Website builder or custom website: what suits a Hobart business?

When a website builder is the right buy

A website builder is the right buy when speed and a low starting cost matter most. For many small businesses it is the sensible first step.

• You need to be online this week. A builder site can go live in days. A custom build takes weeks.
• Your starting budget is tight. You pay a subscription with no build price, so the first months cost little up front.
• You enjoy editing it yourself. If you like changing words and photos on a Sunday night, a builder puts every page in your hands.
• You are testing an idea. A new venture can prove there is demand before it spends money on a build.
• You need the standard pages. Home, about, services and a contact form are what website builders handle well.

If that list describes your business, start on a builder. You can move to a custom website later, and the section on moving below covers what carries over.

When a custom website earns its cost

A custom website earns its cost when the site has to do something specific for your business: carry your brand, show live data, keep content consistent across many pages, or belong to you outright.

• A design that is yours. Our developers design and code the site to your brand, page by page.
• Live data from the systems you already run. Booking, practice, property and stock systems can feed the site directly, so nobody keeps a second copy up to date.
• Content that repeats across pages. On a CMS website, change a price once and it updates on the home page, the service page and everywhere else it appears.
• Speed. A static website from Binary Top is hand-coded onto a global CDN and loads in well under a second.
• Ownership. You own outright what Binary Top builds, with no monthly platform licence to keep paying.

The trade-off is a build price up front and a few weeks of work. A straightforward custom website takes about three to five weeks from kickoff to launch. Larger builds with integrations or online sales usually take six to twelve.

Who will edit the site? The question that decides it

The person who will make the changes decides the choice more often than the budget does. Answer that first and the right kind of site usually follows.

• You, on a website builder. You log in and change any page whenever you like. The hours it takes are yours as well.
• Our developers, on a static website. The content lives in the code and you send us the change. Binary Top quotes each change at $65 an hour before work starts, and most small businesses barely touch their site from one year to the next.
• Your team, on a CMS website. Your staff log into an admin to publish and unpublish pages, posts and prices. The front end is still hand-coded, so the site stays quick.

If you are unsure whether your team needs that admin, our guide to whether a Hobart business needs a CMS works through it.

The current ad-hoc rate is published in the FAQ on the home page.

What each option costs, up front and after launch

A website builder spreads its cost across a subscription. A custom website puts most of its cost into the build, then adds running costs that depend on the kind of site.

Compare the two over three years: a subscription that runs as long as the site does, against a build price plus running costs. Most custom projects land between two rows of that table, and the quote follows your brief. For what moves a build price, read what a website costs in Hobart.

Current Binary Top prices live on the home page.

Moving from a builder to a custom website later

Starting on a builder does not lock you in. Your domain and your content carry over to a custom website, and your search rankings can too if you plan the move.

• Your domain. A .au domain name is a licence, and auDA, which runs .au, sets a formal process for moving it to a different registrar. Register the domain to your business from day one.
• Your content. Keep your own copies of the words and photos. The pages are rebuilt on the new site, and the content moves across with them.
• Your rankings. Google recommends a permanent server-side redirect from each old page address to its new one, generally kept for at least a year. Google says 301 and other permanent redirects 'don't cause a loss in PageRank'.

Before the move, list every page address on the builder site, so each one gets a redirect to its new home.

Three Tasmanian builds, three kinds of site

Three Binary Top builds around Hobart show how the who-edits question plays out for a real business.

Westbrook Residence is a development of 17 waterfront townhouses on Bellerive Bluff. The developer had a brochure PDF, and our developers rebuilt it as a static website that buyers find on search and browse on a phone. A brochure's content rarely changes, so a static build fits.

wbresidence.com.au

PDF → site interactive online brochure · Read the Westbrook Residence case study

@Rice is a beachside restaurant in Lauderdale with a view over the Derwent. Behind a full-bleed hero video, the restaurant's staff update the menu, hours and location themselves in Craft CMS, which makes it a CMS website. The @Rice case study shows the build.

North Hobart Massage needed clients to book against the clinic's real availability in Cliniko, the practice system its therapists already use. The site reads availability and appointments straight from the Cliniko API, so the clinic keeps one calendar.

northhobartmassage.com.au

Live Cliniko booking sync · Read the North Hobart Massage case study

Where Binary Top fits

Binary Top is a Hobart web development studio, trading since 2018, and our developers build websites and web apps for businesses in Hobart, Launceston, Devonport and beyond. Every build gets a fixed quote up front, and the senior developers who scope your site are the ones who write its code. If you have weighed it up and want a custom website, tell us what the site needs to do.