This comparison is usually argued by people with something to sell. The differences that actually matter to a small business are four, and only one of them is about features.
If you want to pay one monthly fee, never think about a file, and accept that the site is rented, a builder is a good product and you should use one. That is a legitimate choice and plenty of well-run businesses make it deliberately.
Builders are also genuinely better at a few things: an integrated shop, a booking calendar, and email marketing bolted to the same account. If those are central to the business, the trade is probably worth it.
If the site is the front door of a business that will be there in ten years, ownership stops being an abstraction. It means the address, the design and the content are things you hold rather than rent, and that any developer in the world can pick them up.
What has always made that route hard is the assembly. That is the specific part we removed: the theme is written for you, installed, hosted and kept current, and you still own the file.
$199 to build, $15 a month hosted, or $150 a year. The address is from $35 a year and registered in your name. You see the finished site before anything is charged, which is a thing neither route above lets you do.
Most ways of getting a website end with you renting one. Cancel a builder subscription and the pages stop existing; there is nothing to take with you because there was never a file. That is the trade you make for the monthly price, and plenty of people make it knowingly.
This is not that. What gets built for you is a WordPress theme: a real folder of files, with its own style.css, index.php and functions.php, that installs through Appearance, Themes, Add New, Upload Theme on any WordPress host in the world. We host it for you at $15 a month so you never have to think about it, and the web address is registered in your name, not ours.
If you ever want to leave, ask for a copy and it is yours: the theme file, the address, the content. You can hand it to any developer and they will recognise exactly what they are looking at, because it is an ordinary WordPress theme and not a proprietary export nobody else can open.
Free to look at the finished site. You pay when you want it live.
Addresses cost different amounts by ending: a .com is cheaper than a .io. We charge what the registrar charges us plus a small margin, and show the exact figure before you pay.
You can export your text and images in some form. You cannot export the site. The design and the layout are properties of their platform and do not travel, which is the thing to know before you start rather than after three years.
The admin is more capable and therefore busier. In our case you do not use it for day to day changes: you click text on your own site and type over it.
WordPress is attacked more because it is everywhere. The vulnerabilities are almost always in plugins, which is a good argument for having very few. This theme uses none.
Keep it running while a new one is built, point the address when you are happy, and cancel afterwards. Nothing has to go dark in between.
Free to look, and nothing to cancel if you decide against it.
Build my website