Should You Build Your Own Squarespace Site or Hire a Designer?
The honest answer: it depends. Not on the platform (Squarespace is genuinely good at this), but on your situation, your budget, your time, and your comfort with slightly fiddly software.
This post is aimed at business owners making this decision, not designers. If you're wondering whether to DIY or hire, the choice is yours. Both paths work. They just work differently, cost differently, and take different amounts of time and stress.
We're going to walk through when DIY makes sense, when hiring makes sense, what to expect from both, and how to figure out which is right for your situation. By the end, you'll know.
The DIY Case: When Building Your Own Squarespace Site Makes Sense
You Have a Small, Simple Site
If you're building a simple five-page site (home, about, services, portfolio, contact), Squarespace's templates and Fluid Engine make this genuinely achievable for someone with no design experience.
A simple site means: you don't need custom integrations, you don't need anything unusual, you're not doing advanced e-commerce or course hosting, and your brand is relatively straightforward (solid colours, standard fonts, simple layouts).
Squarespace is designed for this use case. You pick a template, you adapt it to your business, you write your content, and you're done. The whole process might take you a week of part-time work.
You Genuinely Enjoy the Creative Process
Some people find website building genuinely engaging. They like figuring out how things work, they're comfortable clicking around in software, they enjoy the iterative process of trying something, checking how it looks, adjusting, and trying again.
If that's you, building your own site is more than just a cost-saving measure. It's actually more enjoyable than waiting for a designer to deliver what you're imagining. The learning curve is real, but it's worth it for you because the learning itself is satisfying.
This isn't most people. But if it's you, you'll know.
You Have a Very Tight Budget
Professional Squarespace website design starts around £3,000 to £5,000. DIY means you're paying for the platform (Squarespace costs £20 to £33 per month depending on your plan) and your own time. That's a genuine difference if your budget is £500 or £1,000.
Worth knowing: Squarespace's premium templates cost £40 to £60, and they're genuinely high-quality starting points. You're not building from a blank canvas. You're adapting existing professional designs. That reduces the difficulty significantly.
You're Building a Personal Project, Not a Business Asset
Personal blogs, hobby portfolios, simple CV websites, event pages—these are lower-stakes projects. If it takes longer than expected or the design isn't perfect, nobody's losing money. Building your own site is a reasonable choice.
If your site is supposed to generate revenue (attract customers, make sales, establish credibility for your business), the stakes are higher. A slow site, confusing navigation, or mediocre design actually costs you money. The DIY approach becomes less attractive.
You Have Time and Patience
Building a site takes time. A professional designer might deliver a finished site in four to six weeks. You might take three months, partly because you only work on it a few hours per week, and partly because the learning curve means you'll do things wrong the first time and need to redo them.
You also need patience with small frustrations. Squarespace is user-friendly, but nothing is completely intuitive. You'll spend 45 minutes figuring out how to make a button a different colour. You'll get annoyed that you can't quite get the spacing right. You'll wonder why something looks perfect on your laptop but weird on your phone.
If you have the time and patience, these are solvable problems. If you're impatient or pressed for time, they'll drive you mad.
The Hiring Case: When a Professional Designer Makes Sense
Your Site Is a Business-Critical Asset
If your website is supposed to generate enquiries, leads, or sales, it's a business investment. You're not paying for a website. You're paying for what the website generates.
A professionally designed site, with clear positioning, thoughtful CTA placement, fast load times, and strategic structure, typically converts better than a DIY site. Not because design is magical, but because someone who's done this a hundred times knows what works.
The math: if a professional site generates 5-10 extra enquiries per month (a conservative estimate), and your average job or sale is worth £1,500, you're looking at £7,500 to £15,000 in additional revenue per month. A one-time £5,000 design investment pays for itself in the first month.
If your site is supposed to generate revenue, hiring is almost always the right call.
You Don't Have Time or Interest in Learning
Most business owners are busy. They're managing staff, serving customers, handling operations. The thought of spending three months learning Squarespace is appealing in theory and exhausting in practice.
If your time is worth more than £20 per hour (and if you're running a business, it almost certainly is), paying someone else to build the site is actually the more economical choice. You stay focused on your business. Someone else handles the website. Everyone's time gets spent where it's most valuable.
