Template or a custom build?

This is the fork in the road for most small businesses getting online: pay a few hundred dollars for a template and set it up yourself, or pay a few thousand for a custom site built around you. Both are good answers. They’re just good answers to different questions.

I sell both — six niche Squarespace templates from $129, and custom builds from $1,800 — so I genuinely don’t have a horse in this race. Here’s how I’d actually choose.

When a template is the right call

A template is the smart, frugal choice more often than designers like to admit. Pick one if you’re early, your budget is tight, your offer is fairly standard (a service business, a portfolio, a simple shop), and you’re comfortable spending a focused weekend swapping in your own words and photos.

You’re not buying “less of a website.” A good template is a finished design system — type, spacing, hover states, mobile layout — that someone already sweated over. You’re skipping the design phase, not the quality. The trade is your time for their time, and when you’re starting out, your time is the cheaper currency.

When you actually need custom

Custom earns its price when your business doesn’t fit a box. Reach for it if you need something a template can’t do (a booking flow, a members area, a specific integration, an unusual content structure), your brand has to feel unmistakably yours, you’re migrating an established site without losing rankings, or — honestly — you just don’t have the hours and want someone to take the whole thing off your plate.

The other quiet reason people go custom: decisions. A template hands you a blank, beautiful house and says “make it yours.” Some people find that freeing. Others stare at it for three months. If choosing paralyses you, paying someone to make the calls is worth every dollar.

The cost nobody puts on the invoice

A $129 template isn’t a $129 website. It’s $129 plus your weekend — and possibly several weekends, if web stuff isn’t your thing. That’s a fine trade when you have more time than money. It’s a terrible trade when you’re slammed and the half-finished site sits in drafts for four months while you lose enquiries.

the cheapest option is the one you’ll actually finish ↗

So the real question isn’t “template or custom,” it’s “which one will actually go live?” An imperfect template that launches Tuesday beats a perfect custom site you keep meaning to commission.

“But won’t a template look generic?”

It can — if you pick a popular one and change nothing but the logo. The fix is twofold: start from a template tuned for your niche rather than a do-everything one, and actually make it yours (your photos, your words, a colour tweak, one good font swap). That’s exactly why my templates come in niche flavours — therapist, coach, course creator, author, consultant, wellness — instead of one beige everything-template. You start 80% of the way to “yours,” not 80% of the way to “everyone’s.”

And if you want the template’s price with none of the weekend, there’s a middle option people forget: buy the template and add done-for-you setup. You get a custom-feeling launch without the custom-build timeline.

A few questions I get

Can I start on a template and go custom later? Absolutely, and lots of people should. Launch on a template now, learn what your site actually needs from real visitors, and commission a custom build in a year or two when you’ve outgrown it and can afford it. Starting lean is not the same as starting badly.

Is Squarespace good enough for a “real” business? Yes. Plenty of businesses doing serious revenue run on a Squarespace template. Platform snobbery costs small businesses money they don’t need to spend. What matters is that the site loads fast, reads clearly, and makes the next step obvious — a template can do all three.

How do I know if I’ve outgrown my template? When you keep wanting it to do something it can’t, or when editing it has become a chore you avoid, or when “this looks like a template” is genuinely costing you trust with the clients you want. Until then, it’s doing its job.