Compare · The budget routes

DIY it, hire a freelancer, or use a builder like GoDaddy?

Before a solo lawyer ever talks to an agency, they weigh three cheaper paths: build the site themselves, pay a freelancer, or stand one up on GoDaddy. All three are real options, and for some firms one of them is the right answer. This page is the honest read on each, written by an agency, so take the bias as given and check the reasoning. The short version: the cheapest route is fine if you just need a presence and get clients by referral. It's a false economy if you actually need the website to bring in cases, because none of the three ships the search and AI groundwork that does that. Here's how they really stack up, and where a done-for-you build earns the extra money.

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Three cheap routes

Each one saves money up front. Each has a different catch.

They're not the same trade-off wearing three hats. DIY costs you time, a freelancer is a gamble on one person, and a builder like GoDaddy hits a ceiling you can't raise. Read them as three separate decisions.

Do it yourself

You build it, usually on a drag-and-drop builder. The price is low and the control is total. The catch is your time: every evening spent fighting a template is an evening not billing or not home. And the result is built by someone learning web design on the job, which is why so many DIY firm sites never plainly say the practice area or name the city they serve. If the page doesn't say "patent attorney in Houston," neither Google nor ChatGPT can repeat it.

Hire a freelancer

One person, usually $1,500 to $5,000 for a small site, with direct communication and real cost savings over an agency. The catch is variance and staying power. Quality runs from excellent to rough, and a freelancer often moves on after launch, so the person who built it may be gone when something breaks. Many are strong designers who don't do legal SEO, so you get a site that looks good and doesn't rank. Vet the portfolio, get references, and make sure you keep the source files.

A builder like GoDaddy

Fast, cheap, and beginner-friendly: a real site live in a weekend for roughly $10 to $20 a month. The catch is the ceiling. GoDaddy's Websites + Marketing is a proprietary, closed system with no export, so leaving means rebuilding from scratch. Its SEO stops at page titles and meta descriptions, with no schema markup, which is the exact groundwork AI engines and rich results lean on. Great for a placeholder. Limited the moment you need the site to compete.

Figures are typical 2026 ranges from third-party reviews and pricing pages, not fixed quotes, and they move, so confirm current numbers. GoDaddy is named because it's the most common builder solo firms land on (Squarespace and Wix sit in the same bucket with the same basic trade-offs). None of these is a scam. They're just built for a different job than a site that has to win competitive search.

The short version

Cheap presence, or a site that brings in cases?

That's the real fork, and it decides everything. If the website is a digital business card for a referral practice, go cheap with a clear conscience. If it has to find and convert strangers, the cheap routes leave the most important part out.

Pick a done-for-you build if

You need the website to bring in clients, not just exist, so search and AEO have to be built in.
Your time is worth more billed to a client than spent learning a page builder.
You want a custom, professional site you own on WordPress, not a locked template.
You'd rather pay once for a finished result than gamble on a freelancer or DIY it twice.

Go a cheaper route if

You get nearly all your clients by referral and just need a credible online presence.
Your budget genuinely can't stretch past a few dollars a month right now.
You enjoy building it, or you found a vetted freelancer with real law-firm references.
You're testing a brand-new practice and want the lightest possible first step.

Line by line

The four routes, side by side.

Ranges are typical, not quotes. FirmForte's column is what's on the pricing page. Scroll sideways on a phone to see all four.

Feature	DIY	Freelancer	Builder (GoDaddy)	FirmForte
Who builds it	You	One hired person	You, in their editor	A team, done for you
Typical cost	~$10–20/mo plus your hours	~$1,500–$5,000 once	~$10–20/mo	$3,500 once
Design	Template you fill in	Varies by the person	Templated, often generic	Custom, from scratch
Platform & ownership	Usually a locked builder	Often WordPress you own (ask)	Proprietary, no export	WordPress, fully yours
SEO depth	Whatever you know	Depends; often not their strength	Titles and meta only	Technical SEO built in
AEO / schema	Rare	Rare unless you ask	No schema support	FAQ + LegalService schema on every page
Built for law firms	No	Usually no	No	Yes, bar-aware copy
Support after launch	You	If they're still around	GoDaddy support, generic	Optional retainer, cancel after month 3

Do the math properly

The cheap routes are cheap until you count the misses.

