Why a "free" website (Wix, templates) costs you more in the long run

The most expensive website isn't the one you pay for. It's the "free" one that keeps you stuck for two years, then forces you to start over.

Free is good bait: you sign up on a Saturday night, drag a few blocks with your mouse, and have something on screen in two hours. The problem isn't visible now. It shows up six months later, when the first serious person asks for your website address and you have to say "businessname.wixsite.com/salon".

What "free" actually means

A free plan isn't a gift — it's a trial that never expires. To keep you there, it strips out exactly the things you need to be taken seriously:

• You don't own the domain. According to Wix, the free plan doesn't allow connecting your own domain — you stay on an address like `yoursite.wixsite.com`. To a customer choosing between you and a competitor, that reads like a page thrown together in a rush, not a real business.
• Ads that aren't yours. Also according to Wix, the free plan displays Wix ads on your site. The visitor sees the platform being promoted, not your offer.
• You can't sell. On the free Wix plan you can't take payments or sell products. The moment you want a shop, you're forced onto a paid plan anyway.
• Tight storage and traffic. The free Wix plan comes with 500 MB of storage and 1 GB of bandwidth — filled fast by a couple of decent photo galleries.

To escape all of this, you move up to a paid plan. According to Wix, paid plans start at about $17/month billed annually, and the "business" plan is around $39/month. That's over $400 a year, year after year, for something that isn't yours.

The costs that never show up in the price

Those four limits are written down somewhere. The real cost is in the things nobody tells you at sign-up:

• Your time. A free template looks good until you start editing it. Every tweak that "almost works" is an evening gone. You paid with time — nobody just asked for your card.
• The customers you never see. A slow-loading site, or one that looks amateur on a phone, loses people silently. You don't get an invoice for the visitor who closed the page — but you lost them.
• Lock-in. What you build on a builder stays on that builder. You don't take the design with you. When you want to leave, you take only the text and photos — the rest you rebuild.

The growth wall: the moment "free" blocks you

The most painful part isn't the price, it's the ceiling. A template site works up to a point, then stops:

• You want online booking that automatically sends a reminder — the template doesn't have it, and the plugin that would isn't allowed to install.
• You want to show up in Google when someone searches your service in your town — that needs control over titles, speed and structure, exactly what a free builder hides. See seo-local.
• You want to be the answer ChatGPT gives when someone asks "where do I find X in my city" — that needs a clean structure closed templates don't give you. See ce-este-aeo-geo.

The day your business grows, the "free" site doesn't grow with it. You rebuild everything, exactly when you have the least time.

The honest comparison, in numbers

We're not saying every custom site beats every template. We're saying compare it fairly — including years two and three.

A landing page costs between €290 and €490. A presentation site, €490–890. A shop, from €690. Maintenance, from €29/month. That's real money — but it's once, with the domain and design staying yours. Price details here: cat-costa-un-site-web.

When a free site does make sense

Honestly: if you just want to test an idea over a weekend, or need a page that lives for a month up to an event, a free builder is fine. Just don't pay for it as the foundation of a business you want to keep for ten years.

The rule we work by: pay once for something that stays yours, not every year for something you can't leave.

See before you decide

The simplest way to compare isn't a list of arguments — it's seeing what your website would look like done properly. We'll build you a free demo, on your real address, no strings attached. Message us on WhatsApp: wa.me/40750257140 — tell us what you do, we'll show you what's possible.