Building my own website for Pear Support has been equal parts awesome, frustrating, and eye-opening.
I 100% went into it like – I know how to build sites, I’ve done it before, I manage and edit them ALL THE TIME!
Turns out, it’s hard, just not hard in the way you expect. It also takes agesss.
If you’re a small business owner weighing up whether to DIY your site or invest in Website Design Services, here’s what I’ve learned from doing it myself.
It can be done on a small budget
Let’s start with the good news.
Hosting and domains aren’t wildly expensive. If you shop around, you can definitely find yourself a sick deal. Long term contracts are obviously cheaper overall, but even short term options are pretty manageable when you’re just getting started.
You don’t need a huge budget to set up and launch a professional looking website. For startups and small businesses, getting a website going is much easier than you think it is.
Free tools are more powerful than people think
One of the biggest surprises for me was just how much you can get done with free freebies. I’m talking, not dropping a dime.
I built my site using:
- The free version of Elementor
- Fluent CRM (also free) for forms and basic automations
And honestly? For a startup site, they do the jobs you need them to do.
Basic editors, forms, and automations don’t have to cost anything in the early days. If you know what you’re doing, or are willing to roll your sleeves up and learn some stuff, you can create something functional, professional, and scalable without paying monthly fees for every plugin under the sun.
It takes so much time when it’s your own website
Here’s the bit people don’t talk about enough.
Building a website isn’t always technically difficult, but when it’s your business, it’s deeply personal.
When you’re working on a client site, you can be objective. You make decisions, you move on. When it’s your own website? You overthink everything.
Every word, every colour, every pixel spacing choice suddenly feels like it represents you. You immerse yourself far more deeply than you would for someone else, and suddenly you’ve been playing around with container borders for the past hour.
Not because it’s complicated, but because it matters.
This is something I have a whole new appreciation for when offering my website design services. The emotional investment is real.
SEO vs aesthetics is a constant balancing act
Designing something that looks good while also keeping SEO in mind, while being my favourite part, is… hard.
You’re trying to:
- Hit a certain word count
- Use headings properly
- Keep pages clean and readable
- Avoid heavy code
- Use enough images without slowing things down
- Make everything human
- Actually provide useful information
Doing all of that at once takes time, testing, and a fair amount of tweaking.
SEO isn’t something you bolt on at the end. It needs to be considered while you’re building, and SEO research plays a huge part in your website structure. When you’re juggling both design and optimisation on your own, it’s easy to see why people bring in professional website design services. They just get it right from the start.
Psst… You can understand SEO even more by reading The Magic of SEO for Business: Your Ticket to Online Success
Mobile formatting will humble you
This one hurt a bit.
I spent hours getting my website exactly how I wanted it to look. I was proud of it. Genuinely.
Then I switched to mobile view. Oof. When I say it was not good!
Layouts didn’t translate, spacing was off, and what looked beautiful on desktop looked chaotic on a phone. I had to go back and edit every single page to optimise for mobile.
Note for myself, and for you, so you don’t make the same mistake – always check mobile view! Most people will see your site on their phone first, and they won’t wait around for it to make sense.
My final thoughts
Building my own website has made me more confident, more patient, and far more appreciative of what people will be looking for in my website design services.
Yes, you can do it yourself and yes, it can be done on a budget.
But time, perspective, SEO knowledge, and user experience all come at a cost too.
Whether you DIY or outsource, the most important thing is understanding what goes into a website so that it actually *werks* for you, not just one that looks nice.
And honestly? I wouldn’t change the experience. But I also completely understand why people say, ‘I’m just going to get someone else to do it’.