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Do I need a website?
A Benefitora Burden.
Nine plain-English questions about how customers find you, what a site would actually do, and whether you have the time, money, and photos to make it work. You get a straight answer, a short to-do list either way, and, priced for the features you picked, what it would cost to rent from a website builder versus own outright.
Question 1 of 9
How do new customers find you today?
Pick everything that applies. We count the strongest one.
Pick at least one, then Next.
If you build one, this is all a first website needs
One page. Five things. Anything beyond this is a nice-to-have until the first version has paid for itself.
- 1What you doIn one sentence a stranger understands. Not "solutions." Say "we fix furnaces in Lake County."
- 2Where you do itTowns, counties, radius. People search "near me." Tell them you are.
- 3ProofReal photos of real work, and your Google reviews pulled onto the page. This is the part that closes.
- 4How to reach youA phone number that clicks to call, hours, and a short form. Nothing else needs to be clever.
- 5One clear next step"Call," "Get a quote," or "Book." One. If everything is a button, nothing is.
Own it or rent it? Both are legitimate.
Renting a builder platform is fast and cheap to start. Owning a custom-built site costs $100 up front and then mostly stops costing. Here's each side without the sales pitch.
Rent it
Squarespace, Wix, GoDaddy, Square Online, WordPress.com, Shopify, Webflow
You get
- Fastest start. You can be live this weekend
- They handle updates, security, and hosting
- Drag-and-drop editing you can learn in an afternoon
- No up-front decision. $17 to $49 a month and you can walk away
You give up
- −You pay every month, forever ($200 to $600 a year), and prices go up at renewal
- −Every real feature is a plan bump or an add-on: bookings, email, reviews, payments
- −Some plans keep 2 to 7% of every online sale on top of card fees
- −If you leave, at best your text exports. The design and setup never do (Wix and GoDaddy: nothing does)
- −Speed is theirs to fix, not yours. Median mobile Lighthouse scores run 15 to 63
Own it
Custom-built; you hold the code, domain, and data
You get
- No platform fee, no per-sale cut. After the build, costs drop to a domain and the edits you ask for
- No ceilings: bookings, portals, payments, whatever you need later, built once
- A real asset you can sell, move, or hand to any developer
- Speed you control. Ours ship at 90+ Lighthouse and you can see the score any time
- Changes in plain English through Mission Control. No developer, no retainer
You give up
- −Money up front: $100 for the do-it-yourself setup (it comes back as $150 of edit credit), or $2,397 if we build everything for you
- −On subscription dollars alone, the $100 setup pays for itself within months; the $2,397 done-for-you build takes years on those dollars alone, which is why it sells labor and a guarantee, not savings. Run your own numbers below
- −Someone has to be able to change it. Ask HOW edits happen before you sign, with anyone
- −A bad build is yours to fix. Vet the builder, not the pitch
Where we stand: we're on the “own” side of this. Our clients edit their sites in plain English through Mission Control, and we hand over the code, the domain, and the keys. Weigh that with the appropriate grain of salt.
Break-even, with your numbers
The defaults are placeholders. Put in the quote you actually got and the plan you'd actually pick.
Our DIY setup is $100. Our done-for-you Full Launch is $2,397; other shops vary, so put in the quote you actually got.
Domain ≈ $15-20. Hosting is free at small-business traffic on modern platforms; add ~$240 if you outgrow that.
Owning pays for itself in about 4 months.
3 years
Rent $900
Own $160
5 years
Rent $1,500
Own $200
What the math leaves out: owning only wins if someone can actually change the site when your hours or prices change. Ask how edits happen before you sign anything, on either side.
The pushback we get, answered straight
You sell websites. Why would I trust your quiz?
You shouldn't have to. Every answer's weight and reason is printed on the result page, and across every possible path through the questions, two out of three end in "burden, for now." The first version of this tool leaned too hard toward "yes." We rebuilt it so it can say no.
Isn't a website useless without traffic?
Mostly, yes. A website is not a marketing plan. It's where the marketing lands: referrals, your Google Business Profile, reviews, and the name on your truck bring people; the site is where they decide. If nobody is looking for you yet, fix that first. That's why "how do customers find you" is question one.
Can't I just use a Google Business Profile or a Facebook page?
To start, often, yes. Both are free and you should have them either way. They stop being enough when a customer compares you to a competitor with a real site, when you need quotes, bookings, or payments, or when the platform changes its rules and layout on you (they do).
What does a website actually cost to keep?
Renting on a builder: the cheapest plan that allows your own domain runs from about $4 a month (WordPress.com) to $49 (Square Online), and the features people actually want (automatic email, bookings, payments, a reviews widget) are where the plan bumps and add-ons stack up, so a service business lands nearer $30 to $55 a month, forever. Owning: a domain (about $15 to $20 a year), hosting that's free at small-business traffic on modern platforms, and edits. With Mission Control that's pay-as-you-go, a dollar or two per change, and most sites only change a few times a year once they're live. Your result page prices both sides for the exact features you picked, from each vendor's current price list.
"You own the code." I'm a plumber. Now what?
Right. Owning code you can't touch is a burden wearing an ownership costume. Before you buy "ownership," ask: how do I change my hours at 9pm on a Tuesday? Acceptable answers are "you edit it yourself, in plain English" or "here's the person, here's the price per change." "Submit a ticket" is a burden. Our answer is Mission Control: you type the change, Claude makes it on a preview, you press Publish. No developer, no retainer, and it costs pennies to a few dollars per change, only when you ask.
How long until an owned site pays for itself versus renting?
At our old prices, honestly, years. We said so on this page. At the current $100 setup the math flipped: the builder plans most service businesses land on run $17 to $30 a month ($200 to $360 a year, every year), so even counting the domain and pay-as-you-go edits on the owned side, owning is ahead well inside the first year. A first-year promo (GoDaddy's $9.99 intro) can stretch that a few months. The done-for-you Full Launch ($2,397) is the exception: that much up front takes years to claw back on subscription dollars alone. There you're buying the labor, the battle-testing, and the guarantee, not a discount. Each feature you add shifts the math further toward owning (one-time add-on owned, monthly add-on rented), and some plans keep 2 to 7% of every online sale on top. Your result page shows the year-by-year math for your features, and the calculator further down lets you plug in any numbers you like.
Whatever it said,
that's the honest answer for today.
“Burden, for now” means go do the free things and retake this in a few months. “Benefit” means build something small with one job. If you'd rather own it than rent it, that's what we do: a $100 refundable deposit down, and you test-drive the finished site before you pay the rest.
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