Website builders solve a real problem. If you need a professional-looking site by the end of the week and you don’t write code, a builder gets you there faster and cheaper than any alternative.
What they trade away is control — over your costs, your technical options, and how easily you can leave. Those trade-offs are manageable if you understand them going in and expensive to discover later. This guide covers the main platforms, what they actually cost a New Zealand business, what you can take with you if you move, and the signals that a builder has stopped being the right fit.
What a website builder actually is
A website builder is hosted software. You edit your site through a visual interface in your browser, and the company runs the servers, applies the updates and handles the security. You never touch a file.
That bundling is the appeal: hosting, software, templates and support arrive as one monthly fee. It’s also the constraint. Because everything runs on the provider’s infrastructure, what you can build is bounded by what that provider supports.
The alternative is self-hosted software — most commonly WordPress — where you buy hosting separately and install the platform yourself. More setup, more control, and a considerably lower ceiling on what you can eventually do.
The main platforms and who they suit
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Wix
The most flexible visual editor of the major builders. You can place elements anywhere on the canvas rather than working within a grid, and it has the only genuine free tier among the big platforms — though free sites carry a Wix subdomain and Wix advertising, which rules them out for most businesses.
The main constraint is that you can’t switch templates after publishing without rebuilding, so the layout decision is close to permanent.
Squarespace
More structured than Wix, with templates that are harder to make ugly. Strong for portfolios, hospitality, creative services and anything image-led. No free tier, though there’s a trial that doesn’t require a credit card.
Shopify
Built specifically for selling physical products, and the strongest option if that’s your business. Inventory, checkout, shipping and payment handling are all native rather than bolted on. Overkill and poor value if you aren’t running a store.
Webflow
Aimed at designers rather than beginners — a steeper learning curve in exchange for far more design control. Notably, it lets you export static HTML and CSS, which most builders don’t.
Self-hosted WordPress
Not a builder in the same sense, but the destination many businesses eventually reach. You choose your own hosting, install WordPress, and add a page-building plugin if you want a visual editor. Nothing about the platform is decided for you, which is both the advantage and the work.
There are also smaller platforms marketing specifically to the New Zealand market, such as Rocketspark, which are worth a look if local billing and local support matter to you.
What builders actually cost a New Zealand business
Here’s the detail that most guides written for this market miss: the major builders bill New Zealand customers in US dollars. Shopify, Wix and Squarespace all do.
That has three practical consequences. Your monthly cost moves with the exchange rate. Your card issuer may add a foreign transaction fee. And there’s no New Zealand GST component to claim back on those subscriptions the way you would on a domestic service.
A plan advertised at US$29 a month is not a NZ$29 expense. Convert it before you compare.
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Two further costs worth knowing about:
Shopify’s third-party gateway surcharge. If you process payments through a gateway other than Shopify Payments, Shopify adds a percentage on top of your plan fee — around 2% on the Basic plan, decreasing on higher tiers. On Shopify Payments there’s no surcharge; you pay card processing rates instead.
App and add-on subscriptions. These stack quickly. Forms, bookings, review widgets and SEO tools are each a few dollars a month, and a store running six or seven apps can easily double its base plan cost.
What you can and can’t take with you
This is the most consequential question and the one most often answered badly, in both directions. The accurate position is a split: your data is usually portable, your design almost never is.
Wix states in its own help documentation that because it’s a SaaS platform, your site must run on Wix’s servers and can’t be moved to another host. You can still export data — products, contacts, orders and invoices as CSV files — but there’s no way to download the site itself.
Squarespace provides an XML export intended for importing into WordPress, covering blog posts and basic pages, plus a CSV export of products. Squarespace is explicit that not everything comes across, because many features depend on its own JavaScript and CSS.
Shopify exports products, customers and orders as CSV files.
Webflow exports static HTML and CSS.
In every case, the things that don’t transfer are the same: your visual design and layout, custom CSS, forms and form submissions, SEO metadata, and any redirects you’d already configured. If you leave, the rebuild is the real cost — not the data.
The takeaway isn’t “never use a builder.” It’s that a builder site is best treated as a business asset with a rebuild cost attached, rather than as something you’ll migrate cleanly one day.
Builders and search visibility
Builder SEO has improved substantially, and blanket claims that these platforms “can’t rank” are out of date. The genuine limitations are narrower and worth knowing precisely:
Metadata control on entry tiers. Lower plans on some platforms restrict per-page title tags, meta descriptions and Open Graph data.
