Four ways to get a website. Here’s the honest tradeoff.
Most comparison pages exist to make every other option look dumb. This one doesn’t. Do it yourself, hire a freelancer, hire an agency, or work with us — each of these is the right call for somebody. Here’s who each one fits, where it bites, and where we land, so you can pick with your eyes open.
There’s no single right answer.
It depends on your time, your budget, and how much of this you want to deal with after launch. The four routes below trade off the same three things in different ways. Read the one that sounds like you.
Who each one fits — and where it bites.
Route 1 · Do it yourself
Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy builder
We’re easier and more professional than this.
Where we land: you tell us about your business once, we build and run it. Wix is for people with time. We’re for people with jobs to finish.
Route 2 · Cheap freelancer
Fiverr, Upwork, a guy who does sites
We’re safer and more organized than this.
Where we land: same friendly, direct relationship — with backups, monitoring, and a real platform behind it, so the site is still handled a year from now.
Route 3 · A local agency
The 10-person shop downtown
We’re simpler and less of a hassle than this.
Where we land: you talk to the person building it. No account manager in the middle, no meeting to schedule a meeting. Request a change from your private portal and it gets handled.
Route 4 · A premium firm
The high-end branding studio
We’re more practical and affordable than this.
Where we land: the same hand-coded quality and real infrastructure, aimed at the result that actually matters — calls and customers — at a price built for a working business.
The same six questions, five different answers.
These are the things that actually matter six months after launch, not the day you sign.
| Do it yourself | Cheap freelancer | Local agency | Premium firm | Stroder Web Services | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who actually builds it | You do | One freelancer, quality varies | A rotating team | A senior team | Dominic, every line, hand-coded |
| Typical cost | $16–49/mo, forever | A few hundred, one-off | $5,000–15,000+ | $15,000–50,000+ | $750–2,200 — upfront or monthly |
| Who you talk to after | Yourself & help articles | Them, if they reply | An account manager | An account team | Dominic, in your private portal |
| When something breaks | You Google the fix | Hope they’re still around | Open a ticket, billed hourly | Covered by retainer | Request it in your portal, handled |
| Hosting, backups, monitoring | Platform’s, you don’t control it | Usually none | Add-on, extra cost | Included, premium price | Private servers, nightly backups, 24/7 monitoring |
| Do you own it | No — you rent it | Usually, if handed over | Sometimes — CMS lock-in | Yes | Yes — day one upfront, or month 12 on monthly. Source code in hand. |
← Scroll the table sideways to see every column →
When we’re not the right call.
We’d rather tell you up front than take a job that isn’t a fit. Pick someone else if:
- You genuinely enjoy building it yourself and have the time. A page builder is cheaper, and tinkering is half the fun for some people. That’s a real answer.
- You need a big custom web app — a booking platform, a member portal with thousands of users, complex integrations. That’s a bigger shop’s job, and we’ll say so.
- A national brand overhaul is the goal and the budget is built for it. A premium studio will give you the decks and the show. We’re built for getting a local business found and called.
The practical middle, done properly.
Founder-led, so you work directly with the person who builds your site. System-backed, so it’s hosted on private servers, backed up nightly, and monitored around the clock — the kind of setup agencies charge a premium for. You get the simplicity of working with one person and the dependability of a real platform.
See the price for your business in about a minute.
No call required, no pressure. Answer a few questions and get a real number. Or send us your current site and we’ll tell you straight what we’d fix.