Why Not Wix?

Why not Wix, indeed?

Wix, Square­space and oth­ers are fine prod­ucts in some circumstances.

The cost of entry is low and an entire­ly ade­quate web­site can be cre­at­ed in a few hours by pret­ty much any­one. If all that’s required is some infor­ma­tion, a few pho­tos and basic con­tact infor­ma­tion this can be a per­fect­ly sound solution.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, once fea­tures are added the cost can go up quickly.

Most peo­ple are going to want a lit­tle more:

• An event calendar.
• A weblog.
• A more com­pre­hen­sive pho­to gallery.
• Search engine optimization.

All of these ​‘extras’ raise the cost, and users can quick­ly wind up with a much larg­er month­ly bill than anticipated.

Once a site needs real met­rics for bud­get and adver­tis­ing, more com­plex forms to accept recur­ring pay­ments or gath­er infor­ma­tion, geolo­ca­tion and map­ping or prop­er­ly man­aged search engine opti­miza­tion, your Wix site will no longer be adequate.

It won’t even be viable.

This where con­sumers of com­mod­i­ty web ser­vices can run into one of their biggest hurdles.

Ven­dor lock-in.

Often when stake­hold­ers decide to move away from their Wee­bly or Wix sites they run into dif­fi­cul­ty extract­ing their data.

Images have been com­pressed into hard to work with for­mats, arcane pro­pri­etary code is every­where, and it is all min­i­mized, obfus­cat­ed and com­pressed to the point of incomprehensibility.

It can be a tough real­iza­tion that the site that’s been fine for years is no longer meet­ing their needs. Espe­cial­ly after sink­ing thou­sands of dol­lars into month­ly fees for ​‘extras’.

If you have reg­is­tered your domain through your provider it can add anoth­er lay­er of complexity.

The upside.

A cus­tom site can solve these prob­lems. First and fore­most, you own your files and con­tent and are free to do with them what you will.

Oth­er advan­tages include:

• No more month­ly fees. When we are done we don’t bill you any­more and you are free to use the host of your choice — we’ll even install and con­fig­ure it for you.
• Bet­ter per­for­mance. We use proven frame­works and best prac­tices to ensure that your site is acces­si­ble to all peo­ple on all devices. We bench­mark every­thing and if you host with us (free for a year) we’ll do all secu­ri­ty updates and keep every­thing hum­ming along on a Dig­i­talO­cean VPS con­fig­ured for your appli­ca­tion. We only host sites we build so hands on atten­tion is assured.
• Eas­i­er edit­ing. While we work with Dru­pal, Word­Press and oth­ers, our pre­ferred con­tent man­age­ment sys­tem is Craft CMS. Craft offers an unpar­al­leled edit­ing expe­ri­ence and makes it easy for non tech­ni­cal peo­ple to man­age the site
• Us. We’re not a face­less con­glom­er­ate. If you have a ques­tion, we’ll give you an answer. If you have a prob­lem, we’ll help find a solu­tion. Quick­ly and in plain English.

We’ve found that often the cost of a cus­tom hand-cod­ed site is recouped sur­pris­ing­ly quick­ly while improv­ing the expe­ri­ence for both users and editors.

If you agree, or want to find out more, please let us know.