Just when you thought you’d seen it all—supply chain chaos, impossible client requests, and whatever that new zoning law is—here’s another pitfall to dodge: DIY website builders.
Wix, Squarespace, and their budget-friendly cousins promise an easy, beautiful website in minutes. In reality? You get a frustrating, time-sucking mess that never looks as good as the template preview. And for an industry built on aesthetics and functionality, a clunky, slow, cookie-cutter site isn’t just embarrassing—it’s bad for business.
DIY site builders limit branding, layout flexibility, and overall design quality—hurting your firm’s credibility in a visual industry.
Let’s break down why DIY website design is a trap, and what architects can do instead.
What are DIY website builders?
DIY website builders (like Wix, Squarespace, Weebly) are designed for mass appeal. They’re designed for ease in the beginning, not long-term success.
X Not industry-specific: DIY website builders offer pre-made templates, but these templates are industry-agnostic. You could be a home-based jewelry business or a pet-sitter or a fashion blogger. Since these platforms cater to any business, they don’t prioritize the visual and functional needs of design-based industries.
X Rigid controls: Functional customization options are minimal with DIY website builders. When you try to adjust layouts, fonts, or other elements, you tend to get clunky and inconsistent results.
X Performance issues: DIY sites often have bloated code, slow loading speeds, and poor mobile responsiveness. These issues hurt user experience (and your search rankings).
X Limited scalability: Do you want your business to grow? Then you need a website that can grow with you—and DIY website builders can struggle with custom integrations, advanced functionality, and content management improvements.
Redditors agree:
A turn-key site from Projio is not the same as a DIY website builder.
Projio’s websites are built specifically for design professionals and architects:
✓ Industry-specific: Your Projio site is specifically crafted to meet the digital needs of design professionals and their clients. That means portfolio-focused layouts, case study sections, and clear CTAs.
✓ Customizable: Projio sites can be adjusted and improved, growing with you as your business grows. We build the code, you own the code, and we can work together to improve it anytime. We’re not limited by the constraints of a rigid DIY builder.
✓ Peak performance: Projio sites are optimized for fast load times, mobile responsiveness, and SEO. We build them that way to help our designers rank higher and attract more clients.
✓ Scalable: Need advanced features like interactive project maps, quote request tools, or seamless blog integration? A customized Projio layout can handle it—without frustrating workarounds.
The examples advertised for DIY websites can be unattainable
DIY website builders showcase stunning templates—but those demos? They’re professionally curated. Seriously, you’re drooling over example websites that use perfect image ratios, custom CSS, and design tricks that simply aren’t available in the standard drag-and-drop setup for DIY builders.
The reality? These perfect example sites are unattainable. Your attempt at a DIY site probably won’t match the polished examples on display.
When you try to swap in your own images and content, the perfect layout often breaks. Text wraps awkwardly, image quality degrades, and spacing looks off.
You’re a designer—but you’re not a website designer.
On the one hand, there’s no shame in admitting that you can’t get a DIY site to look like a professionally coded website. On the other hand, you really do need a high-quality site to succeed in a design-driven industry like architecture.
Don’t be duped by the pretty pictures. DIY website builders tend to look really great in demos, but your results are likely to be far less impressive.
Working on your DIY website can become a time-suck
How do I resize a text box on Wix?
What is the image size ratio for a header image on Squarespace?
Where do I find the text formatting option on Weebly?
Have you ever had to Google something like this? Please accept our condolences.
DIY platforms promise simplicity, but even basic tasks (resizing images, aligning text, or adjusting layouts) can turn into hours of frustration. That’s because DIY website builders have rigid constraints that force you to work around their limitations. Even a small change isn’t simple.
You may not even notice how much time you’ve spent hyperfocusing on fixing a small part of your website.
But time is money, as they say.
Any time you spend on your website is time that could be spent on billable work, client meetings, or project management.
Don’t let your DIY website become a distraction to the real work. Fixing small issues, troubleshooting broken elements, or making updates—these all take time. If your website becomes a side project that drains your energy without delivering real value, it’s costing you more than you think.
DIY websites take time to maintain…so you might avoid updating it
Remember this: A website is only as good as its most recent update.
Once you struggle through getting a DIY website just the way you want it…how likely are you to make any changes in the future? Pretty unlikely.
DIY sites often require tedious reformatting to add new projects—as a result, updates get pushed aside.
Over time, your portfolio will stagnate, leaving potential clients questioning whether you’re still active.
A DIY site builder is a lose-lose scenario for you and your business. Either you’ll avoid making any more website updates because it was so traumatic the first time around—or you’ll fall into the sunk cost fallacy and chase your initial time investment with even more tweaking and fiddling, only to get an imperfect result at the expense of billable hours.
The solution is to use a well-structured, custom-built website that makes it easy to add new work. This way, your online presence stays fresh and relevant with no tears or table-flipping.
User experience is often terrible on DIY websites
DIY websites deliver worse user experience. That’s what the data shows.
DIY sites often suffer from:
- Slow load speeds
- Messy code
- Poor mobile responsiveness
- Lack of accessibility features
Why does this matter? Well, if a prospective client hates your site they probably won’t call you. But of equal importance is how Google interprets your site’s user experience.
Your site’s user experience is directly correlated to how Google ranks you.
A good user experience means that your site needs to perform equally well on phones, tablets, and laptops. Your site also needs to meet WCAG standards so that people with disabilities can navigate your site.
A slow, clunky site costs you leads and weakens your online presence.
Review and next steps
Reviews and referrals can only keep you afloat for so long.
Architects and design professionals like you need a reliable, impressive, scalable online presence. So why not work with an expert?
Our goal is to provide great value for architectural firms without huge marketing budgets. Our data-driven website blueprints lead with design—your designs—while delivering a fully accessible, best-in-class user experience for every site visitor. Projio can help you drive referrals through the architect-selection process faster. Reach out to Projio for support. Our team is real and the results are real.