Why I moved my own website (GhostSquad) off a website builder
My own website used to run on a hosted website builder. Why? Because years ago when I first needed a website, I really didn't want to put too much effort into it. I found a website builder and did it myself. It was cheaper than paying someone as well. It worked fine… Until it wasn't… One day it broke, and it stayed broken.
I did what you're supposed to do. I raised a support ticket. Then I waited. And waited some more… Support didn't get back to me for over a week while my business website sat there with pages missing and not working properly. The site that's meant to win me work was costing me every day it was broken, and there was nothing I could do about it except continue to refresh my inbox hoping to hear back from support.
That week taught me more about website platforms than the years before it.
The part nobody tells you
A site built on a hosted platform isn't really yours. It looks like yours. It has your name on it. But you can't open it up. You can't move it easily. When something breaks, you can't fix it, and neither can anyone you hire. You join a queue behind thousands of other tickets and wait for a large company that has never heard of your business to care about it.
That's fine right up until the day it isn't.
So I rebuilt it properly
I moved GhostSquad to a custom-built site. Real code, in a real repository, on hosting I control. It was live within days. And looking wayyy better than it was on that other platform.
Then I kept tuning it, because now I could. I could do anything I wanted. That's the whole point. Some numbers from the rebuild:
- Mobile page weight down 84%
- The headline paints in about a second
- No external dependencies slowing anything down
Those are measured numbers, not marketing.
What this means if you own a business
When your site goes down at 9am on a Tuesday, you don't want a ticket number. You want a person who can open it up and fix it that day!
That's the real difference between a platform site and a custom one. It isn't the design, and it isn't even the speed. It's what happens on the bad day/s.
How I build now
Every site I build is owned outright by the client. The code is yours. The domain is yours. If you ever want to walk away, you take the whole thing with you. No lock-in, no hostage situation.
I'd rather keep clients because the work is good than because leaving is hard.