You Need Something Custom or Complex
Squarespace handles most standard website needs well. But if you need something unusual—a complex e-commerce setup, course hosting with specific payment structures, advanced membership features, significant custom integrations, or a really unusual design direction—you might exceed what Squarespace can do without significant custom code.
A good Squarespace designer knows the boundaries of what's possible on the platform and can recommend either custom code solutions (which they might handle) or suggesting a different approach that achieves your goal within Squarespace's constraints.
Your Brand Is Complex or Sensitive
Some businesses have complex positioning. You're not a simple "photographer" or "plumber"—you're a niche specialist with a specific audience and a specific value proposition that takes careful articulation.
Professional consulting, luxury goods, B2B services, mission-driven nonprofits—these often need strategic thinking about positioning, messaging, and audience before the design even starts. A designer who does discovery work (interviewing you, understanding your business, researching your market) can help you clarify your positioning and then build the site to reflect that clarity.
DIY designers (including you, if you're building your own site) often skip the discovery phase. You go straight to design. You might get a nice-looking site that doesn't actually communicate your positioning clearly to your target audience.
You Want Something That Looks Distinctive
Squarespace templates are beautiful. Tons of people use the same templates. If you build your site with a template and minimal customisation, there's a decent chance your site looks similar to 50 other sites built on the same template.
A designer customises the template (or builds from scratch in the Fluid Engine), adjusts typography, modifies colour schemes, creates custom layouts, and generally makes your site look like it was designed specifically for your business, not pulled off a shelf.
The difference isn't huge, but it's real. And it compounds. A site that looks professional and distinctive builds trust better than a site that looks professional but generic.
You've Never Done This Before and You're Anxious About It
If you're reading this post and feeling mildly panicked at the thought of building your own website, that's useful information. Anxiety about a task is often a sign that you shouldn't be the one doing it.
Hiring removes the anxiety. Someone else handles the technical details. You provide feedback and direction. You review the final result. You can see what's actually possible before committing.
What to Expect When You DIY
Learning Curve
You're going to spend the first 10-15 hours learning Squarespace basics. Where things are, how to edit content, how to adjust settings, what the Fluid Engine is and how it works differently from the standard layout editor.
Squarespace has good tutorials and documentation, but they're not always intuitive. You'll find yourself watching a 15-minute video to figure out a 30-second task. That's normal.
Time Commitment
A simple five-page site, starting with a template, takes roughly 40-80 hours of work. That's assuming you have your content written, you know what you want to say, and you're not making constant changes.
Breaking that down: 5-10 hours learning the platform, 10 hours writing and gathering content, 15 hours setting up pages and adapting the template, 10 hours creating or gathering images, 10-20 hours adjusting and tweaking until you're happy with how it looks.
If you only have 5 hours per week to work on this, you're looking at two to four months.
You'll Get Stuck
You'll encounter something that isn't working the way you expect, or something that you want to do that the template doesn't easily allow. You'll need to figure out whether it's a knowledge gap (you don't know how to do it) or a platform limitation (Squarespace genuinely doesn't do this easily).
Squarespace has a support forum. Google is your friend. YouTube has tutorials for almost everything. Most problems are solvable with 20 minutes of searching. Some require custom CSS code, which you can often find templates for online and adapt.
The frustration threshold varies. Some people find this problem-solving process engaging. Others find it enraging.
The Result Will Be Functional, Probably Decent-Looking
You're not going to build something that looks bad, assuming you start with a good template and follow basic design principles (good contrast, readable fonts, clear hierarchy). Squarespace templates are designed to look good with minimal customisation.
Will it look as polished as something a professional designer built? Probably not. Will it work as well? Possibly not—you might miss optimisations that a professional would automatically make. But will it work? Almost certainly yes.
What to Expect When You Hire a Designer
The Process
A professional Squarespace design process looks roughly like this:
Discovery (1-2 weeks): The designer interviews you, learns about your business, understands your goals, reviews your competition, and creates a brief that articulates what the site needs to achieve.
Design (2-3 weeks): The designer creates design mockups, typically desktop and mobile versions of the key pages. You review these and provide feedback. They revise until you approve.
Build (1-2 weeks): The designer builds the approved design in Squarespace. They set up integrations (email capture, contact forms, payment processing), optimise for speed, and test on multiple devices.
Content & Review (1 week): You provide final content, images, and any copy adjustments. The designer integrates these and you do a final review.
