If you're a plumber, electrician, cleaner, roofer, or any other trade business looking for a website, you've probably looked at Wix. It's the most advertised website builder on the planet, and its free plan sounds like exactly what you need.
But Wix and a built-for-you trade website are solving different problems. Understanding the difference will save you hours of frustration — and potentially years of paying for something that doesn't quite fit.
Short answer: Wix is a tool. A built-for-you website is a finished product. Which you need depends on whether you have the time and skills to use the tool.
What Wix Actually Is
Wix is a self-service website builder. You sign up, pick a template, and drag elements around a canvas until it looks like a website. It's genuinely impressive technology — no coding required, hundreds of templates, built-in hosting.
The catch is that "no coding required" doesn't mean "no effort required." Building even a basic 5-page website on Wix takes most people 8–20 hours, especially if you've never done it before. And unlike a professional build, you're responsible for every decision: layout, copy, images, SEO settings, page structure.
Wix's free plan exists, but it comes with a Wix-branded domain (yoursite.wixsite.com/yourbusiness) and Wix ads on every page. Most trade businesses — where trust and professionalism matter enormously — can't use the free plan in practice. The first paid plan that removes ads and gives you a custom domain starts at around $17/month.
What a Built-For-You Trade Website Is
A built-for-you service means someone else builds the website. You provide your business name, services, location, and contact details. They handle everything else: design, copy, structure, SEO setup, image selection, going live.
The key difference with a trade-specific built-for-you service is that the builder understands what a plumber's website needs to do differently from a photographer's. Emergency call-out banners. Click-to-call at the top of every page. Service area coverage listed for local SEO. Google Maps embed. Trust signals (licences, associations) in the right places. None of that is in a Wix template out of the box — you have to figure it all out yourself.
We build these for trades and small businesses, free — five pages, mobile-first, delivered in seven days, full file handover. No invoice.
The Core Trade-offs
Ownership
On Wix, you don't own your website. You're renting it. Stop paying and it disappears. The files live on Wix's servers and you cannot export them to host elsewhere. If Wix raises prices, changes features, or closes down, you start from scratch.
With a built-for-you service, you own every file. You can host on any provider, hand it to any developer, or leave it exactly as-is indefinitely. Hosting costs roughly £3–10/month with any standard provider — far less than a Wix subscription, and the website belongs to you regardless.
Time investment
Wix requires your time — typically 10–20 hours to build something that looks professional. That's time not spent on jobs. For a sole trader billing £200–£500/day, that's a real cost even if the software itself appears free.
A built-for-you service requires roughly 30 minutes of your time: filling in a brief. The rest is handled. If your time has any value at all, this is a meaningful advantage.
Trade-specific content
Wix's templates are generic. A "Services" template designed for photographers is the same one a plumber would start from. You'd need to rewrite every section, reconfigure every page, and add every trade-specific element yourself.
A built-for-you service starts from your trade. A plumber's site has an emergency call-out section because plumbing emergencies happen. An electrician's site has a NICEIC or similar certification section because customers check credentials before they call. A cleaning business's site lists domestic, commercial, and end-of-tenancy separately because customers search for each one differently.
SEO out of the box
Wix has improved its SEO significantly over the years, but the defaults are poor. The template page titles are generic, meta descriptions are blank, and heading structure is often wrong from the start. You need to manually fix all of this, which requires knowing what good SEO looks like.
A trade-specific built-for-you website is set up correctly from day one: titles that include your trade and location, heading hierarchy that Google can parse, a sitemap submitted to Search Console, and copy written using the words customers actually search for — not industry jargon.
Where Wix Wins
Wix is genuinely better in a few specific scenarios:
- You want an online store. Wix ecommerce is solid and would require significant custom work to replicate with a static site.
- You want built-in bookings. Wix has a native booking system. A handbuilt site needs a third-party tool like Calendly or Acuity embedded.
- You want full creative control. If you have a strong visual brand and want pixel-level control over layout, Wix gives you that. A built-for-you service gives you a finished product with less flexibility to redesign.
- You want to update it yourself. Wix has a visual editor anyone can use. Updating a static HTML/PHP site requires basic technical knowledge or a developer.
Where a Built-For-You Website Wins
- You want a website that actually gets found on Google. Trade-specific SEO setup beats a generic template every time.
- You want it done without spending your evenings on it. 30 minutes of briefing vs 20 hours of building.
- You want to own the asset, not rent it. Files you own can't be held hostage by a price increase.
- Your business is local and service-based. Wix's strengths (ecommerce, bookings, app market) aren't relevant to most trade businesses. A cleaner, faster, trade-specific site will outperform a bloated Wix build in local search.
- Budget matters. A built-for-you service costs nothing upfront. Hosting costs £3–10/month indefinitely, regardless of the service that built it. Wix is $17–$29/month and climbing.
The Honest Verdict
For most trade businesses — plumbers, electricians, cleaners, roofers, landscapers, hair salons, mechanics, and the rest — a built-for-you trade-specific website delivers a better outcome with less of your time and lower ongoing cost.
Wix is a good product. It's just not built for you. It's built for everyone, which means it's optimised for no one in particular.
The businesses that end up on Wix and never get found on Google aren't there because Wix is bad — they're there because they built a generic site instead of a trade-specific one, and because they spent their energy on design decisions instead of SEO fundamentals.
If you're a trade business that wants a website that works — not a website that looks like a website — the built-for-you route is the more direct path.
Find your trade and apply for your free website →
Not sure yet if you even need a website? Read: Do I need a website for my trade business? →
Already have one and want it found on Google? Read: How to get your small business website to show up on Google →