Use a builder, or hire a designer?
Which one is better? Better for the site you are actually building.
Two routes to the same website. This site works through the trade between them — what each one costs, what each one asks of you, and where each one stops being the obvious answer.
same money, two completely different Tuesdays
the sketch is the point — reasoning on the page, never a score
Two sketches of the same website
Neither of these is the answer. They are the two shapes one project can take, drawn at the same size on purpose.
Build it yourself
Template, drag, publish. You keep the keys and you keep the work, and the ceiling is whatever the platform happens to do.
Hire a designer
A brief, a back-and-forth, a build. You are buying judgement and time, and the floor is how well you can describe the job.
Same panel, same pen, same amount of ink — and it stays that way. However this comes out for a given project, it will come out in words with the reasoning shown, not as a number attached to one side.
The bits worth sketching out
The ground this site is being built on, listed so you can see whether it is the right place to come back to.
What each route actually costs
A subscription plus your own evenings, set against a quote and a scope. The two bills do not arrive in the same shape.
Who can change it in month six
Editing your own copy on a Sunday, or filing a change request and waiting. Most of the difference shows up after launch.
How long until it is actually live
An afternoon of templates against weeks of rounds — and what each timeline quietly assumes of you.
Where each route runs out
The point a builder cannot do the thing you need, and the point the budget cannot pay for it either.
What you are left holding
Files, logins, hosting, domain. Who owns which, and what happens to the site if you and the other party part ways.
None of these are written yet, which is why none of them is a link. When one is written it turns into a link on this napkin.
five headings, nothing behind them yet
Notes to self, before any of it gets written
Worth pinning down while the pad is still blank, because they are what the writing will be held to afterwards.
Nothing here gets a number
No scores, no stars, no tier boards. Where something comes out ahead it will say so in a sentence, with the reason sitting next to it.
Neither side starts in front
A builder and a designer are two routes, not a winner and a runner-up. The right answer moves with the project, so the write-ups start with the project.
Paid links are said out loud
Some links here may earn a commission. That does not move anything up the page, and it is stated wherever it applies.
pinned first, on purpose
How to run the decision without us
Four boxes and three arrows. It gets most people to an answer before they read a word of anyone's comparison.
Draw the site first
Pages, not platforms. Five boxes on a napkin is enough to price either route.
Say who edits it later
Answer that before you look at a single price. It decides more than the build does.
Price the whole first year
Subscription plus your hours, against a quote plus whatever a change costs afterwards.
Then pick the route
By this point it has usually picked itself. The write-ups are for when it has not.
The pad is still blank
This site was set up recently and nothing has been published on it yet. There are no comparisons, no write-ups and no reviews behind the headings above — only the topics themselves, which are what it is being built to cover.
When the first pieces go up they will appear on napkin 3 as links. Until then the only two things here that go anywhere are this page and the sitemap.