URL structure. Some platforms impose fixed path prefixes you can’t change — Wix blog posts sit under /post/, for example. That’s not a ranking penalty, but it does constrain your architecture and complicates your redirect map if you ever leave.
JavaScript weight. Builders ship framework code you can’t touch, which affects loading performance. This matters because Google measures real-world page experience through Core Web Vitals — Largest Contentful Paint, Interaction to Next Paint and Cumulative Layout Shift. You can influence these on a builder through images and content choices, but you can’t optimise the underlying bundle. On self-hosted WordPress, the server and the code are both yours to tune.
Free-tier subdomains. If your site lives at yourbrand.platform.com, links and authority accrue to a domain you don’t own. This is a real problem, and the fix is simple: get a proper domain. Our guide to buying a .nz domain covers the process, and connecting one generally requires a paid plan on any builder.
When a builder stops being the right choice
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The clearest trigger is integration. When you need your site to talk to something else — booking software, a point-of-sale system, an inventory feed, a client portal, a CRM — you’re bounded by whatever exists in your platform’s app marketplace. If the integration you need isn’t there, on a builder it usually can’t be built.
The second is cost drift. A base plan plus six apps plus transaction percentages can quietly exceed what hosting plus a developer’s occasional time would cost.
The third is simply performance ceilings you can’t move past despite doing everything right on your end.
Migrating to self-hosted WordPress without losing your rankings
If you do move, the sequence matters more than the speed.
Set up hosting and install WordPress first. Choose a host with a current PHP version — WordPress.org currently recommends PHP 8.3 or greater with MariaDB 10.11+ or MySQL 8.0+, and HTTPS on every install. Our WordPress guide covers the basics.
Export what you can, download what you can’t. Run the platform’s export, then separately download your images at full resolution. Exports typically reference images by URL rather than including the files, so cancelling your old account before you’ve saved them will break everything they point at.
Map your old URLs to your new ones. Do this in a spreadsheet before you build. Every page that currently gets traffic needs a destination.
Rebuild the design. Pick a lightweight theme and reconstruct the layout. This is the bulk of the work.
Set up 301 redirects, then switch. Permanent redirects preserve most of the search value of your old URLs. Without them, everything Google knows about your site points at pages that no longer exist.
Keep the old site live until the new one is indexed. Cancelling the subscription the day you launch is the most common and most expensive mistake in this whole process. Give it a few weeks.
This article is provided for factual and informational purposes only. It does not constitute professional, financial or purchasing advice, and it is not a recommendation to use any particular platform. Platform pricing, features and export capabilities change frequently, and the major builders bill in US dollars — check each provider’s current pricing page and confirm the tax treatment of overseas subscriptions with your accountant before budgeting. For current software requirements, see the WordPress.org requirements page; for performance metric definitions, see Google’s Web Vitals documentation.
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Frequently asked questions
Can I use a .nz domain with a website builder?
Yes, but generally only on a paid plan. Free tiers put your site on a platform subdomain. You register the domain separately through a registrar and point it at the builder, so the domain stays yours regardless of which platform you use.
Do website builders really bill in US dollars?
The major ones do for New Zealand customers. That means your monthly cost shifts with the exchange rate, your bank may add a foreign transaction fee, and there’s no NZ GST component to claim back. Convert advertised prices before comparing them with local alternatives.
Can I export my site if I want to leave?
Partly. Your data usually comes out — products, contacts and orders as CSV, and on Squarespace blog and page content as XML. Your design, layout, custom code, forms and redirects do not. Wix’s own documentation confirms its sites can’t be hosted elsewhere. Plan for a rebuild rather than a migration.
Are builder sites bad for SEO?
Not inherently — the platforms have improved considerably. The real constraints are metadata controls on lower plans, fixed URL structures, JavaScript weight you can’t optimise, and free-tier subdomains that build authority for someone else’s domain. A well-run builder site on a proper domain can rank perfectly well.
Is WordPress cheaper than a builder?
Usually over time, but not always at the start. You pay for hosting separately and take on the setup and maintenance work yourself. The saving grows as your needs do, because adding features doesn’t mean upgrading a plan tier.
How do I know when I’ve outgrown my builder?
The clearest signal is needing an integration your platform’s app marketplace doesn’t offer. Others: your combined app subscriptions rivalling a hosting-plus-developer arrangement, or hitting a performance ceiling you can’t move past.
How long does it take to move from a builder to WordPress?
For a small brochure site with content already written, a few days to a couple of weeks depending on how much design you’re rebuilding. Stores take longer because products, variants and payment setup all need checking. Keep the old site running throughout.