Switching
You have already met the ceiling.
WordPress, Squarespace, Wix — all of them hand you a set of parts somebody else made. It works right up to the moment you want something that is not in the set, and then it is a plugin, an app, a workaround, or a quote from a developer.
No parts to work around
Nothing is assembled from a catalogue, so “can it do that” stops being a question about the catalogue.
Nothing to install
No plugins, no apps, no add-ons that need updating and occasionally fight each other.
Keep your domain
Point it here whenever you are ready. Build on a free address until then.
The thing they have in common
Every one of them is a box of pre-made parts.
The names differ — themes, templates, blocks, widgets, sections, apps, plugins — but the deal is identical. You get a set of things somebody built in advance, and your website is whatever you can arrange out of them.
Inside the set
Genuinely easy.
Drag the thing where you want it, put your words in, change the colour. This is what those products are good at and there is no point pretending otherwise — it is why so many people start there.
One inch outside it
A different job entirely.
Search for a plugin. Read the reviews. Pay for it. Find it nearly does it. Search for another. Ask on a forum. Get told to edit the code. Decide it does not matter that much after all — and quietly change what you wanted to fit what the thing can do.
That last sentence is the real cost, and it is the one nobody counts. Not the plugin licence — the fact that after a while you stop asking for what the business actually needs, because you have learnt what the tool will give you.
What “anything” means
The requests that end in a support forum.
These are ordinary things to want, and every one of them is a plugin hunt somewhere else. Here each is a sentence, because the page is written rather than assembled.
“Just this one page is different”
A landing page with no menu, or an about page laid out unlike anything else on the site. Themes are consistent by design, which is exactly the problem when you need one page not to be.
“Put the opening hours in a proper table”
With the bank holidays marked, and the same table in the footer of every page, and one place to change it when the hours change.
“Make it look like the brochure”
You have a printed thing a designer made and you want the site to match it. Nothing in any template gallery matches your brochure.
“Move that above this, on phones only”
The photograph first on a laptop and the price first on a phone. Reordering by screen size is a developer job nearly everywhere.
“Every page needs this bit, except two”
A notice, a phone number, a seasonal banner. Adding it everywhere is easy; adding it everywhere except two pages is where most builders start to fight you.
“Take the whole thing somewhere else”
A rebrand, a new colour, a different feel. Not a new template with your content poured into it — the same site, looking different.
What you are actually leaving
Four things that stop being your job.
Keeping software up to date
A self-hosted site is a small estate of software: the core, the theme, a dozen plugins, all versioned separately and all occasionally a security problem. Nothing here is installed, so nothing here needs updating — and there is no plugin that can break another plugin.
Paying for the site in pieces
The hosting, then the theme, then the page builder, then the forms add-on, then the SEO plugin, then the backup plugin. Here there are no add-ons to buy: what is on the pricing page is what it costs.
Making it fast afterwards
Speed is normally a project you take on later — a caching plugin, an image optimiser, someone on a forum telling you to change your host. Your pages here are finished before anybody asks for them, so there is nothing to tune.
The half-finished feeling
Most small business sites are a template that was never quite bent into shape. Starting from a description rather than a layout is the difference between a site that fits and a site that fits well enough.
The same request, both ways
“We’re doing Christmas hampers this year.”
One ordinary thing a real business wants in November. Here is what it takes in each place — not a caricature, just the steps.
Where you are now
- 1. Look for a section that shows three items with prices. Find one that shows four.
- 2. Search for a plugin. Read the reviews. Two are abandoned, one is $59 a year.
- 3. Install it. It does not match the rest of the site.
- 4. Find the setting that controls the spacing. There isn’t one.
- 5. Email the person who built it. Wait. Get a quote.
- 6. Decide three hampers is fine after all.
A fortnight, and the page you settled for.
Here
- 1. Type it: “Add a Christmas hampers page — four hampers, prices, and a photograph of each. Put it in the menu before Find us.”
- 2. Look at what it made.
- 3. “Make the second one stand out, it’s the popular one.”
- 4. Press Publish.
An afternoon, and the page you actually wanted.
And in January: “Take the hampers page down and put it back in November.” Which is a sentence too.
Moving across
Nothing is at risk while you try it.
Leave the old site up
Do not cancel anything. Your current site carries on serving customers the entire time.
Build here on a free address
Every site starts on mightybuilder.site, live and shareable. Describe the business, or point the AI at your existing site and let it read it.
Look at it properly
Send it to somebody whose opinion you trust. Change what you do not like — which is a sentence, not a support ticket.
Move the domain, then cancel
Point your name here when you are happy, and cancel the old subscription after. Not before.
Questions about moving
Can you import my existing site?
No — and nothing that claims to really can. An import brings across a shape built for someone else’s theme and you spend a fortnight unpicking it. Here you describe the business and the site is built new, which in practice is faster and gives you something you actually like. Have your existing site open: point the AI at it and it will read it and work from what is there.
What happens to my domain and my search rankings?
Keep your domain — you point it here and it costs nothing. Rankings follow the address, so as long as your important pages keep their addresses, there is nothing to lose. If a page does have to move, a permanent forward is written for you automatically.
How long does it take?
An evening for a small site. Two sentences gets you a first version of every page; the rest is telling it what to change, which is conversation rather than construction.
Do I need to cancel my old subscription first?
No, and you should not. Build here on the free address first, look at it properly, point your domain at it when you are happy, and cancel the old one after. Nothing here renews, so there is no pressure to hurry.
I paid a developer for my current site. Is this a step down?
Ask it for what you paid for. There is no theme underneath deciding what is possible, and a developer can still open and edit everything except the body of a page. What you lose is a build step and a package manager; what you gain is that the next change is a sentence rather than a scoped piece of work.
Is there anything it cannot do?
Yes. There is no shop or checkout, no contact form yet, and no logins, memberships or booking system. Pages are pages — there is no blog engine with categories and archives. It is built for the site most small businesses actually need: who you are, what you do, what it costs and how to reach you. If you need a shop today, stay where you are.
What if I try it and hate it?
You have spent whatever a pack cost and lost nothing else — your old site is still up, your domain never moved, and nothing here was on a subscription. That is the honest version of “risk-free trial”.