Most “Wix vs custom” advice argues about the monthly price. That’s the wrong fight. The real question for a small-business owner is quieter and more expensive: how many of your evenings is this going to eat, who fixes it when it breaks, and do you actually own the thing at the end? On all three, Wix costs more than the sticker price suggests.

Here’s the honest comparison - and why, for most established businesses, a custom site you own beats renting one you built yourself.

The short version: Wix is a hosted builder - easy to start, from A$21 to A$55 a month for its main plans on yearly billing (as of October 2026). But you build and maintain it on your own time, you’re locked to the platform (you can’t move a Wix site off Wix, so leaving means rebuilding), and when it breaks it’s your problem. A custom site is built for you, you own the code, domain and hosting outright, and you still edit it yourself with a simple Word-style editor. CatalystHub builds a five-page one for $500 flat, once, with free hosting on your own account, no monthly rent, no lock-in, and a real Perth person on the other end. Bigger sites have their own packages.

What to do next: Leaning custom? See what’s in each package on our pricing page, or start your project. Still deciding? Keep reading for the five-year picture.

First, the fair bit: what Wix is good at

Wix earns its popularity. If you’ve never made a website, it’s the gentlest on-ramp there is: drag, drop, publish, hosting included. If you’re pre-revenue, testing an idea, with no budget and no site at all, Wix gets something online today. That’s a real, fair use.

But “something online today” and “the website my business runs on” are different jobs - and that’s where the hidden costs start.

Hidden cost #1: your time (the part no one quotes)

The Wix price buys the software. It doesn’t buy the hours. Building a Wix site that doesn’t look like a Wix template is a weekend - often three - of dragging boxes, wrestling spacing, second-guessing fonts, then redoing the whole thing on mobile. And it never really stops: every change, every fix, every “why is it doing that” lands back on your plate, in the evening, after the actual work of running your business.

Be honest about what your time is worth. A few weekends lost to fighting a page builder is the most expensive part of “cheap,” and it never shows up on the invoice.

Hidden cost #2: you’re the whole team

On a DIY site you’re not just the builder - you’re the designer, the fixer and the support desk. Three things tend to follow:

It looks templated. Because it is. Customers can tell, and “looks a bit DIY” quietly reads as “a bit less trustworthy” on a first visit.
Things break, and they’re yours. A form stops sending, an image won’t load, an update nudges your layout - and there’s no one whose job it is to sort it but you.
When you’re stuck, you’re on a queue. Wix has support, but it’s generic platform help: agents and forums that don’t know your site, your business, or what you’re trying to do. They can point you at a button; they can’t take the problem off your plate.

That’s the real weight of “do it yourself”: you own every problem, indefinitely.

Hidden cost #3: you’re renting, and you can’t leave

Wix isn’t a one-off. It’s a subscription for as long as the site exists: A$21/month (Light), A$42/month (Core), A$55/month (Business) on yearly billing, per Wix’s own pricing page as of October 2026. Core at A$42 is A$504 a year, every year - A$2,520 over five years, with nothing you own at the end.

And here’s the part almost no one mentions until they try to leave: you can’t move a Wix site to another host. It only runs on Wix’s platform. Your content and domain are portable; the site itself isn’t - to leave, you rebuild from scratch (Wix’s own help docs confirm it). You’re not just renting. You’re renting somewhere you can’t move out of without starting over. Our guide to who owns your website has four checks you can run on any site.

”But Wix is so easy to edit myself” - and so is this

This is the objection that keeps people on Wix, and it’s out of date. A custom site does not mean emailing a developer every time you change a price. CatalystHub builds yours with a Word-style editor built in - you log in, change the text, swap a photo, hit publish. It’s as simple as Wix’s editor, arguably simpler, because there’s no sprawling builder to get lost in.

The difference is what’s underneath: you get that easy editing without the monthly rent and without the lock-in. Same control, none of the trap.

Is Wix cheaper over three years?

Not at Wix’s regular prices. Over three years, Wix’s Core plan plus a .com.au domain comes to A$1,580.85, and the Business plan to A$2,048.85. A CatalystHub Standard site over 36 months comes to A$568.85.

