Costs & pricing · 6 min read
Agency vs freelancer vs DIY: a straight comparison
DIY costs roughly £150-£300 a year plus 30-60 hours of your own time. A freelancer typically costs £500-£2,000 one-off with variable availability afterwards. A studio or agency typically costs £350-£5,000+ with ongoing support built in. The right answer depends far more on how much of your own time is available than on the price.
By Raja Wahab, Co-founder, Fixby Studios · Updated
Cost, honestly
- DIY: low cash cost, high time cost. Budget 30-60 hours for a decent five-page site if you've never done it.
- Freelancer: mid cash cost, low time cost during the build, uncertain afterwards.
- Studio/agency: higher cash cost, lowest time cost, defined support after launch.
The hidden costs nobody quotes for
- Content. Somebody has to write it. If that's you, that's your evenings; if it's them, it's in the price.
- Photography. Stock images are free and look it.
- Search setup. Titles, structured data, sitemap and Search Console are cheap to do at build and expensive to retrofit.
- Changes. Ask what a text edit costs six months from now before you sign anything.
Where DIY genuinely wins
Testing a new idea, a side business, or a single landing page for a campaign. If the business itself is unproven, don't spend a build budget proving it.
Where it genuinely loses
When the website is a main sales channel; when you need booking, payments or integrations; when speed and search performance decide whether you get found; or when your time is worth more spent doing the actual work of your business.
The test that settles it
Work out what one new customer is worth to you over a year. If a website that brings in one extra customer a month pays for itself several times over, the build cost stops being the interesting question.
A closer look at the platform side of the decision.
Raja Wahab is co-founder of Fixby Studios, a Huddersfield studio building websites, SEO, social media and business software for small, owner-managed businesses across West Yorkshire.
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