A few dollars a month or a one-time $2,000 looks like a clear win next to a $3,500 build. It usually is, on the invoice. The cost that doesn't show up on the invoice is the cases the site never brings in, and the rebuild you pay for later.

The time you don't bill

A DIY build is twenty to forty hours you could have billed or spent on cases. At even a modest hourly rate, the "free" site quietly costs more than the build did. The cheapest option on paper is rarely the cheapest in practice once your own time has a price on it.

The cases that never arrive

A site that doesn't name its practice area or city, has no schema, and was never written answer-first won't show up in Google's AI Overview or get named by ChatGPT. You can't measure the client who picked the firm that did show up. That invisible loss is the real price of skipping the search and AEO layer.

The rebuild you pay for twice

A common path: a $2,000 freelancer site that doesn't convert, or a GoDaddy site you can't export, followed a year later by paying again to do it right. As one industry write-up put it, a cheap build you have to redo doesn't cost its sticker price, it costs that plus the proper build. Starting on something you own avoids the second invoice.

Where $3,500 once lands

Full agencies often quote $5,000 to $50,000. FirmForte productizes the done-for-you build to a flat $3,500: custom design, WordPress you own, search and AEO baked in, live in 21 days. It sits on purpose between "too cheap to perform" and "too expensive for a small firm," which is the gap most of these routes leave open.

To be fair to the cheap routes: if your firm runs entirely on referrals and word of mouth, the website genuinely is a formality, and paying more for search performance you won't use would be its own kind of waste. The full FirmForte lineup is on the pricing page, and the build is detailed on web design.

The honest part

When each cheap route is genuinely the right call.

We'd rather send you to the right option than sell you a build you don't need. Here's when each of the three beats hiring us.

DIY, if you have time and taste

If you genuinely enjoy this, have the hours, and only need a clean presence, modern builders can produce something perfectly respectable. A brand-new solo testing whether a practice even takes off is right to spend almost nothing on the website until there's revenue to reinvest. Start cheap, upgrade when it's earning.

A freelancer, if you vet well

A good freelancer with a real portfolio, references, and some law-firm or SEO experience can deliver excellent work for less than any agency, and if they build on WordPress you own the result. The win is real when you find the right person. Just protect yourself: check references, agree on scope in writing, and get the source files so you're not stranded if they move on.

GoDaddy, if speed and price rule

If you need something live this week for almost nothing and have zero technical help, GoDaddy clears that bar better than anything. You keep your domain, since GoDaddy is a registrar, and the editor is genuinely easy. For a referral-driven firm that just needs to look real online, that's a sensible, honest choice.

And when none of them fit

If the website has to do marketing work, find strangers, answer their questions, and turn up in AI search, all three routes leave the engine out. That's the firm FirmForte is built for: one that wants the result without the time sink, the gamble, or the ceiling.

If you're upgrading

Coming off a DIY or builder site, without losing ground.

Most firms that hire us already have a cheap site. Moving up is straightforward, with one wrinkle depending on where you're starting.

Off a builder like GoDaddy

Because builders are closed, there's no clean export, so we rebuild fresh on WordPress and carry your content across by hand. The good news: your domain is already yours (GoDaddy is a registrar), so it points at the new site with no drama, and we set redirects to keep any search equity you've built.

Off a freelancer's WordPress site

If a freelancer built you a real WordPress site, you may be in better shape than you think. We can often work with what's there, rebuild the parts that matter, and add the search and AEO structure that was missing, rather than starting from zero. We'll tell you honestly which is the better value.

Off your own DIY effort

The content you wrote is usually worth keeping. We take your words, your photos, and what you've learned about your clients, and build the proper site around them, so your time wasn't wasted, it was the first draft.

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The free audit tells you which

Not sure your current site is worth replacing? The free AEO audit looks at exactly that and tells you what's wrong and what's salvageable, whether or not you hire us. It's the lowest-stakes way to find out where you actually stand.

Common questions

DIY, freelancer, or builder, answered plainly.

If your question isn't here, drop it in the audit form below. We answer everything within a business day.

Should a lawyer build their own website?

