs to be done. Unless, you have all this experience in web design.

Posted from TSR Mobile

I tried using a free website builder just as a tester, it feels really simple and straight forward. Layout is also genuine and can be easily adjusted. Should I still need someone who knows coding and web designs because it may make the situation more complicated.

Reply 4

MedCrashCourse

OP

11

Original post by Plagioclase

There are some perfectly good free website builders around but remember that regardless of what you choose, you'll definitely need to pay for hosting and a domain name if you're starting a website as a business (although some services combine these). To make it clear, website building is the actual process of making the website (you can pay for a web designer if you really want but it will be expensive there are some very good, powerful website builders out there such as Squarespace), hosting is paying a company to host your website on a server so other people can access it, and a domain name is the URL people type into their web browser to access your website (you can get free domain names but they generally look highly unprofessional, e.g. websitename,wix.com, so it's strongly recommended that you pay for a custom domain name).

Most websites will generally charge more if you want to put an e-store on your website.

Thank you so much. That's very useful. How much does it normally cost for hosting and a domain name? I do have a budget to spend but not a lot. Are there any good examples of website builders just for comparison? I am still confused whether I will be taxed for offering services and how I should approach this when I am starting my business as I don't want to break the law. Any advice?

Reply 5

shawtyb

20

coding takes ages and it takes the piss

Reply 6

Plagioclase

21

Original post by tutorscience

Thank you so much. That's very useful. How much does it normally cost for hosting and a domain name? I do have a budget to spend but not a lot. Are there any good examples of website builders just for comparison? I am still confused whether I will be taxed for offering services and how I should approach this when I am starting my business as I don't want to break the law. Any advice?

It depends on what service you use but the one I've used, SquareSpace (which I like), charges about £70 for the first year and about £85 per year after that for the most basic plan (which includes the website builder, hosting and a custom domain name). There are plenty of other services like Wix and Wordpress which offer similar prices, that's the sort of cost you'd be looking at.

With regards to taxes I'm afraid I don't really know what the rules are, sorry.

Reply 7

1682795

16

Original post by tutorscience

I tried using a free website builder just as a tester, it feels really simple and straight forward. Layout is also genuine and can be easily adjusted. Should I still need someone who knows coding and web designs because it may make the situation more complicated.

Yes, it's simple to build a website on a website... But, you'll want to read all terms&services and other stuff. Also, do you know how to structure your website?

House style, front page, logo, user friendly, mobile?, how fast the website responds, how interactive it is,etc. Don't want to mention other stuff like hosting, tracking, encryption (if necessary), screen resolutions, etc.

The website you're going to create should stick to some sort of a plan (if you have one). For example, if you don't know your audience, how are you going to make it appealing?

But I'm not going to stop you. If you feel like it, go for it.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 8

CJTWhite

14

Steer clear of website builders. Charge you out the arse for websites and themes that hundreds if not thousands of others have.

Reply 9

Andy98

20

Original post by tutorscience

I'm thinking about starting an online business offering paid services over skype/calls. I encountered that some website builders charge whilst others don't. May I know the reasons? I kind of get a feeling that they will eventually steal your website name if you've became successfully. Should I pay someone to code a website for me or should I use a free website builder/ paid website builder? like e.g. wix, sitebuilder, ehost, go daddy. if so, there are many choices which one should i use? I really need some professional advice as I have no experience in making a website whatsoever.

Will happily rep anyone who is willing to help :smile:

For people who know how to code website builders are horrible, for people who don't know then they're OK

Posted from TSR Mobile

Reply 10

GiantKiwi

19

Original post by Impressive

I would recommend hiring someone because web designer might have better idea of what needs to be done. Unless, you have all this experience in web design.

Posted from TSR Mobile

Web Developer* (Designers make pretty things, Developers make things that work)

But yes, this would be the appropriate option - Beware though, they won't take kindly to the whole do it on the cheap thing OP. Contrary to popular belief, its not something that anyone can do, otherwise it would be a defunct industry.

As the OP is using the site for Business purposes there are whole streams of regulations that must be met regarding accessibility, DPA, and so on that means that using a website builder is fairly well unacceptable, as most cannot produce the correct attribute structure.

You can be held accountable for a whole storm of problems if you ignore them. (A site not accessible by assistive software eg. screen readers can potentially lead to a disability discrimination case)

Reply 11

rom13

2

If you have time for coding, you can try to build your website from the very scratch. I personally prefer using ready-made templates (mosty from here - http://www.templatemonster.com/prestashop-themes.php ). As a rule, this way saves me a lot of time and effort.

Reply 12

username1204031

14

Original post by tutorscience

I'm thinking about starting an online business offering paid services over skype/calls. I encountered that some website builders charge whilst others don't. May I know the reasons? I kind of get a feeling that they will eventually steal your website name if you've became successfully. Should I pay someone to code a website for me or should I use a free website builder/ paid website builder? like e.g. wix, sitebuilder, ehost, go daddy. if so, there are many choices which one should i use? I really need some professional advice as I have no experience in making a website whatsoever.

Will happily rep anyone who is willing to help :smile:

I used to use Webs to build and host an anti-bullying site. This was a long time ago, but it was a decent service with a good site builder. I don't know what it's like these days though. Their free service - and I assume this applies to most free builders - made money by placing ads on your site. You could get rid of the ads by paying for a premium subscription. I don't think there's much risk of them stealing your site or anything devious, as long as you go with a well-known company and not something shady. Even then, if they did that you could take legal action.

There's not really any reason to code your own if you don't need anything special. You'll be able to find a site builder that lets you put together something that looks professional. It depends what kind of functionality you need though - most site builders will allow you to have pages with information, image galleries and so on, and they'll probably let you have forms that users can fill in and send to you. If you want more advanced stuff like forums, live chat and so on, not all services will offer those (but they'd also be really hard to code yourself). You can get embeddable widgets for some things that will work with most site builders.

The only real issue with using a site builder is design. Since you're running a business you probably have a brand, and you should design your website to have a company colour scheme and fonts etc. that all fit your brand, and you need the layout to be easy to use. Learn CSS (very easy) and pick a site builder that lets you customize the stylesheet, and you'll be able to make it look how you want it to look. You should probably get somebody to design it, but you could build it on a site builder and implement the design yourself.

You'll probably be able to find someone who can do a website design on fiverr.com, but the quality will vary.

What are the differences coding your own website vs using an online website builder?

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