Wix, Framer, AI: The real cost of your website in 2026
Platforms promise a website in 10 minutes. AI promises to do it all for you. Before you believe them, do the math—and ask yourself the right question.
In 2026, the question is no longer really "Wix or a developer?". It has become: "Why pay someone when AI builds a website in 10 minutes?"
It is a fair question. It deserves an honest answer.
What platforms and AI do well
Let's be direct: Wix, Framer, Squarespace, and their AI cousins do impressive things. In a few hours, you get something visually clean, responsive, with a domain name and a working contact form.
For a personal blog, a simple landing page, a test project—it is enough. Generative AI has accelerated this even further: describe your business, and a first draft appears in minutes.
So why not stop there?
What these tools don't do
They generate the generic. By definition.
An AI builder doesn't know your trade, your constraints, your clients. It doesn't know that your booking system needs to sync with your Google Calendar, send an SMS confirmation, and block time slots according to rules only you know. It doesn't know that your shop must handle basket subscriptions with varying frequencies and product substitutions.
It produces the average of what it has seen. And average is invisible.
A Framer site looks like every other Framer site. This isn't a judgment—it's a technical constraint of the system.
The 5-year calculation
Here are the numbers, unfiltered.
Typical platform (Framer or Wix Business)
| Item | Over 5 years |
|---|---|
| Subscription (€20–35/mo) | €1,200 – €2,100 |
| Domain | ~€75 |
| Paid apps and plugins | €200 – €600 |
| Estimated total | ~€1,500 – €2,800 |
Not counting sales commissions (up to 3%), annual price hikes, and the time spent bypassing the platform's limitations.
Custom-built website (Presence offer)
| Item | Over 5 years |
|---|---|
| Creation (one-time fee) | €1,500 excl. VAT |
| Vercel hosting | €0 |
| Domain | ~€75 |
| Optional maintenance | €0 if you don't need it |
| Total w/o maintenance | ~€1,575 excl. VAT |
Result: over 5 years, the custom site often costs less. And you actually own something.
What "owning" actually means
This is where the real difference lies.
With a platform, your site lives on their infrastructure, in their proprietary format. If their business model changes—and they all do, regularly—your options are limited. Migrating a Wix or Framer site to another system is technically very difficult. In reality, you are starting from scratch.
With a custom site delivered by a serious freelancer, you own the code entirely upon final payment. You can change hosts, hand over the maintenance to any developer, and evolve the tool without depending on a product roadmap you don't control.
"And with AI now, we don't need you anymore?"
It's a fair objection. I will answer it honestly.
For a simple showcase site—a page, some photos, a form—AI can indeed produce something decent in a short amount of time. If that is all you need, it is a valid option.
But as soon as you have a specific business need—a calculation logic, an integration with an existing system, a tool that automates something in your daily workflow—AI generates code that looks like a solution without actually being one. It stacks approximations until it looks like it works. In production, it breaks.
My job is not to code what an AI could do. It is to understand your problem—often better than you can describe it—and to build something that truly solves it, that stands the test of time, and that belongs to you.
Do you have a project and find yourself asking this question? Let's talk — not to sell you something, but to figure out together if a custom build is the right answer for you.