Launch & Training (a few days): The site goes live. The designer walks you through how to use it, how to update content, and where to go if you need help later.
Total time: roughly four to eight weeks, depending on complexity and responsiveness of feedback.
Your Role
You're not building the site. You're providing direction, making decisions, and giving feedback. You need to:
Articulate what you want the site to achieve (generate bookings, sell products, establish credibility).
Describe your ideal customer or client.
Provide existing brand materials (logo, colour scheme, any guidelines).
Gather and write content (or budget for a copywriter to do this).
Provide images, photos, and portfolio examples.
Review designs and give clear feedback.
Make decisions when the designer presents options.
Be reasonably available (respond to emails within 24-48 hours).
Most projects slow down not because of the designer, but because the client is slow to provide content, slow to review work, or slow to make decisions.
What You Get
A finished, launched website that's optimised for conversion, tested on mobile and desktop, set up with analytics, possibly integrated with your email service or booking system, and backed by a designer who understands it thoroughly and can help you fix things later if they break.
You also get strategic input. A good designer doesn't just build what you ask for. They notice when your positioning is unclear and help you clarify it. They question design choices that might hurt conversion. They recommend approaches based on seeing what works across dozens of other clients.
Cost
Professional Squarespace design in the UK ranges from £3,000 (for simple builds by junior designers) to £15,000+ (for complex projects from experienced specialists). Most experienced designers charge £4,000 to £8,000.
This covers design, build, testing, content integration, and launch. It doesn't typically cover copywriting (you provide that or hire a copywriter), high-end photography (you provide existing images or hire a photographer), or ongoing management (some designers offer retainer plans for that).
How to Know Which Is Right for You
Build Your Own If:
Your site is simple (under 10 pages).
Your budget is under £1,000.
Your timeline is flexible (you don't need it done in a month).
You enjoy learning software.
Your business doesn't rely heavily on the site for revenue generation.
You're happy with good-looking templates with minimal customisation.
You have time to invest (5-10 hours per week for 2-4 months).
Hire a Designer If:
Your site is business-critical (you need it to generate enquiries or sales).
Your budget is over £3,000.
Your timeline is tight (you need it in 4-8 weeks).
You don't want to learn software; you want results.
Your business is complex and needs strategic positioning.
You want something distinctive and customised.
You'd rather spend your time on your business than on web design.
A Middle Ground: Using Squarespace Templates Thoughtfully
If you're genuinely undecided, there's a middle path. Many business owners build their own site using a high-quality Squarespace template, then hire a designer for a limited engagement to polish and optimise it.
This might look like: you build a rough version, then pay a designer £1,000-£2,000 for a focused session to improve the design, optimise the content, and make sure everything is conversion-focused. It's cheaper than a full redesign, faster than building from scratch, and better than building entirely alone.
Not all designers offer this, but some do. It's worth asking if you're planning to DIY but want some professional input along the way.
Practical Next Steps
If You're Leaning Toward DIY:
Spend an hour exploring Squarespace's template library. Look for templates that feel close to what you imagine for your site.
Read reviews of Squarespace on platforms like Trustpilot to understand common pain points.
Watch one full tutorial on YouTube (search "how to build a Squarespace website from scratch"). Estimate how long it feels like it would take you.
Be honest: am I actually going to enjoy this, or am I just trying to save money?
If you're committed, start building with the understanding that your first version might not be perfect, and that's fine.
If You're Leaning Toward Hiring:
Start gathering material: your logo, brand colours, portfolio examples, content (or rough drafts), images.
Write one paragraph describing your ideal customer. What problem do they have? Why would they choose you?
Get quotes from 2-3 Squarespace designers. Ask what's included and what's not. Ask how they handle revisions.
Check references or case studies. Look at previous work and notice: does it look distinctive, or does it look like a template?
Make sure you understand the process and timeline before you commit.
The Bottom Line
Both paths work. DIY is cheaper and gives you full control. Hiring is faster and typically delivers better results. The choice comes down to your budget, your timeline, your technical comfort, and your priorities.
If you have the time, the patience, and the budget of £500-£1,000, DIY is worth trying. If you don't have much time, your site is business-critical, or you'd rather stay focused on your business, hiring makes sense.
Neither choice is wrong. Just choose deliberately, not by accident or anxiety. Whatever you decide, commit to it and follow through.