What’s the real cost of free website tools?

Hi, I’m Holly Christie. I’m from the website Made Simple Podcast. I’m also a website designer and mentor, and I am here to help you to have a really good website design business. And yes, you can use free tools to do that.

And with this episode, I want to look at Free Tools falling into the Yes, they’re amazing and really worth your time category and the. This is so not worth it. Um, a category as well so that you know how to make a really good decision around this. So the first thing to note is that free tools are not all created equal.

And if you’ve been in the web design industry for a while, you are gonna know this. You have your free open source software with things like WordPress, for example. Brilliant, brilliant free tool, and it’s where a lot of website designers cut their teeth as well, because why not? WordPress is the preferred platform across the internet.

I say across the internet, just because it holds the market share of all websites built on the internet. I know that. Lots of people have their own preference, like you know, when they use Weebly or Squarespace on Magento or whatever it is they like. But I’m a WordPress girl and I love that it’s free at the source as well.

So big tick to that one. Let’s look at themes as well, because I think as well, lots of people get caught up in the industry where it says, you know, all the advertising, build your website for free. Have your blog for free. Do this, that, and the other. We’ve got the tools for you. And, you know, WebPress makes that possible through webpress.com.

Uh, Wix makes it, uh, possible and most of the time. If you want the really free experience, you’re going to start off with a web address, like I’ve got a holly christie.wordpress.com from about 20 years ago. Or, uh, you might have something@wix.com, that sort of thing. And you know, you are never gonna make money with a free website address and really with a free website full stop because you have that layer of the tools of, you know, you want that open source software with something like WordPress.

But it is really worth getting a premium theme for it because premium themes are what really gives you that tools and that styling and everything you need to build a really good website. And when we say really good website, obviously we mean mobile responsive. We mean great design. We’re looking at it to be search engine optimized, but most importantly, we are looking for that website.

To make, to make sales and bring in leads as well. So you, that’s gonna happen in a variety of ways, in a variety of designs with a variety of skill sets. I’m gonna stop saying variety now, but what’s going to really have in common there is the fact that it is going to be using some premium version of software.

And I’m not here to convince you to use the software that I use. I love it. It works for me. It works for my team, it works for my clients. That’s great. But I am here to say to you about sometimes when we faff around with the free versions of things, the free tools, all of that, we actually spend more of our time trying to find workarounds and trying to figure something out than if we just.

Bought the premium version of something and you know, had it at our fingertips. And there are all different ways of, you know, pricing models and ways of getting that premium version there as well. So for example, if you were on a real budget. A great tool that you could use for a WebPress website would be divvy, because divvy have a lifetime pricing model where you can pay, I think it’s $249 plus V 80, and you have licenses for a lifetime.

You can license as many websites as you like. Obviously the more that you create the, you know, kind of cost per website goes down, lots and lots of different signers use this to build templates and sell templates in a template shop, um, with. Elemental, for example. Elemental is a free tool, but it is incredibly limited and it has its own host of other options.

I promise you I will do a do not use Elemental because it’s rubbish episode and why? Um, and I. Elementor actually has 5% of the market share of, uh, website builders. But I strongly, strongly believe that there’s two reasons for that. One is they offer it completely for free at the point of entry. Two, it can be used with lots of different themes.

And the third reason is anyone can download Elementor as a drag and drop builder and call themselves a web designer. And many do, and they’re the ones that people have a really difficult experience with. If you are someone who has done that, don’t worry. I’m not here to tell you that you’ve done it wrong.

I’m here to say, come along, learn and I’ll help you be a really good web designer even if you choose to still use Elemental, but. Ultimately, we are looking for clients to invest with us, and that means that we actually have to make investments ourselves as well, and we need to invest in the tools that we’re using.

We need to invest in our own learning because web design is such an underrepresented. Is experience anyway. There’s not a lot of web designing mentors. There’s not a lot of qualifications, there’s not a lot of this stuff. And so a lot of the time people have to patch together their own learning, which can just be hideous for some people.

Other people. It’s great. Like I always have a plan of what I want to work on. So, um, each year I’ll look at tackling a really big topic, topic like accessibility or. SEO or whatever, and I’ll make it my mission to learn all of that as well as keeping on top of website trends and running the business. And other people learn to build websites using the tools, especially free ones.

And then they kind of just cash out and they’re like, oh yeah, that’s great. I know how to do that now. And they never really. Develop beyond that and using free tools can make things a lot harder because there’s a reason that developers lock things behind premium additions of tools. So when you’re getting the lightweight version of the tool, often to avoid paying for it, people are saying, oh, well I’ll do work around or I’ll write this, or I’ll do an if this, then that formula, or I’ll uh, connect it with Zapier or something like that.

And there’s all these really creative ways. That you think, but how much is your hourly rate now? My hourly rate’s at like 65 pounds an hour. Or in 2025, most of the premium products I would be looking at, uh, layering on, on a website for example, might be like $30 for a year. They might be $60 for a year.

It’s still less than an hour’s work. But if I think I’m gonna do a workaround, unless it’s a workaround that I know very well, then I am gonna spend more time creating that workaround than if I just paid for the plugin. Put it on the client’s website. I mean, ultimately I pass on the cost of additional plugins to clients anyway, and then that frees me up with that hour to do my marketing or start a new website or do some ad hog work or something like that.

So when you are pricing up your web design. Project do actually look at including premium software in that pricing and it will really make a difference And say if you have in your terms of service as well, that any premium software the client needs to pay for the licensing for, then it. You are covering it on both ends because it also means you can pass that plugin or you know, whatever it is that you’ve bought the premium license for onto the client.

Or you can ask them to buy it themselves and connect it, and then you connect it for them. But either way, you are gonna make your life so much easier using the premium versions of stuff, but also you are going to actually really build your experience because there’s. Stuff you learn when you’re using premium tools, stuff you learn that’s not there on the not premium and the free stuff as well.

So an investment in those tools is also an investment in the quality of websites that you, sorry, that’s my dog there. Uh, the. Investment in the quality of the website that you’re giving out and what the client’s going to have at the end of it. So do not be afraid to invest. Make sure that you’re charging proper prices for your website.

So that’s the main thing I would say is charge proper prices and then just absolutely. Go for it. And if you have a story that you would like to share with me around using free tools or um, a time experience you’ve had with kind of premium tools, I would love to hear it. So to come and drop me a line, I’m at websites made simple.co.uk.

There’s contact form on there. You can even drop a voice note in. I love a voice note and let me know how you get on. That’s all for now. I’ll see you next time.