// the honest comparison
Website builder or have it coded?
Wix, Squarespace & Co. compared honestly to a coded website, with a five-year cost calculation and the cases where you don't need us.
What this is about
Anyone who needs a website today quickly faces the same question: click it together yourself or have it coded? The short answer that will accompany you through this page:
Which path fits depends on your plans. Let’s go through it honestly.
How a builder works
Builders like Wix, Squarespace or Jimdo deliver ready-made blocks that you arrange in the browser, text here, image there. That’s tempting: you see a result immediately, need no technical knowledge and pay a manageable monthly amount.
The price for it is in the small print: you rent the platform. Design and features end where the provider allows. The pages carry invisible ballast that makes them slow, visitors and Google notice. And your content sits in a system there’s no easy export from: whoever leaves starts over.
When a builder is enough
There are good reasons for a builder, and we’ll tell you them honestly. If you need a simple business card online, a few pages with contact details, opening hours and a form, a builder is fast and cheap enough. As long as you need no special features, no connections to other programs and place no big demands on load time and findability, it does the job.
Does that describe you? Then take one of the big providers, and come back when your website should do more. No hard feelings.
When a coded website pays off
As soon as your website should do more than “be online”, the maths changes. A coded solution pays off when
- Speed matters: fast pages keep visitors and are favoured by Google. Lean, clean code is clearly superior here, builder ballast can’t be switched off.
- Ownership matters: you get the complete code and are tied to no provider. Nobody can raise prices or cut features you depend on.
- Your presence should be unique: no template sameness, but design and workflows that fit your company.
- You want to grow: further languages, price calculators, bookings or connections to your existing programs can be added cleanly, in a builder such wishes often end at the system boundary.
- Data protection and accessibility are meant seriously: no third-party trackers in the foundation, usable also for people with impairments.
Builder and coded website compared
This is exactly why most people come to this page: the comparison at a glance. The builder column is deliberately fair, not a straw man.
| Criterion | Website builder | Coded website (murmy) |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership | You rent, cancel and it’s all gone | Code, content and access are yours |
| Running costs | Subscription per month, unlimited, tending upward | Paid once; maintenance and hosting optional and cancellable |
| Load time | Sluggish from carried-along system ballast | Fractions of a second, only your code, nothing superfluous |
| Google findability | Basics possible, limits on fine-tuning | Clean technology from the ground up, the best starting point |
| Design | Templates you recognise | Bespoke work that fits your brand |
| Special features | Ends at the provider’s system boundary | Price calculators, bookings, connections, all buildable |
| Moving/switching | Practically a fresh start | Any development team can take over |
| Dependency | Provider changes prices, features, rules | None, you sit in your own house |
What does it really cost? The five-year calculation
The monthly fee of a builder looks small. Let’s calculate honestly, with typical figures for a company website with its own domain, without provider advertising and with the usual extra features (prices in Swiss francs):
| Item | Builder | Coded (murmy) |
|---|---|---|
| Start | approx. CHF 0 to 500 (setup, template) | one-off from approx. CHF 5,000* |
| Monthly costs | approx. CHF 30 to 60 (business tariff, add-on modules) | CHF 0, or optional maintenance and hosting approx. CHF 30 to 80 |
| Your working time | you build and maintain yourself | we build; changes on request |
| After 5 years | approx. CHF 1,800 to 3,600 paid, you own: nothing | paid once, you own: everything |
*Guide value for a focused company website; the price calculator gives you your specific range in two minutes.
Depending on scope, the builder can stay cheaper over five years, for a small business-card page for example. But the calculation tells only half the truth: the silent item is the missing control. With the builder you pay twice in the end, the rent all those years, and the fresh start when you want out.
And what does “coded” mean at murmy in concrete terms?
“Have it coded” sounds like agency effort with project-management loops. With us it means: you talk directly to the developers, see a real version early instead of drafts, and get the whole house with all the keys in the end:
- ✓ The complete source code, transferable to any other development team, anytime.
- ✓ All content and data in open formats, no export needed, it’s yours anyway.
- ✓ All access, domain, server, services. Nothing runs through accounts we own.
- ✓ Understandable documentation, so anyone can carry on tomorrow too.
And maintenance? On request we build in a simple editing system so your team changes text and images itself, or you just send changes to us. Real examples: the trilingual website for Al Freihat (2 weeks) or plaene-scannen.ch with its own online price calculator (1 week), both things builders fail at.
When you don’t need us
We don’t sell you anything you don’t need. If your website stays a pure business card, nothing about it will change for the foreseeable future and you can live well with the limits of a rented platform, then a coded website is overkill for you. We’ll tell you honestly, even if it costs us a project. A satisfied person who recommends us is worth more to us than a job you end up regretting.
The short decision guide
Take a builder if your website should be a simple business card, the budget is tight and you can live with templates and monthly rent.
Have it coded if your website should bring customers, needs to be found on Google, should do something special, or if you simply don’t want to live in a rental.
And if you’re unsure: answer the few questions in the price calculator. You get an honest first assessment, even if it says: “Take the builder.”
By the way, everything on this page applies just as much to software: there too there are off-the-shelf rental solutions, and bespoke work that belongs to you. More on that under custom software. And so your website gets found: SEO.