There is nothing wrong with a page builder in principle. The problem is what they ship to the browser, and what that costs when your customer is on a phone at a subway platform with two bars of service. Here is the arithmetic.
What a page builder actually sends to a phone
Open a typical WordPress site with a commercial theme and a builder plugin. The browser downloads jQuery, the theme framework, the builder's own runtime, an icon font with 900 glyphs you are using four of, an animation library, a slider library, and a stylesheet covering every layout the theme supports. Then it downloads your content.
Add it up and 2 to 4 MB is normal. Your business needed maybe 300 KB of that. The rest is capability you are paying to download on every visit, and your visitor is paying for it in seconds.
Why seconds matter more in New York
Everyone quotes the same statistic about bounce rates and load times, and it is directionally right, but the New York version is more specific. Your traffic is disproportionately mobile, and it is disproportionately on congested or weak connections. Underground platforms, elevators, brownstone basements, and avenues where thousands of phones share one tower.
A 3.5 MB page that renders in 1.5 seconds on your office fiber can take eight or nine seconds in that environment. People do not wait eight seconds for a barbershop. They go back to the results page and tap the next one.
The security side nobody mentions at signup
A WordPress install is a live application with a database, an admin login, and a stack of plugins from different authors on different update schedules. Every one of those is a door. Most sites that get compromised are running an outdated plugin nobody remembered was installed.
A hand coded static site has almost none of that surface. There is no database to inject, no login page to brute force, and no plugin to fall behind. It is a meaningful reduction in risk, and it is why security updates on our plans are a small monthly task instead of an emergency.
The costs that show up in year two
The first year usually looks reasonable. Then the theme license renews, the booking plugin moves to a subscription, the form plugin adds a tier for the feature you already use, and hosting renews at the real rate instead of the introductory one.
None of it is outrageous on its own. Together it is commonly $60 to $150 a month in software before anyone has touched the site, which is worth knowing when you compare it against a flat rate that already includes hosting and changes. Ours is on the pricing page.
What you give up by going custom
Honesty requires this part. With a page builder you can log in at midnight and change a headline yourself. With a hand coded site you email us and we do it, usually within two business days.
For most of the businesses we work with that is a fine trade, because they were never editing the site anyway. If you genuinely publish several times a week and want to do it yourself, a builder is the right tool and we will tell you so rather than sell you something that fits us better than you.
How to check your own site in two minutes
Run your homepage through Google PageSpeed Insights and look at the mobile score and the total transfer size. Under 1 MB is good. Between 1 and 2 MB is worth fixing. Over 3 MB is costing you customers right now.
Then do the real test. Put your phone on cellular, walk into your building's basement or stairwell, and load your own homepage. Whatever that feels like is what a decent share of your customers experience. If it is bad, send us the address and we will tell you what is causing it, whether or not you hire us.
