I am not going to tell you Wix, Squarespace, and Shopify are evil. They are not. They are a trade, and trades should be understood before they are signed.
What the fee buys you
Real things. Hosting you never think about. Templates that look decent on day one. Security patches you never see. Support chat at midnight. For a brand-new business with no traffic and no systems, that bundle is legitimately useful.
What the fee does not buy you
Ownership. Read the terms of any builder and you will find the same shape: you own your content, they own the platform. In practice that means:
- The site cannot move. There is no export that walks out the door with a working website under your arm.
- Features live behind plan tiers. The moment you need the next thing, you need the next plan.
- The data model is theirs. Your customers, orders, and form fills live in their structure, reachable the way they permit.
- Price changes are their decision, not yours.
The quiet math
The fee that starts small rarely stays small, because the builder is almost never alone. There is an email tool next to it. A booking app. A review widget. A form upgrade. Each one is a reasonable monthly number, and together they become a permanent line item that buys the business nothing it owns.
Add up your own list honestly. Not the advertised prices, the actual charges on the card. That number, times twelve, is what renting costs per year. You can do it right here.
Total your builder stack, right now
The builder fee never travels alone. Check off everything your business pays for each month and watch the real number assemble itself. Bring your card statement, not your memory.
Your numbers
What that means
Includes the 8% a year they raise it on you.
Yr 1: $4,740. By Yr 10: $68,666.
$68,666 over ten years, and on the last day you own exactly nothing. That is the whole business model they are running on you.
This is not an argument against every subscription. It is an argument against renting the parts of your business you cannot afford to lose.
What this assumed
- Assumes the annual increase you enter compounds every year on the whole stack.
Runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere.
This is an estimate
This tool returns an estimate based on the numbers you entered. Your real result depends on your own costs, rates and conditions. Check it against your own records before you make a decision with it.
How to run it, step by step
- 1Open your last card statement. The advertised prices are wrong and your memory is generous. The statement has the real charges, including the annual ones you forgot.
- 2Check every box that charges you. Builder plan, email tool, booking app, CRM seats, review widget, chat, forms, phone platform. If it hits the card monthly or yearly, it counts.
- 3Adjust the amounts to your real prices. The tool starts with typical prices. Overwrite them with what you actually pay so the total is yours, not an estimate.
How to read what it gives you
- The monthly total times twelve is your yearly rent. That is the number to hold up against what the stack actually produces.
- Circle the lines that hold your data: the customer list, the bookings, the reviews. Those fees are not for features. They are for custody.
- A modest total serving a business well is a fine trade. Keep it and stop feeling guilty. A big total with your leads scattered across five inboxes is the signal to consolidate.
The tool is free, it does not expire, and you can put it on your own website if you want it there. Nothing on this page is locked.
Not ready to talk? Browse the rest of the free tools
When the trade makes sense
- You are new, unproven, and need something live this week.
- Your website is a brochure and genuinely nothing more.
- The total monthly stack is still small and the business is not leaning on it.
Keep the builder in those seasons. No shame in it.
When the trade stops making sense
- The stack costs hundreds a month and the business depends on it.
- You keep hitting the template ceiling and buying plugins to punch through it.
- Leads come in from calls, texts, forms, and DMs, and the builder holds none of that together.
- You want the customer list, the follow-up, and the site to live in accounts you control.
That is the point where ownership beats convenience, and it arrives earlier than most owners expect. When you get there, map the system you actually need before you buy anything else. The diagnosis is free and it does not ask who you are first.
Questions people actually ask
Is Wix or Squarespace bad for a small business?
No. For a new, unproven business that needs to be live this week, a builder is the right tool. The trade goes bad later, when the stack of add-ons grows, the template ceiling arrives, and the business depends on tools it can never own or leave cleanly.
Can I move my Wix or Squarespace site somewhere else later?
Not as a working website. You can usually export content like text, images, and some data, but the site itself, its design and functionality, stays on the platform. A move is a rebuild. That is the single most important thing to know before you invest years in one.
What is the real monthly cost of a builder site?
The plan fee plus everything around it: email marketing, booking, forms, review tools, plugins, apps, extra seats. Businesses I map are often paying several times the advertised plan price across the stack without ever deciding to. Add yours up with real statement numbers before judging the trade.
When should a business leave the builder?
When the monthly stack is large and load-bearing, when leads arrive from calls, texts, forms, and DMs that the builder cannot hold together, or when you keep buying plugins to punch through the template ceiling. At that point ownership usually beats convenience, and the move should start with a map, not a purchase.
Example: $180/mo in rented tools vs a $2,500 one-time build plus $25/mo hosting, over 5 years.
Your numbers different? Run them in the Rent Receipt calculator.