Tilda or a Custom Website: Which to Choose for Your Business

How does a website on a builder differ from your own?

The difference is not that "a builder is worse". The difference is the ownership model.

A builder is renting. You pay monthly for access to the platform, and as long as you pay, the site works. The design is assembled from ready-made blocks, the speed and the technical side are determined by the platform, and what you can do is limited to what it has provided for.

Your own website is buying. You pay once for development, after that only hosting and a domain - usually a few dollars a month. The design can be anything, there are no platform limits, the code belongs to you.

Neither model is better by default. Below - when each one is appropriate.

When is a builder the right choice?

I will say it straight, because it is honest: in several cases Tilda is objectively more sensible than custom development.

Testing a hypothesis. You are launching a new product and do not know whether it will take off. Putting a page together in one evening and checking demand is cheaper than commissioning a site.

A one-off event. An event, a promotion, a conference - the page lives for a month and closes.

A really tight budget. If there is no money for proper development right now, a builder is better than nothing or than a badly made cheap site.

You want to do it yourself. Some people enjoy assembling and editing it themselves, and they do it well enough. If that suits you - I will not try to talk you out of it, you are not my client.

What does owning a builder site actually cost?

People rarely count this, and it is worth counting.

A builder plan is a subscription forever. As long as you pay, the site exists. Stop paying - the site is switched off, and along with it everything you assembled in it. Over several years the subscription total often exceeds the cost of your own development, and yet you are left with no asset: all that time you were renting.

Compare that with the opposite model. Development is a one-off spend, after that hosting and a domain at the level of a couple of dollars a month. In two or three years you either own the site or keep paying the subscription - depending on what you chose at the start.

Count the risk of moving separately. You cannot leave a builder "taking the site with you" - the code and the structure stay on the platform. Moving means rebuilding from scratch, and the longer you put it off, the more content you will have to move.

When is it time to move to your own website?

Five signs. If two or more match - moving will most likely pay off.

The site has become the main source of enquiries. A tool your revenue depends on should not depend on someone else's plan and someone else's decisions.

You have hit the limits of the platform. You need non-standard logic, your own calculator, an integration with your system, a special form scenario - and the platform cannot do that.

The site is slow, and that affects search. Builders ship a lot of unnecessary code: speed hits the platform ceiling, and you cannot optimise any further.

The design no longer sets you apart from competitors. Template blocks are recognisable. When the company has grown but the site looks like everyone else's, that costs deals.

The subscription has become a noticeable line of expenses. Especially when paid features have been added on top of the base plan and you are paying for things you do not use.

What happens to SEO when you move?

The main fear - and it is justified, but manageable.

Rankings are lost not because of the change of platform but because of a careless move. What has to be preserved: the addresses of the pages that are already in search, or 301 redirects from them to the new ones; the texts that bring traffic; titles, descriptions and markup; the structure of the sections.

If that is done, search engines carry the accumulated weight over to the new site and the rankings recover. If the site was rebuilt from scratch with all the addresses changed and the texts thrown out, - the search engine sees a mass of pages that have disappeared, and traffic falls. This is the most common and the most expensive mistake when moving.

The practical conclusion: a move is planned from the map of the old URLs, not from a beautiful mockup.

How do I work with sites built on builders?

I will say it straight so as not to waste your time: I do not edit other people's sites on Tilda and other builders. It is not a whim - the platform dictates its own rules, and spot edits in someone else's account turn into work with a permanent dependency on what the platform will allow.

What I do instead: I move your site onto its own platform. Your texts, structure and materials are preserved - you are not starting from scratch. The design is built again for your brand, not out of template blocks. Page addresses and SEO are moved carefully, with redirects.

In terms of money it is closer than it seems: a landing page from $250, a multi-page site from $600, one-off. After that you pay only for hosting and a domain, registered in your name.

If you are not sure whether it is worth moving - write to me, I will look at your site and tell you straight: it is time, or you can stay for now.