Wellness Creative
What is building your own website really costing you?
It’s not just the money you spend. It’s the time, opportunities, and mental energy, too.
FreeDIY Website Cost CalculatorDoing it yourself can be a good call. It just helps to see the whole bill, including the evenings spent on tutorials and the weeks the site sat unfinished.
No judgement here. Reviewers of Squarespace and Wix describe the same learning curve, so you’re in good company.
Your numbers are private. Nothing you enter is saved or sent anywhere.
The numbers already in the boxes are an example. Swap in your own, and the sources at the bottom show where the starting numbers came from.
Where are you in your website journey?
Building it yourself
Using this tool, guesstimate how many hours you expect to put into each of these while you build your site. Then add what your time is worth and what waiting could cost you.
There’s no standard figure for this. Count the time on Pinterest and other people’s websites too. Reviewers of Wix and Squarespace mention watching many tutorials or hiring help, so be honest.
Wix estimates 20 to 40 hours over a few weeks for a small business site you build yourself.
Reviewers of both platforms report phone layouts needing manual fixes, and some tablet gaps don’t show up in the Squarespace editor.
The example uses $125. Your hourly rate with clients is a good place to start.
Wix describes a few weeks of effort, and its own editor experience ran four weeks to three months. Count the weeks from starting to going live.
Be realistic. This is the booking you could have been getting while it was in progress.
Think sessions, packages and programs. Use a number you’re comfortable with.
How that compares to having it built
Your first year of doing it yourself comes to $8,125. That’s more than a $5,000 site, before tax.
A good fit for these numbers: The Launch at $5,000, a custom site built around your practice. If a customized template would do, The Sprint is $2,500.
This counts your time at the hourly value you enter, and some people have good reasons to build their own site. These are estimates built from your guesses and the research below, and they aren’t a prediction. Package prices are in CAD, before tax.
Want to skip the late-night tutorials?
I’m Renée, a brand and web designer for women-led health and wellness businesses. I’ll build the site, write it with you, and keep it clear and easy to use, so you can get back to your clients.
Practical website and brand tips for women-led health and wellness businesses, sent to your inbox.
Where the numbers come from
Some defaults come from published research. Others are starting guesses, because nobody has measured them. Swap any of them for your own.
How long a DIY build takes
Wix estimates 20 to 40 hours, spread over a few weeks, for a small business site you build yourself. Its own writer’s experience with the Wix Editor ran from four weeks to three months. Wix blog
The learning curve and the fixes
Capterra reviewers of both platforms describe watching many tutorials, an overwhelming interface, one person hiring an expert, slow editors on content-heavy pages, phone layouts needing manual fixes, and Wix template changes meaning a rebuild. These are individual reviews, not averages. Squarespace reviews · Wix reviews
Why sites launch late
In a September 2025 survey of 2,478 Canadian small business owners by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, 66% of those using digital tools named lack of time as their biggest challenge. The question covered digital tools in general, not only websites. Statistics Canada’s 2021 survey of businesses with five or more employees found that 78% had a website, and only 59% of those were built to work well on a phone.
What nobody has measured
Hours on tutorials and layout research, and the clients a month the site should bring. These are reasonable starting points. Your own numbers will be better.