Should You Build Your Own Business Website? An Honest Answer From Someone Who Did

I still remember sitting at the kitchen table with the third quote open on my laptop.

Eight hundred pounds at the low end. Two thousand at the top. For five pages — who I am, what I do, where I cover, some photos of dogs, and a contact form.

I was starting a dog walking business in East Lothian. One man, one van, a pair of wellies. Two thousand pounds wasn’t a line item on a marketing budget. It was money that would have to come out of the family account, and Lindsay and I had already done a lot of number-crunching to make this whole thing work.

So I sat there and thought: how hard can it actually be?

This post is my honest answer to that question — including the part where I tell you that some people genuinely shouldn’t do it themselves.

What a web designer actually gives you

Let me be fair to web designers first, because a lot of “build it yourself!” articles are written by people selling website builders and they’re not fair at all.

A good designer gives you three real things:

Speed. They’ll have you live in a week or two. It took me considerably longer.

Polish. They’ve done this a hundred times. They know what looks professional and what looks like a school project. Your first attempt will not be as good as their hundredth.

Someone else’s problem. When something breaks at 11pm, it’s not you sitting there Googling error messages. That has genuine value, and anyone who tells you otherwise has never had a site go down.

If you can afford it and your time is genuinely worth more than the hours it would take you, hiring someone is a perfectly sensible decision. I want to be straight about that.

What they don’t tell you at the quote stage

Here’s the bit that changed my mind.

The quote is for building it. It isn’t for living with it.

Want to change your prices? Email the designer. Want to add a photo of the new van? Email the designer. Spotted a typo on your own About page? Email the designer, and wait, and possibly pay.

For a small local business, this is the real cost. Not the £1,500. The permanent dependency on someone else for every small change, forever.

I run a dog walking business. Prices change. Availability changes. I add photos constantly because dogs on beaches are the best marketing I have. If I had to email someone every time, I’d simply stop updating the site — which is how you end up with a business website that still says “Christmas availability” in April.

That was the thing that tipped it for me. Not the money. The control.

What it actually took me

Right — the honest version, because you deserve numbers rather than encouragement.

I started with nothing. No coding. I’d never touched WordPress. I didn’t know what DNS was, or hosting, or why anyone cared about SEO. When people said “install a plugin” I genuinely didn’t know if that was a five-minute job or a five-hour one.

Time: If you’re starting from zero, budget somewhere between twenty and thirty hours, spread over a few weeks. Not a weekend. Anyone telling you a weekend is being optimistic, or they already knew things you don’t.

The frustrating bits: There was an evening I lost entirely to a header that had gone transparent for reasons I could not fathom. Hours of it. I nearly packed the whole thing in. The answer turned out to be one setting in the wrong place, which is how these things usually go.

What I didn’t need: Any code. Any design background. Any technical instinct whatsoever. Modern website tools are genuinely built for people like me now, which wasn’t true ten years ago.

What I did need: The willingness to feel stupid for a bit. That’s the actual barrier. Not intelligence — patience with your own incompetence while it’s temporary.

The honest test: should you do this?

Here’s where I’d rather be useful than persuasive.

Build it yourself if:

• You’ll need to change things often. Prices, availability, photos, services. If your site needs to breathe, you want your hands on it.
• You’re tight on cash but have some time. This is the classic small-business trade — money you don’t have versus hours you can find.
• You want the skill permanently. This is the one people underestimate. I didn’t just end up with a website. I ended up able to build websites. Completely different thing.
• Your site is fairly simple. Services, about, contact, maybe a gallery. That’s most local businesses.

Hire someone if:

• You need it live next week. You won’t manage it. Pay someone.
• You need proper e-commerce or booking with payments. Once money changes hands on your site, the stakes and the complexity both jump. Get help.
• Your time genuinely is worth more. If thirty hours of your time is worth more than £1,500 to your business, the maths does the arguing for you.
• You know, honestly, that you’ll abandon it half-built. Some people will. If that’s you, there’s no shame in it — but a half-finished site is worse than no site, and far worse than a paid one.

That last point matters. I’m not trying to talk everyone into this. If you’re the sort of person with three unfinished projects in the garage, hire someone and spend your energy on the actual business.

What I built, and what it does for the business

I’m not going to ask you to take my word for any of this. Go and look.

lothianwalkies.com is the site I built, sitting at the kitchen table with no idea what I was doing.

It’s a real business. East Lothian Council approved. It brings in enquiries every week, and it’s now at full capacity — which is a nice problem, and the reason I’m building other things.

That’s what a self-built website did for a one-man local business. Not passive income. Not a laptop on a beach. A functioning asset that brings paying customers to a real business in Tranent.

What it cost

Let’s do the maths properly, including the bits that don’t flatter my argument.

Hiring someone: £800–£2,000 up front, plus a fee for changes. Call it £1,500 as a middle figure.

Doing it myself: I used Wealthy Affiliate, which gave me the training, the hosting, and the tools in one place. It’s free to start, and $49/month for the full thing.

Now — the honest catch. That’s a monthly cost, not a one-off. Over two years it adds up to more than the mid-range designer quote.

So why was it still the better deal for me?

Because I didn’t just buy a website. I bought the ability to build them, and it included the hosting the site runs on. I’ve since built another site with the same skills, and I’ll build more. The designer quote gets you one website. This gets you a capability.

If you only ever want one site and never plan to touch it, hiring might genuinely work out cheaper. Be honest with yourself about which you are.

How I’d start, if I were you

Don’t buy anything yet.

1. Use the free option first. Most decent platforms let you start free. Wealthy Affiliate does — no card required, which is unusual enough to be worth noting. Build one page and see how you feel.

2. Build your About page first, not your homepage. It’s the easiest one and it’ll teach you the basics without the pressure of getting your shop window right.

3. Give it two evenings before you decide. Not two hours. Two evenings. The first is always frustrating; the second is when it starts making sense.

4. Only then decide. If you’ve hated every minute, you’ve lost two evenings and learned something true about yourself. Go and hire someone with a clear conscience.

Most people skip straight to buying tools and never publish anything. Prove to yourself you’ll actually do it first.

So – which should you do?

Honestly, I don’t know. It depends entirely on your time, your budget, and whether you’re the sort of person who enjoys figuring things out or finds it maddening.

What I can tell you is that a dog walker from Tranent with no technical background built a working business website at his kitchen table, and it’s been bringing in customers ever since. The tools are good enough now that the barrier isn’t skill. It’s patience.

If you want the full detail on the training I used — what it costs, what I like, what I don’t, and who it’s genuinely not for — I’ve written that up properly here:

Read my honest Wealthy Affiliate review →

And if you’d rather just see the tools before committing to anything, I’ve put the five I actually used into a short free guide. No cost, straight to your inbox (just fill in the form below).

Peter Tranent, East Lothian