Ways to build a website

Every approach has trade-offs

There's no single "best" way to build a website — it depends on your budget, technical skills, time, and what you need the site to do. Here's an honest look at every major approach.

Hiring an agency or freelancer

The premium option. A professional designs and builds your site from scratch, tailored exactly to your needs. Results can be stunning — but so can the invoice. Expect to pay $2,000–$15,000+ for a custom site, plus ongoing maintenance fees. Timelines range from weeks to months. You get expertise and polish, but you're dependent on someone else for every change. Best for: businesses with budget and specific needs that off-the-shelf tools can't meet.

Website builders (Wix, Squarespace, Webflow)

Drag-and-drop platforms that let anyone build a site without coding. They look great, they're easy to start with, and they handle hosting and security for you. The downsides: monthly subscriptions ($15–50/month adds up over years), vendor lock-in (try moving your site off Wix — good luck), limited customization beyond templates, and your site lives on someone else's infrastructure. Best for: people who want something up fast and don't mind ongoing costs.

WordPress

The world's most popular CMS, powering over 40% of all websites. Massive ecosystem of themes and plugins, huge community, and enormous flexibility. But WordPress comes with baggage: it requires a MySQL database, regular updates (core, themes, plugins — skip one and you're vulnerable), it's the #1 target for hackers precisely because it's so popular, performance degrades without caching plugins, and "free" quickly becomes expensive when you add premium themes, plugins, managed hosting, and security tools. Many people install WordPress for a five-page business site — that's like driving a semi-truck to pick up groceries. Best for: complex sites with blogs, e-commerce, membership areas, or heavy plugin needs.

Static site generators (Hugo, Jekyll, Eleventy)

Generate pure HTML files from templates and content files. Blazing fast, extremely secure (no server-side processing to exploit), free hosting on platforms like Netlify or GitHub Pages. The catch: you need to be comfortable with command line, Git, and build processes. There's no admin panel — you edit files in a code editor and deploy via terminal. Content editors who aren't developers will struggle. Best for: developers building personal sites, documentation, or blogs who enjoy the toolchain.

Flat File CMS

The middle ground that combines the best of multiple worlds. A Flat File CMS gives you an admin panel (like WordPress), stores content in simple files instead of a database (like static generators), requires minimal hosting (just PHP — no MySQL needed), and is inherently more secure and faster than database-driven systems. Setup is often as simple as uploading files to a server. Maintenance is minimal — no database to optimize, no complex update chains. Backups are trivial — just copy the files. The trade-off: smaller communities and plugin ecosystems compared to WordPress. But for the vast majority of websites — business sites, portfolios, small blogs, landing pages — a Flat File CMS does everything you need with a fraction of the complexity. Best for: anyone who wants simplicity, speed, and security without sacrificing an admin panel.