"Free" website builders are the most expensive option for tradies. Here's why, and what it actually costs you.
"I'll just build it myself on Wix, it's free." We hear this from tradies every week.
The logic makes sense. You're a small business. Cash flow is tight. Why pay $30/month for something you can do for "free"?
Here's the problem: the free option costs you more than the paid one. Not just in dollars, in time, lost jobs, and opportunity cost.
Let's do the math.
Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy, Weebly, these platforms all advertise free or cheap plans. Here's what they don't tell you:
| Cost item | Wix | GoDaddy | TradesPro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 advertised price | $16/mo (Combo) | $5.99/mo | $30/mo |
| Year 2 renewal price | $27/mo | $20–40/mo | $30/mo |
| Your time (4 hrs/mo @ $50/hr) | $200/mo | $200/mo | $0 (we manage) |
| Missed jobs from slow site | $500–2,000/mo | $500–2,000/mo | $0 (fast site) |
| Year 1 true cost | $2,592+ | $2,472+ | $360 |
| Year 3 true cost | $7,776+ | $8,640+ | $1,080 |
Year 3 true cost of a "free" Wix site, including your time + missed jobs
The headline number is $16/month for Wix. But the real cost, once you account for the time you spend managing it and the jobs you lose to a slow site, is $2,592+ per year.
Let's break down each cost.
We surveyed 50 tradies who built their own sites. Average time spent per month:
Total: 4 hours/month. At $50/hour (your billable rate), that's $200/month, or $2,400/year.
You're paying yourself $50/hour to be a webmaster. You're not a webmaster. You're a tradie.
Free website builders run on shared hosting. Your site loads in 3–5 seconds on mobile (we tested dozens).
According to Google Core Web Vitals research, every 1-second delay costs around 7% of conversions. If you get 100 visitors/month and each job is worth $1,000:
Your free website is costing you jobs every single day, and you can't see it because you can't measure what you never had.
We hear this exact quote constantly. Beautiful design on Wix. Zero leads. The design is fine. The problem is everything underneath: slow hosting, no local SEO, buried CTAs, broken mobile experience.
Here's the real game with free website builders:
Year 1: "Cheap" or "free." They hook you with introductory pricing. Wix Combo is $16/month. GoDaddy is $5.99. Feels like a steal.
Year 2: Your site has content, photos, maybe a few rankings. The renewal price jumps: Wix goes to $27/month. GoDaddy goes to $20–40. You're now paying more, but you can't leave without rebuilding everything.
Year 3: Your site is fully locked into their ecosystem. Templates, pages, forms, all proprietary. Moving costs thousands in developer time. You're trapped. And they know it.
TradesPro: $30/month. Year 1, Year 2, Year 5. Same price. No lock-in. You own your content, your domain, your data.
| Factor | Wix / GoDaddy / Squarespace | TradesPro |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 total cost | $2,592+ (including your time) | $360 |
| Year 3 total cost | $7,776+ | $1,080 |
| Site speed (mobile) | 2.5–4.5 seconds | <0.8 seconds |
| Your time managing it | 4 hrs/month | Zero |
| Local SEO built-in | No | Yes (service area pages) |
| Lead notifications | Email only | SMS + email + dashboard |
| Lock-in risk | High (proprietary templates) | None (you own everything) |
| Support | Chat queue (24–48h) | Direct tradie support |
The biggest cost of a free website isn't money, it's missed opportunity.
When your site loads in 4 seconds, you don't know which jobs you lost. When you have no service area pages, you don't know how many customers Google sent to your competitor instead. When you check email only once a day, you don't know which leads responded faster.
You're losing a substantial share of potential jobs, and you can't see it because you never had them.
A slow, poorly-optimised free website leaks leads through speed losses, missing SEO, and broken lead capture. The jobs you don't get never show up in your analytics.
We've helped 50+ tradies move from Wix, GoDaddy, Squarespace, and WordPress to TradesPro. Here's what they all say:
Let's be clear what "free" means vs TradesPro:
| Feature | Free Builder | TradesPro ($30/mo) |
|---|---|---|
| Custom design | Generic template | Trade-specific design |
| Mobile experience | Responsive (basic) | Mobile-first (built for trades) |
| Site speed | 2.5–4.5s | <0.8s (Cloudflare CDN) |
| Service area pages | You build manually | Auto-created for your suburbs |
| Lead capture | Email form (basic) | SMS + email + dashboard |
| Google Business sync | No | Yes |
| Your time managing | 4+ hrs/month | Zero |
| Support | Standard ticket | Direct tradie support |
Your free website is costing you more than TradesPro ever will. Switch today and start getting calls instead of managing templates.