The Rent Trap: Why You Must Own Your Website

When you start a business, it is tempting to choose the easy path. “No-Code” platforms like Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify promise you a website in an afternoon for a monthly fee. And to start, sometimes it’s okay.

But building your main business on a closed platform is like renovating a rented apartment. You can paint the walls and put nice furniture, but at the end of the day, the apartment is not yours. If the landlord decides to raise the rent or kick you out, you are left on the street with your furniture and no house.

The risk of “Vendor Lock-in”

“Vendor Lock-in” is a commercial strategy designed to make it extremely difficult for you to change providers.

1. Impossible to migrate: If Wix decides to double its prices tomorrow, you cannot take “your” website and take it to another cheaper hosting. Its code is closed and proprietary. You would have to start from zero and lose all your previous work.
2. Foreign rules: You are at the mercy of their terms and conditions. If they decide that your type of business is no longer welcome on their platform, they can close your account overnight.
3. Limited functionality: You can only do what they allow you to. Do you need a specific integration with your CRM? If they don’t have a “plugin” for that, you are blocked.

True digital ownership

A custom-developed website (using standards like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Astro, Next.js) is a real asset of your company. It is intellectual property.

• Total portability: You can host your website on any server in the world (AWS, Google Cloud, Vercel, Netlify, or a local server in your office). You decide where your website lives.
• Cost control: You choose how much you pay for hosting. There are free options of the highest quality for static websites.
• No limits: If you can imagine it, it can be programmed. You do not depend on a third party to develop the functionality you need.

Technical Advantages: Speed and SEO

In addition to ownership, having your own code usually means better performance.

“Drag-and-drop” platforms generate “dirty” and heavy code behind the scenes, necessary for their visual editors to work. This translates into slower websites.

A custom-made website only loads the strictly necessary code. This improves your Core Web Vitals (Google metrics), which in turn improves your SEO positioning and reduces the cost of your advertising campaigns.

Conclusion

If your website is a hobby, rent. If your website is the core of your business, build. Be the owner of your digital destiny.