A free website on Webnode or Wix: when it is enough and when it costs you customers
"Build a website for free" sounds like the perfect start: sign up, pick a template, rewrite the texts and have a site by the evening. Webnode, a Czech builder popular in Slovakia and Czechia, Wix or Google Sites really do make that possible. And for some jobs it is exactly what is needed.
For a business that expects enquiries from its site, though, the question is different: not what the site costs at the start, but how many customers it loses before anyone notices. Below, honestly: what "free" includes, when it is enough, where it costs customers, and what works out better over two or three years.
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A company site, an online shop or a booking system. Most projects ship within 15 working days.
What "free" really includes
A builder's free plan is a demo, not a finished company website. It typically looks like this:
- An address on the builder's subdomain. The site's address carries the platform's name, not your domain.
- The builder's branding right on the page your visitors see.
- Your own domain only on a paid plan, along with other features a business usually needs.
- A template and ready-made blocks. You can change the content and the look, not how the site is built.
What matters is this: the moment a business wants its own domain and a site without someone else's branding, the site stops being free. A one-off "nothing" becomes a recurring payment that never ends, and the site still lives inside someone else's system.
When a builder is enough
Honestly: there are situations where a custom site would be an unnecessary expense.
- You are testing an idea. You want to find out whether there is demand for a service before putting money into it.
- A hobby, a club, a personal page. The site is not meant to win work; it is enough that it exists and shows a contact.
- The first weeks before a real site. The company is freshly registered, the real site is in progress, and until then you need at least a business card online.
What these have in common: nobody uses the site to decide whether to trust you with money. When that changes, so does the answer.
Where a free site costs customers
Trust
Slovak customers check a contractor out. They look at the site's address, the email, the IČO, real photos and whether the company comes across as stable. A builder subdomain with its branding on the page says "we did not want to spend a single euro on our website", and a contact address on a free mailbox adds to that. What people base the decision on is covered in how Slovaks choose a contractor.
Speed on mobile
A builder is one platform serving millions of different sites, so alongside your content it often loads its own scripts and styles for features you may not even use. When the site is slow on a phone, all that is left is shrinking the photos. For comparison: this site is a static Next.js build, and the server responds in about 0.09 seconds.
Mandatory details and the cookie banner
A builder will not sort out what a Slovak company's website must show: business name, registered office, IČO, the register entry and other details. The same goes for the cookie banner: if the site uses analytics or advertising, consent has to be obtained under EU rules and passed to Google's tools through Consent Mode v2. The full list is in mandatory details on a Slovak company website, and the consent rules in the cookie banner in 2026.
Visibility in Google
Page titles and descriptions can usually be set in a builder. You have far less control over what decides a contest with competitors: speed, technical SEO and structured data that tells Google this is a business with an address, services and answers to common questions. On a search like "accountant Bratislava", you are up against companies that have this sorted.
Measurement
A business needs to know how many enquiries the site brought and where they came from. In GA4 that is done with key events: a form submitted, a click on the phone number. On a builder, adding your own code is often limited by the plan, and the form is part of the platform, so reliably capturing a successful submission is harder. The result is GA4 showing visits but not enquiries, and decisions about advertising made blind.
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The hidden costs over two or three years
Count the whole period, not the first day:
| Item | Builder | Custom site |
|---|---|---|
| Start | free | landing page from 1 500€, company website from 3 500€ |
| Own domain, no third-party branding | paid plan, paid indefinitely | domain and hosting registered to you, roughly 50-150€ a year |
| Mandatory details, cookie banner, enquiry tracking | on your own or with someone at extra cost | included |
| Your time | building and editing in the evenings after work | a short conversation; I propose the solution |
| When the business outgrows the site | a new site and moving content by hand | the site is extended |
The most expensive line is missing from the table: the enquiries that never came because the site did not inspire trust, loaded slowly or did not show up in Google.
Lock-in: a site you cannot take with you
A builder site is a rental. The texts and photos are yours, but the site's code stays on the platform, and you cannot take it to another provider. If you decide to leave, you rebuild the site and move the content by hand.
What a custom site gives instead
A site on a modern stack (React, Next.js, TypeScript) is built for one specific business, not assembled from blocks meant to suit everyone. Every new site includes:
- a domain and hosting registered to you (roughly 50-150€ a year), not an account in someone else's system;
- email on your own domain;
- GA4 and Tag Manager with enquiry tracking;
- a cookie banner with Consent Mode v2;
- the mandatory company details;
- basic SEO;
- six months of free support: monitoring, backups, updates and bug fixes.
Prices: a landing page from 1 500€, a company website from 3 500€. The price is stated before work starts and does not change mid-project. On average I deliver in 10 working days.
Features are built around the business, not around what a template offers. At Biliardovňa, a billiard club, online table booking replaced phone calls; on the TOP SKLAD site, free spaces are visible online and can be reserved; and the bilingual Synchro Žralok site pulls its news automatically from a public Instagram account.
Prices by type of site are broken down in what a website costs in Slovakia. If you have just registered a company, the order of steps is in the digital start after company registration. And if instead of a builder you are weighing a cheap site from someone abroad, read why websites built remotely abroad do not sell in Slovakia.
A quick decision
A builder is enough for now if all of these are true:
- The site is not meant to bring enquiries or orders.
- Nobody uses it to decide whether to pay you.
- You do not need to measure where customers come from.
- You accept that the real site will later be built from scratch.
A custom site makes sense if at least one is true:
- You want people to find you in Google, including on competitive searches.
- You plan to advertise and need to know how many enquiries the ads brought.
- You need booking, a client portal or another feature built for your business.
- You already pay for a plan and the site still brings no enquiries.
If you need help
I build custom websites on a modern stack: landing pages, company websites and online shops, with enquiry tracking, mandatory details and a cookie banner from day one. I do not build or maintain sites inside Webnode, Wix or other website builders. And if a builder genuinely is enough for you at this stage, I will tell you so.
I have lived in Slovakia for over ten years and have launched 12+ sites for Slovak companies, such as Krása štúdio OK with booking through Telegram. I work as a Slovak s.r.o. and issue a faktúra with an IČO.
Details on the web development service page. If you already have a builder site and want to know how Google sees it and whether it records enquiries, the free audit returns results within 3 working days.
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