Wix costs £17–£35 a month. A custom Zebweb website costs £500 once, plus a £250/mo Bronze care plan (6-month minimum). On paper Wix is cheaper for the first year. By year two it isn't — and the gaps in what it can do start mattering. Here's the honest version of this comparison, written for Lincoln businesses making a real decision.
What Wix and Squarespace actually are
Wix, Squarespace, and similar builders are software subscriptions. You rent a template, drag things around, and publish. They handle hosting, security updates, and backups automatically. That's genuinely useful if you want to publish a simple site in a weekend with no technical knowledge.
A custom-built website is code someone writes specifically for your business. It lives on hosting you control, looks exactly how you need it to look, and nobody can change the price or pull the platform in the middle of your trading year.
The real cost comparison over three years
| Cost | Wix (Business plan) | Custom build (Zebweb) |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | £276 (£23/mo) | £500 build + £1,200 hosting = £1,550 |
| Year 2 | £276 | £1,200 (hosting only) |
| Year 3 | £276 | £1,200 (hosting only) |
| 3-year total | £828 | £3,950 |
On raw spend, Wix is cheaper over three years. But that table misses what you actually get for the money — and what you give up.
What Wix can't do (and custom sites can)
Performance on mobile
Wix sites load slowly on mobile — consistently. Google's Core Web Vitals scores for Wix sites are typically poor because the platform injects its own JavaScript on every page regardless of what you need. A custom-built site loads only what's required. For Lincoln businesses competing for "plumber Lincoln" or "café Lincoln" search traffic, page speed is a ranking factor, not an optional extra.
SEO control
Wix has improved its SEO tools, but you're still working inside their constraints. Custom sites give you full control over page structure, schema markup, canonical tags, heading hierarchy, and metadata. When a Lincoln estate agent wants dedicated pages for "property for sale in Bailgate" and "flats to rent Lincoln uphill", a custom build can do that cleanly. Wix generates URLs and page structures that are harder to optimise at that level.
You don't own it
When you build on Wix, you own your content — but not your website. If Wix changes their pricing (they have, multiple times), if they discontinue a feature you rely on, or if you want to move to a different host, you start from scratch. Your custom-built site is yours: the code lives in a GitHub repository in your name, you can take it anywhere, and no platform can alter what you built.
Design flexibility
Wix templates look like Wix templates. Skilled Wix users can push the boundaries, but the output tends to be visually recognisable. If your brand has specific requirements — a particular grid, custom animations, a unique layout — a custom build delivers it cleanly. A template delivers a compromise.
Where Wix genuinely wins
It's not all one-sided. Wix makes sense in specific situations:
- You need something published today, for free or nearly free. A one-page holding site for a new business, a temporary site while you build your main one — Wix is fine for this.
- You want to run the site yourself, daily. If you need to update menus, add products, or write posts without touching anyone else, Wix's drag-and-drop editor is genuinely easy. Custom sites often need a developer for layout changes.
- Your business is genuinely simple. A sole trader who wants three pages and isn't planning to grow their web presence — the £17/month Wix plan works. Don't overcomplicate it.
- Budget is critical in year one. A startup with no cash but real intent to invest later can use Wix now and migrate to something better in year two. Just don't let year two become year five.
The hybrid position most Lincoln businesses end up in
The typical pattern we see: a Lincoln business starts on Wix because it's quick. Two or three years later, they're frustrated with the template limitations, they've been quoted £3,000–£8,000 by a Lincoln agency, and they're stuck. They can't easily migrate their content, and the Wix fees have quietly climbed.
A Zebweb custom build at £500–£750 upfront breaks that pattern early. The hosting cost (£100/month) is higher than Wix year-to-year, but you own what you're paying for, the performance is measurably better, and there's no ceiling on what the site can become.
Questions to ask before you decide
- Will this site need to rank for competitive local search terms in Lincoln? If yes, custom wins.
- Does your brand have specific design requirements that matter for how customers perceive you? If yes, custom wins.
- Are you genuinely going to manage the content yourself, weekly? If yes, a CMS (whether custom or Wix) matters.
- Is this a holding page or a serious business asset? Holding page → Wix. Serious asset → custom.
- What's your timeline? Need it live in three days → Wix. Three weeks is fine → custom.
Most Lincoln businesses who've thought about it for more than a week know they want a proper site. The question is usually cost and timeline, not capability. If that's where you are, get a Zebweb quote — the calculator shows you a fixed price in under a minute.
