So, you’ve got your brand name and your professional email. You have your digital address. Now, it’s time to build the house.
This is one of the most confusing and high-stakes decisions you’ll make. You’re bombarded with ads for “easy” website builders like Squarespace and Wix, and they all promise a beautiful site in minutes. They’re tempting, very tempting.
Plus, if you are already looking at things like AI (Artificial Intelligence) there are plenty of ads telling you to just write ‘a one line prompt’ and you will get a lovely website all done for you.
Which sounds great but how and where do you host it? Where does it ‘live’? How do I change it when I need to update or add content?
But are any of these shiny objects the right choice for a real, long-term business?
As a beginner, I wrestled with this exact question. I spent hours researching the options, and I came to a very clear conclusion. In this post, I’m going to cut through the marketing hype and give you the honest, straightforward breakdown of the pros and cons.
I’ll explain the critical difference between “renting” your online space and truly “owning” it, and I’ll walk you through why I ultimately chose WordPress.org as the unshakable foundation for Digital Honesty HQ.
The Most Important Question: Are You Renting or Owning?
"All-in-One" Website Builders (Squarespace, Wix, Shopify):
Think of these like renting a beautiful, fully-furnished apartment. It’s easy to move in, everything works, and the landlord handles the maintenance. But you can’t knock down a wall, you’re stuck with their rules, and if you stop paying rent, you’re homeless. You never truly own it.
WordPress.org (The Open-Source Platform):
Think of this like owning your own plot of land and building your own house. It requires a bit more setup (you have to get your own foundation and utilities—that’s your hosting), but you have complete and total freedom. You can build whatever you want, you can change anything, and no one can ever kick you out. You own the asset.
Secondly: Regardless of which route you finally choose for your business you need to know this.
ALL of the web site builders out there will require you to learn from scratch how to use them and get the best out of them.
To be brutally honest with you, this is going to take three things:
- Patience: Learning to build websites can be a frustrating business, patience is what is going to get the job done!
- Time: You will need to invest a good deal of time into building your website, the learning curve is steep but don’t lose faith you really can get it done.
- Focus: Ensure that you are focussing on the MAIN task at hand, don’t get distracted with adding fancy menus or gimmicky additions, concentrate on an MVS (minimum viable site), you can add the glossy bits later.
Overall, for a hobby, renting is fine. For a serious business, you need to own the land.
A Quick, Honest Comparison
of the “Big Three”
Squarespace, Wix & the Others: The Pros and Cons
- Pros: Extremely beginner-friendly, drag-and-drop is very simple, all-in-one pricing.
- Cons: You are “locked in” to their platform (you can’t move your site easily), less flexible for advanced features, can become more expensive over time, you have less control over technical SEO.
WordPress.org: The Pros and Cons
- Pros: Total Ownership and Control. Infinitely flexible (if you can imagine it, there’s a plugin for it). The best platform for SEO. A massive community for support. You can move your site to any host at any time.
- Cons: A slightly steeper initial learning curve. You are responsible for your own hosting and security (though good hosts make this easy).
Premium Themes Vs Free
So anything free is great right? Well….not so much. There is an old saying that fits here and that is ‘you get what you pay for’.
Like so many other things in life, getting a freebie is great in the beginning but it comes with strings. One of my favourite phrases is ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch’, at some point someone has to pay.
After trying out a few free themes, these strings started to really irritate me so I started looking at what is known as Premium Themes, the ones you pay for.
So I broke out our trusty friend Google and started searching. Just as on WordPress I found dozens of premium themes, so how did I choose?
If you are like me then you start to look for certain attributes that a product has that fit your needs. These might include but are not limited too:
Support
What is the support like? A really important element that will influence your choice. Check reviews, do your research.
Flexibility
Will it do everything you want to do? Think branding and design styles, and if you pivot later can it cope?
Community
WordPress has a massive community, but does your choice of theme have the same? Think about future developments. Again, do your research.
In the end I chose a theme called Divi from Elegant Themes.
It gives me the best of both worlds: the total ownership and power of WordPress, combined with a user-friendly, visual drag-and-drop builder that has a really good support, a great community and all the flexibility I need to get the job done.
A premium theme if chosen well will really help you on your website building journey, and whilst I am a devil for trying to find products that cost the minimum Divi from Elegant Themes is worth every last penny.
Build a Foundation, Not Just a Facade
Choosing an “easy” website builder can feel like a smart shortcut now, but it can become a roadblock later. By choosing to build on WordPress, you are making a long-term investment in your business. You are building a true asset on a foundation you completely control.
Choosing a premium theme like Divi bolsters the strength of that WordPress platform, and gives you all the tools you need.
Whether you are building a straight forward website, creating an online e-commerce site or anything in between these are the assets that will grow and adapt with you over the coming months and years.
It’s a decision that respects the seriousness of your second act, and puts you in the perfect place to establish your brand and messaging online.
Your Simple “Home Base” Starter Kit
Ready to build on your own land? Here is the simple, three-part formula to get started.
- Get Your Land and Utilities (Your Host): You need a reliable web host. As I mentioned in my last post, I use Hostinger because it’s affordable and makes installing WordPress a one-click process.
- Get the Free “Engine” (WordPress): When you sign up with a good host like Hostinger, they will have a simple button to install the free WordPress.org software for you.
- Once WordPress is installed, you just need to choose and install the theme of your choice be it free or premium. So install your Divi Theme if you choose to use it.
That’s it. With those three steps, you own your own corner of the internet, ready to build whatever you can imagine.