Is Wix or a hand-coded site better for a tradesman? Three routes, priced over three years
Build it yourself, rent it monthly, or have it built and run for you, measured on what actually decides 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 to £25 a month forever and your own weekends on one side, £50 every four weeks with nothing to pay on day one 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 to £25/month indefinitely, can't be exported off its platform, and has a monthly plan you maintain yourself. A hand-coded site can be very light, but the finished page still needs testing. Sitework has no build fee: £50 every four weeks, done for you, with the site and domain yours after twelve months. 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 Sitework site is built and run for you at £50 every four weeks with no build fee, and transferred into your name after twelve months.
That difference, a platform you rent forever versus a site that ends up in your name, 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. If the honest answer is that you mostly want somewhere to send people from social, read Facebook ads against a website for tradesmen first, because that changes the sums.
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 (DIY) | Rented plan | Hand-coded (Sitework) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Upfront cost | £0 | £0 | £0 |
| Ongoing cost | £10 to £25/mo, you build it | £39 to £49/mo, forever | £50 every four weeks |
| Three-year total | £360 to £900 plus your time | £1,404 to £1,764 | £1,950 |
| Who owns the files | Not exportable | Often held for 12 months | Transferred to you at 12 months |
| Done for you? | No, DIY | Yes | Yes |
| Edit it yourself | Yes, anytime | Via their dashboard | Small changes done for you |
| Looks templated? | Often | Often | No, built for you |
| Tied in for | Nothing | Usually 12 months | 3 months, then rolling |
| Time to live | A weekend (your time) | Days | ~1 week (built for you) |
Speed: the gap that costs you calls
Do not accept a generic score claim from either side. Test the page that will actually carry your phone number and project photos. Google recommends good Core Web Vitals for a better user experience, including a Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds where possible (Google Search Central). On a phone with two bars outside a customer's house, the slow site is the one that gets closed before the customer sees the number.
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 £50 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 is not only its headline monthly fee: it is the recurring subscription plus the time you spend building and maintaining the site, and moving later means rebuilding the design on another platform, because Wix publishes no export.
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. Prices vary by plan, billing period and location, so check the current UK checkout before you decide. Sitework has no build fee at all: £50 every four weeks covers the site, hosting, the domain, SSL, backups and unlimited small edits, with three months minimum and then rolling. Note that it is billed every four weeks rather than monthly, so it is thirteen payments a year and not twelve. The comparison is a DIY subscription plus your own time, against a site built and maintained for you that ends up in your name.
There is a third option that has grown fast, and it deserves naming: the rented done-for-you plan, typically £39 to £49 a month with nothing upfront. It looks like the best of both, and on cash flow it is. The catch sits in the cancellation terms. One of the larger UK providers publishes that the website files are yours to keep after 12 months, and that if you cancel before then the files are not handed over. Over three years those plans total £1,404 to £1,764, against roughly £1,950 on the Sitework plan. So be clear about this: on a straight three-year total, the cheap rented plan is the cheaper one. What the extra buys is no twelve-month tie, a three-month minimum instead, a first payment refunded if you do not like the finished site, and a transfer of the site and the domain into your name at twelve months rather than a promise you have to stay to collect.
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, although you can move a domain registered in your name. What that actually costs you in rankings, and the three questions that decide whether you lose anything at all, is worked through in will I lose my rankings if I move off Wix? On the Sitework side the minimum is three months, then rolling, and the site and domain are transferred to you at twelve months with no exit fee. Whichever route you take, ask the same three questions before you sign: which account owns the domain, what content you can take with you, and what happens the month after you cancel.
Your time has a price too
"Free to build yourself" isn't free if your day rate is £200 to £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.
What changed in 2026: AI makes the first draft easier. Wix and other builders now use AI to turn a short prompt into a first layout and draft copy. That is useful for getting started, but it does not change the work that matters for a local trade: real photos, accurate services, evidence, a fast contact route and regular updates. See the full AI website builder verdict for tradesmen before treating a generated first draft as a finished site.
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 currently buying leads to fill the gap, weigh it against what Bark actually costs a tradesman, because that is usually the bigger line on the bank statement.
The recommendation for working UK trades
For a working tradesperson who wants enquiries rather than a placeholder, a done-for-you hand-coded site is often the calmer value, while Wix 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 gives you a templated site you maintain yourself. A done-for-you hand-coded site shifts that maintenance off your list and can be built lighter, but the useful test is always the finished mobile page, its evidence and whether it makes calling straightforward. For most busy trades, that is the work worth paying to have handled.
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? There is no build fee: it is £50 every four weeks covering the site, hosting, the domain, SSL, backups and unlimited small text and photo changes, three months minimum and then rolling. If you don't like the finished site your first payment comes back, and after twelve months the website and the domain are yours to keep with no exit fee. Sites are usually live in about a week. Apply at sitework.uk/#apply.