Over 36 months (AUD)	Wix Core	Wix Business	CatalystHub Standard
Building the site	$0 (you build it)	$0 (you build it)	$500 once, inc. GST (five pages)
Plan or hosting	$42/month = $1,512	$55/month = $1,980	$0: hosting is free on your own Cloudflare account, no care plan needed
`.com.au` domain, 3 years	$68.85	$68.85	$68.85, paid to your domain registrar
3-year total	$1,580.85	$2,048.85	$568.85

Wix prices are the regular yearly-billing prices on Wix’s Australian plans page, read on 5 November 2026. Wix plans renew automatically, and any first-year discount applies to the first term only: renewals are charged at the plan’s original price (Wix Help Center). To be fair to Wix, the first purchase of a Wix Premium plan comes with a voucher for a free domain for one year, claimed within two months of buying the plan, and the domain renews after your first free year. The Wix Business plan also includes accepting payments, standard eCommerce (selling online) and scheduling and services. The domain uses VentraIP’s regular .com.au price of $22.95 a year in every column, so the comparison is like for like. With a CatalystHub site you renew the domain with the registrar yourself, and we hand you the login on launch day. See exactly what each package includes on our pricing page.

The five-year picture

	Wix (Core plan)	Custom site (CatalystHub)
Who builds it	You, on your weekends	Us, done for you in 7 business days
Upfront	$0	$500 once, inc. GST (five pages)
Ongoing	A$42/month, forever	Domain (~$23/yr). Hosting is free on your own account
5-year cost	~A$2,520+	~$615
Edit it yourself?	Yes	Yes, same Word-style ease
Own the site?	No, you rent it	Yes - code, domain, hosting
Someone to call?	Generic platform support	Vish, who built it, in Perth
Leave anytime?	Rebuild from scratch	Take the whole thing with you

The ~$615 assumes a .com.au domain at about $23 a year (VentraIP’s regular price, as of October 2026) and free hosting on your own Cloudflare Pages account, free at small-business volumes. An optional care plan from $49/month, where we handle hosting, backups and security updates for you, is a separate choice, not included above.

When Wix is genuinely the right call

To keep it fair: if you’re testing an idea with no budget, you need a placeholder online today, or you genuinely enjoy building it yourself as a hobby, Wix is a sensible pick. For the simplest possible needs, the convenience is worth the rent.

But if you’re an established business that wants a site that looks the part, loads fast, and that you actually own, paying rent forever to build and babysit it yourself is the expensive road, not the cheap one.

The shortcut: $500, built for you, yours to keep

This is exactly the gap CatalystHub fills. For $500 flat, once, including GST, our five-page Standard build gets you:

A custom-designed website - not a template every other business also picked - built for you, live in 7 business days, so you lose zero weekends.
Full ownership of the code, domain and hosting, handed over in plain English on day seven. No platform can hold it hostage.
A Word-style editor to change your own content whenever you like - the easy part of Wix, kept.
A real person in Perth - Vish, who built your site and answers directly when you need something, usually within a business day.
Free hosting on your own account, so there’s no monthly hosting bill either.
No monthly platform fee. No lock-in. Ever.

Need more than five pages, or an online store? We build those as well: up to 15 pages on the Specialist build from $1,500, and custom Shopify themes from $700.

It’s the same logic as the rest of our guides: modern tooling makes a real, owned website affordable, so you never trade ownership, or your weekends, for convenience. See what a small-business website should cost for the full picture, or our pricing for exactly what’s included, then see our work, tell us about your business or call (08) 6288 0080.

Frequently asked questions

Is Wix bad? No - it’s a genuinely good starter for testing an idea on no budget. It’s the wrong tool for a business that wants to own its site, look professional, and not spend its evenings maintaining it.

Don’t I lose the easy editing if I leave Wix? No, that’s the myth. A CatalystHub site comes with a Word-style editor, so you change your own content just as easily, without the monthly fee or the lock-in underneath.

What happens when something breaks? On Wix, that’s your problem and a generic support queue. With us, the person who built your site fixes it, and you can put it on an optional care plan from $49 a month so it never becomes your job at all. The first month is free with a new build, and you can cancel any month with 14 days’ notice.

Isn’t Wix cheaper? Only at the start. Against Wix’s Core plan at A$42 a month, a $500 five-page site with free hosting is cheaper from the second year and every year after, because you’ve stopped paying rent, and you own the result. See the five-year table above.

Is the hosting really free? Yes, on your own account. Our sites run on Cloudflare Pages, which is free at small-business volumes. The one bill you can’t skip is the domain, about $23 a year.