Only if two things are true: you have the time to spare, and the website doesn't need to bring in clients. A do-it-yourself site on a builder can look perfectly fine for a referral-driven firm that just needs a credible presence. The hidden cost is your time (a DIY build is commonly twenty to forty hours that could have been billed) and the search performance you give up. Most DIY firm sites never plainly state the practice area or name the city served, so they don't rank for either and can't be cited by AI engines. If you need the site to find and convert strangers, doing it yourself usually costs more than it saves once your time and the missed cases are counted.

Is it cheaper to hire a freelancer or a web design agency?

A freelancer is cheaper up front, typically $1,500 to $5,000 for a small law firm site versus $5,000 to $50,000 for a full agency. The honest catch is variance and support: freelance quality runs from excellent to rough, many don't do legal SEO, and a freelancer often moves on after launch, so the person who built it may be gone when something breaks. The real comparison isn't sticker price, it's total cost including the risk of a redo. A cheap site you have to rebuild later costs its price plus the proper build. FirmForte sits between the two: a productized, done-for-you build at a flat $3,500, with a team behind it rather than one person.

Can I use GoDaddy, Squarespace, or Wix for a law firm website?

You can, and for a basic presence it works. The limitation is that these are closed builders aimed at general small business, not search performance. GoDaddy's Websites + Marketing, for example, is proprietary with no export, and its SEO stops at page titles and meta descriptions with no schema markup, which is the groundwork rich results and AI citations rely on. Squarespace and Wix sit in the same bucket. They're fine for a referral-driven firm that needs to look real online, and a poor fit for a firm that needs the website to compete for new clients in search.

Do I own my website if I build it on GoDaddy?

You own your domain, since GoDaddy is a registrar, but not the website in a portable sense. GoDaddy's Websites + Marketing is a proprietary, closed platform with no export function, so if you leave you can't take the site with you. You'd rebuild from scratch on a new platform, copying your text and images over by hand. That's the trade-off of any closed builder. FirmForte builds on WordPress instead, so the site, the code, and the domain are all yours and portable from day one.

Will a cheap or DIY law firm website rank on Google and get cited by AI?

Usually not well, and that's the core issue. Ranking in competitive legal search and getting named by ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews takes content written answer-first plus clean technical groundwork like FAQ and LegalService schema. DIY builders and most cheap sites don't include schema, and many don't even state the practice area and city in plain words, which is the minimum an engine needs. The honest caveat we hold to everywhere: schema is hygiene and eligibility, not a magic citation trick, and the content is what earns the mention. But without the groundwork, the content never gets the chance.

How much should a small law firm spend on a website?

It depends entirely on what the site has to do. For a referral-only practice that needs a credible presence, a few dollars a month on a builder is reasonable. For a firm that needs the website to bring in cases, the useful range starts where real design and search work begin. Full agencies often quote $5,000 to $50,000; freelancers run $1,500 to $5,000 with more risk; FirmForte productizes a done-for-you build at a flat $3,500 with search and AEO included. The wrong move is paying for performance you won't use, or paying cheap for a site that needed to perform and doesn't.

What's the catch with a $500 website from Fiverr or a cheap builder?

The catch is that price buys a template filled in, not a site built to win clients. At that level you're getting design and basic setup with no real law-firm SEO, no schema or AEO, no bar-compliance review of the copy, and little or no support afterward. For a brand-new solo who just needs to exist online, that can be genuinely enough for now. For a firm that needs the website to generate work, a $500 site usually becomes the first half of a bill you pay twice, once for the cheap version and again for the rebuild.

Can FirmForte rebuild my DIY, freelancer, or GoDaddy site?

Yes, and how much we reuse depends on where you're starting. From a closed builder like GoDaddy there's no clean export, so we rebuild fresh on WordPress and carry your content across, then point your existing domain at the new site. From a freelancer's WordPress build we can often keep and improve what's there. And your DIY content, your words and photos, is usually worth keeping as the first draft. The free AEO audit will tell you what's salvageable and what's worth replacing before you spend anything.

Related services

What you'd actually be buying.

The comparison above is the why. These are the what.

Web Design

Law firm website design

$3,500 flat, 21 days, custom WordPress you own. The done-for-you option in this comparison.

AEO

AEO for law firms

Get cited by ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. The layer the cheap routes leave out.

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Other honest head-to-heads.

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