Having a website and using it for business or personal use has never been easier. However, deciding how to create and run your website requires careful consideration. Although do-it-yourself website builders have advanced considerably over the year, most people are likely better served with custom website development. Here are a few advantages of custom websites.

Portability

Most DIY website builders are tied to specific sites. These tools tend to be marketed as free to use, but they’re primarily used to attract customers who will pay per year or per month for the hosting service. This makes it more difficult, and sometimes effectively impossible, to move your website to a new site should you choose to do so in the future. When you rely on custom website development, copying your website to a new host is a simpler task. Even if you’re happy with your current host, prices can change, and companies can modify their usage terms. Furthermore, not all sites offering DIY website builders survive, which can place your website in limbo. Relying on custom coding keeps you in control of your content.

Better Performance

DIY website builders rely on templates, which can be large and take up a significant amount of space. Although disk space generally isn’t much of a concern, larger templates and other features you might never use can make your website significantly slower to load. This concern is amplified considering how people now access websites. Mobile devices, which are becoming more and more common, can suffer from significant performance problems, especially if the website builder isn’t tailored toward portable devices. Visitors to your website can become frustrated due to poor performance, leading to lost readers or even lost customers. When you rely on custom coding, you can ensure that your websites meets your performance goals.

Search Engine Optimization

Regardless of your website’s primary purpose, you’ll want people to be able to find it. Attracting users means appearing high in search engines results, which requires careful development and expertise. With DIY website builders, you’re generally at the mercy of the provider’s SEO tools, which are often minimal. Furthermore, search engines prefer to rank high-quality websites well, and using a website builder can indicate to ranking algorithms that little effort has been put into your site. With custom coding, you can work with developers to implement state-of-the-art SEO techniques and modify your code over time to seek out even better results. Note that overall performance will affect your search engine rankings, and the faster loading times custom coding brings can be especially beneficial.

Solid Platform to Build On

Your needs for your website will change over time, and it’s important to reassess on occasion to ensure your website, as it exists, is meeting your needs. When you use a website builder, you’re limited to what the provider offers, which might not be sufficient for meeting your goals. With custom development, you can be assured that your website will be better able to evolve over time. Website builder code is created by scripts and templates that function well but can be difficult to read and understand. Even if you switch to other custom website developers in the future, the custom code they receive will be easier to read, comprehend and modify.

Clear Ownership

Running a website means taking ownership of intellectual property, and it’s important to manage your content the right way. You own the content on your website when using custom website builders, but your content will likely be mixed in with content owned by the provider and licensed for your use. Should you change hosts or make modifications, doing so might lead to intellectual property violations and other problems. Custom coding is far simpler: You own all of the content you pay for. Managing your intellectual property is essential for managing your business, and the simpler terms of custom development make it easier to handle.

Websites present incredible opportunity, but they also require owners to take on certain responsibility. Although a DIY website builder can get your site up and running quickly, it doesn’t provide the same long-term maintainability of custom code created by experts in the field. Your website is an investment, and the money you invest upfront in ensuring you have a top-notch website will pay off over time.