Your website, built from scratch to be fast, found, and truly yours.

Match the tool to the job. Squarespace/Wix for a simple brochure site you'll edit yourself, fastest and cheapest, least flexible. Webflow for designer-grade control on a marketing site, with a learning curve. WordPress for endless extensibility if you (or someone) will manage hosting/plugins/updates. Pick the simplest one that holds you for 2–3 years. The platform matters far less than whether the site is fast, mobile first, and findable.

For a true 5-page brochure site, WordPress is often more machine than you need, a builder (Squarespace) or Webflow will launch faster with less maintenance. You 'outgrow' a builder when you need custom logic, complex integrations, or a big content operation. Be honest about your 2–3 year trajectory: if it's a marketing site, a builder or Webflow is usually fine; if you're building a product, start on something you won't fight.

It depends on your needs, not the developer's preference. Custom (Next.js) genuinely wins for performance, control, and anything involving auth, complex logic, or AI features, and you fully own the code. It's overkill for a simple brochure site that a non-technical person needs to edit daily. Ask: what does custom let me do that a CMS can't, and who edits content after launch? If there's no clear answer to the first, a CMS is probably fine.

Because a $500 site and a $30,000 site are rarely the same thing. Cheap end: a template with your logo. Higher end: custom design, conversion strategy, SEO/schema, integrations, performance, accessibility, and post-launch accountability. For most small businesses a well built marketing site is low-to-mid four figures; custom app work runs more. Judge quotes by what's included and who's accountable after launch, not the headline number.

A real build is discovery (goals, content, conversion paths), design (custom, mobile first, revised with you), build (development, integrations, CMS setup), optimization (speed, SEO, accessibility), and launch/QA. A template flipped overnight skips most of that, which is why it converts and ranks like a template. Faster is possible when content is ready and scope is tight; the weeks are the work, not the developer stalling.

Hosting, domain renewal, SSL, premium plugins/apps, and, the big one, maintenance (updates, security, backups, small fixes). A website is a living asset, not a one time purchase. Budget a monthly or annual amount for upkeep. Neglecting it is how sites get hacked, break after an update, or slowly rot. Ask any vendor for the full ongoing cost picture before you sign, not just the build price.

For a simple site and a founder with time and taste, DIY on a builder is completely legitimate, many good small-business sites are built this way. It becomes a false economy when the result is slow, unfindable, or off-brand enough to cost you leads, or when you sink 60 hours into something a pro would do better in 10. Be honest about your time and skill. DIY the simple; hire out when the site is doing real revenue work.

Builder: cheapest, you do the work, limited ceiling. Freelancer: more custom and affordable, but you're reliant on one person's availability and follow-through. Agency: most expensive, but you get a team, process, and continuity after launch. For a first site, the deciding factors are budget, how custom you need it, and how much you value someone being there when something breaks in six months. There's no wrong answer, just the right fit for your situation.

Ask for a portfolio of live sites (visit them, test on mobile, check speed), talk to a past client, and get specifics in writing: scope, timeline, who owns the domain/hosting/code, what happens after launch, and how revisions work. Red flags: no references, vague scope, no ownership clarity, and prices that seem too good. The cheapest quote that leaves you stranded is the most expensive option. Pay for clarity and accountability, not just code.

You should, and you should insist on it in writing before work starts. Own your domain (registered in YOUR account), your hosting account, and your code/content. A reputable partner sets it up that way by default and gives you full admin access. If a vendor won't, if the site lives in their accounts and you can't leave with it, that's a leash, not a partnership. Ownership is what turns a website from a rental into an asset you control.

Painful and common. First, establish what you can recover: your domain registrar (do a WHOIS lookup, if it's in your name you can regain control), your hosting provider, and any CMS logins. If everything is in the developer's accounts, you may have to rebuild, but you can usually save the content by copying it from the live site. Then never again: for the rebuild, insist everything is registered in your accounts. This is exactly why ownership upfront matters.

Whoever you agree to in writing, the mistake is not deciding. Options: a care/maintenance plan with your builder (updates, backups, security, small fixes for a monthly fee), doing it yourself if you're comfortable, or a hybrid. On WordPress especially, someone must keep plugins/core updated or the site becomes a security risk. Clarify this before launch so the site doesn't quietly rot the day the project 'ends.'

Usually all three, in that order of impact. Cheap shared hosting throttles you; a bloated theme loads far more than you need; and every plugin adds scripts. Fix it by moving to decent hosting, compressing/right-sizing images (often the single biggest win), using a lightweight theme, and deleting plugins you can't tie to a result. Speed is a real ranking and conversion factor, a 0.1s speedup lifted retail conversions 8.4% in Google's study.

It wasn't built mobile first. With ~60% of traffic on phones, that's the majority of your visitors seeing a broken experience, and 61% won't come back after a bad mobile visit. The fix ranges from responsive CSS adjustments (if the foundation is decent) to a rebuild on a mobile first framework (if it's fundamentally desktop-only). Test on real devices, not just a resized browser. Mobile isn't a version of your site, it's the main one.

A site isn't findable by default, you have to earn it. Common gaps: pages aren't indexed (check Google Search Console), thin or missing content for what customers actually search, no title/meta optimization, slow pages, and no schema. Launching a site is not the same as ranking it. Make sure it's indexed, write genuinely useful pages targeting real queries, add structured data, and keep it fast, then it can start showing up on Google and in AI answers.

Depends on whether the problems are cosmetic or structural. If it converts and ranks but looks old, a refresh on the same foundation is cheaper and lower-risk. If it's slow, unfindable, impossible to edit, or built on something you're fighting, a rebuild usually pays for itself, patching a broken foundation wastes money. Diagnose first: is it a paint job or a foundation problem? That answer, not the age, decides it.

Tie it to outcomes or don't do it. A redesign justified by 'it looks old' is a gamble; one justified by 'we're losing leads at these specific steps, mobile converts badly, and the site is slow' is an investment with a measurable target. The documented upside is real, performance and UX fixes have driven double-digit conversion and revenue gains. Define the goal (more leads, faster load, better mobile conversion), then measure the redesign against it.