Comparison · Build options · UK 2026
Wix vs a hand-coded website for tradesmen
Two routes to a trade website, measured on the five things that actually decide whether it earns its keep.
A tradesman website really only has to do one job: convince a stranger holding a phone at half-eight on a Tuesday that you're the one to call. Everything else is detail. Yet the decision most trades agonise over isn't what goes on the site — it's what to build it with, and the two names that come up are Wix and "getting someone to code it". The gap between them is bigger than it looks: roughly £10–£25 a month forever on one side, £395 once on the other, with a real difference in how fast the thing loads when it matters most.
This is an honest run at both. No affiliate links, no pretending Wix is rubbish — it isn't. If a drag-and-drop builder genuinely fits how you work, I'll say so plainly. But the maths and the mobile speed both point one way for most working trades, and it's worth seeing why.
For most UK tradespeople, a hand-coded website beats Wix. Wix charges £10–£25/month indefinitely, can't be exported off its platform, and typically scores 60–80 on Google's mobile speed test. A hand-coded site is a one-off from £395, loads at 95–100, and the files are yours. Wix only wins when you want to build and edit it yourself and the site is just a placeholder.
What you're actually choosing between
Wix is a monthly subscription to a drag-and-drop builder where the site lives on Wix's servers; a hand-coded site is a set of plain HTML and CSS files, built once, that you own and can host anywhere.
That difference — rented platform versus owned files — is the root of almost every other difference further down. It's worth being clear on what each one really is before comparing prices.
What Wix is
Wix is a website builder you pay for monthly. You drag blocks around in an editor, drop in your text and photos, and publish. The free tier puts Wix branding and a Wix subdomain on your site, so in practice any trade who wants to look professional needs a paid plan to use their own domain and drop the adverts. The appeal is real: you can have something live in a weekend without paying anyone, and you can change it yourself whenever you like.
What a hand-coded site is
A hand-coded site is written directly in HTML, CSS and a little JavaScript — no builder software sitting between the code and the browser, no WordPress admin, no plugins. It's built for you by a person, once. The output is a handful of lightweight files that load fast and don't depend on any platform staying in business or keeping its prices flat.
The trade-off in one line
Wix trades long-term cost and ownership for the ability to do it yourself today. Hand-coded trades the DIY control for speed, ownership and a site that doesn't look templated. Which matters more depends entirely on what you want the website for — covered further down, and in more depth in the best way to build a tradesman website.
Side-by-side: cost, speed, control and looks
On mobile speed, ownership and two-year cost a hand-coded site wins clearly; Wix wins only on day-one self-service editing — and that single advantage is what its whole pitch rests on.
| What matters | Wix | Hand-coded (Sitework) |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | £0 | £395–£595 |
| Ongoing cost | £10–£25/mo forever | £10/mo all-in (optional) |
| Mobile speed (Lighthouse) | 60–80 / 100 | 95–100 / 100 |
| You own the files? | No | Yes |
| Edit it yourself | Yes, anytime | Small changes done for you |
| Looks templated? | Often | No — built for you |
| Time to live | A weekend (your time) | ~1 week (built for you) |
Speed: the gap that costs you calls
Wix loads a large amount of its own framework on every page so the editor and features work. That overhead is why a typical Wix site lands in the 60–80 range on Google's page-experience test, while a hand-coded page with nothing extra to load usually scores 95–100. On a fast office connection you'd barely notice. On a phone with two bars outside a customer's house, the slower site is the one that gets closed before it finishes loading.
Control: who edits it, and how often
This is Wix's genuine strong point. If you like tinkering and want to change a price or add a photo at 10pm yourself, Wix lets you. With a hand-coded site you send the change and it's done for you — usually same day, included in the £10/month hosting, with no limit on small edits. For most trades that's a feature, not a loss: the time spent fighting an editor is time off the tools. But if hands-on control is the thing you value most, Wix earns a point here.
Looks: the template tell
Wix sites are built from templates shared by hundreds of thousands of other businesses, and people who look at a lot of websites can spot one. A hand-coded site is laid out around your trade specifically — your accreditation badge in the header, your reviews and real job photos where they do the most work. It doesn't look like it came off a shelf because it didn't.
The hidden and ongoing costs nobody mentions
Wix's real cost isn't the headline monthly fee — it's that the meter never stops and the site can't be moved, so two years in you've paid £240–£600 and still own nothing.
The subscription that never ends
Wix's paid plans run from roughly £10 to £25 a month depending on tier, as published on Wix's own pricing page. That's £120–£300 a year, every year, for as long as the site is live. Stop paying and it goes dark. A hand-coded one-pager is £395 once; even with managed hosting at £10/month the two-year total (£395 + £240 = £635) is roughly what two years of a mid Wix plan costs for the subscription alone — and at the end you still own your files.
The lock-in: you can't take it with you
Wix doesn't let you export your site as working code. If you outgrow it or get fed up, you rebuild from scratch elsewhere — you can move your domain name, but not the site. That's the quiet cost: every month on Wix is a month you're renting something you can never pack up and take. Owning plain files from the start, as you do with a hand-coded site, removes that trap entirely.
Your time has a price too
"Free to build yourself" isn't free if your day rate is £200–£350. A weekend wrestling with a builder, plus the evenings spent tweaking it later, is real money for most trades. The full sum across both routes is laid out on the tradesman website cost page.
Who Wix genuinely suits — and who needs hand-coded
Wix suits a trade who treats the website as a credibility placeholder and enjoys editing it themselves; a hand-coded site suits any trade who wants the site to actually pull enquiries out of Google.
When Wix is the right call
Be fair to it: Wix is a sensible choice if your work is almost entirely word-of-mouth, the site exists mainly so referrals can check you're real, and you genuinely like building and updating it yourself. If you'll keep it maintained and you're comfortable in the editor, the monthly fee buys you self-service and a tidy-enough result. A decent Wix site beats no site every time.
When you need a hand-coded site
If you want the website to find you work — to turn "emergency electrician Shrewsbury" at 11pm into a call — speed, local-search performance and trust signals start to matter, and that's where hand-coded pulls ahead. It's the better fit for active sole traders and small firms who'd rather pay once and have it built properly than rent a template forever. If you're still unsure a site is worth it at all, start with do tradesmen need a website in 2026.
The recommendation for working UK trades
For a working tradesperson who wants enquiries rather than a placeholder, a hand-coded site is the better two-year value and the only option you actually own — Wix only edges it if hands-on, do-it-yourself editing is the thing you care about most.
The bottom line
Wix isn't a bad product; it's built for a different customer than a busy plumber or sparky. It rents you a templated site you maintain yourself and can never move. A hand-coded site costs more on day one and less over two years, loads faster on the phone where your customers actually are, and belongs to you. For most trades, that's the one that pays for itself.
See it before you decide
I'll build a free mockup of your actual business — your name, your trade, your area — before you pay anything. Like it? A one-pager is £395 (founding price; £500 after the first 10 clients), a full multi-page site is £595 (£795 after). Hosting is £10/month all-in, no contract, unlimited small changes, and refer another trade and you both get £100 off. Sites are usually live in about a week. Apply at sitework.uk/#apply.