Wix vs GoDaddy vs custom website for a heating business: the honest 5-year cost

The answer in one line: over 5 years a Wix site for a heating engineer costs roughly £1,000 to £1,500, a GoDaddy site costs roughly £800 to £1,200, a custom Syntorak site costs £595 and ships with a marketing video and 10 pages already written. The DIY builders feel cheaper on day one and stay more expensive every year after.

Most heating engineers picking a website don't get a fair comparison. They see "websites from £15/month" on a Wix ad, run the maths over month one and assume that's the cheapest option. The 5-year maths is the one that matters and it almost never gets done.

This post does that maths honestly. Three options. Same heating business. Same 5-year horizon. Real costs, including the bits the builders don't mention until you're a few months in.

Why most heating engineers default to Wix or GoDaddy

Three reasons.

The marketing is everywhere. Wix and GoDaddy spend tens of millions on ads. Every podcast you listen to, every YouTube video you watch. The default in your head is what you've been advertised to.

The day-one price looks great. "£12 a month" or "Free to start" reads as cheap. The 5-year total never gets calculated.

The DIY promise is appealing. "Build your own site in an afternoon". Most engineers like the idea of being in control. The reality is most don't have the time, the design instincts or the patience to make a good site. They build a rough one, never finish it and stop editing after the first week.

What Wix actually costs over 5 years

UK Wix prices for a small business plan (2026), annual billing:

• Light: ~£9/month. Form-builder capped, no online payments, 2GB storage. Not viable for a trade business.
• Core: ~£16/month. Free domain year 1, no ads, basic features.
• Business: ~£25/month. More storage, online payments, marketing tools.
• Business Elite: £119/month. Bigger teams.

Most heating engineers pick Core or Business. Average around £20/month on annual billing. Pay monthly for flexibility and prices are roughly 25% higher.

5-year direct cost on annual billing: 5 years × 12 months × £20 = £1,200.

Plus:

• Custom domain after year 1: ~£15/year × 4 = £60
• Apps and add-ons most sites end up needing (forms, SEO, business email via Google Workspace): £200-400 over 5 years
• Your time to build and maintain: 25-40 hours

5-year all-in: £1,400 to £1,700 plus your time.

What you get: a Wix-template site you built yourself. Wix owns the files. If you ever leave Wix, you start from scratch elsewhere.

What GoDaddy actually costs over 5 years

GoDaddy Website Builder UK prices (2026), three tiers on annual billing:

• Basic: £7.99/month. GoDaddy branding, basic marketing tools.
• Premium: £11.99/month. GoDaddy's recommended tier and the default pick.
• Commerce: £13.99/month. Online booking, payments, ecommerce.

Watch the small print. Those are annual-plan prices. Pay monthly for flexibility and Basic jumps to £16.99/month, Premium to £29.99 and Commerce to £34.99. The "free custom domain" and "free professional email" GoDaddy headline on the plan page are only included on the annual plan. On monthly billing both are struck through.

Most heating engineers pick Premium at around £12/month on the annual plan.

5-year direct cost on annual billing: 5 years × 12 months × £12 = £720.

Plus:

• Custom .co.uk domain: free year 1 with the annual builder bundle, ~£15/year × 4 = £60 after
• Business email: included on the annual plan for an intro period, then a paid Microsoft 365 mailbox at ~£3-5/month
• Your time to build and maintain: 25-40 hours

5-year all-in: £800 to £1,100 plus your time. On monthly billing the same 5 years costs £1,800 or more before any extras.

What you get: a GoDaddy-template site you built yourself. Similar lock-in to Wix. The design quality is usually a step below Wix because the GoDaddy editor is older and the template library is narrower. The hosting itself is decent.

What a custom Syntorak site costs over 5 years

The Syntorak £295 offer is structured differently from a monthly builder:

• Year 1: £295 one-off. 10 pages, branded marketing video, custom .co.uk domain, hosting, SSL, contact form, email forwarding, SEO done properly.
• Years 2 to 5: £75/year. Renewal covering domain, hosting, email forwarding and 4 content edits a year.

5-year direct cost: £295 + (£75 × 4) = £595.

Plus:

• Your time: send your business details once, approve a preview link, done in days. Maybe 1 to 2 hours of your time total.
• No add-on creep: the £295 already includes the things Wix and GoDaddy upsell separately.

5-year all-in: £595 plus 1 to 2 hours.

What you get: a custom-built site on your own .co.uk domain, with 10 pages written for you, a branded marketing video, schema.org markup set up properly, listed in Google in 1-2 weeks. The site is yours to keep. If you ever leave Syntorak, the domain comes with you.

What you get for the money

The hidden costs everyone forgets

Four things the day-one price never includes:

The time cost is the biggest one. 25 to 40 hours of evenings to build a Wix or GoDaddy site you'd be embarrassed by anyway. At even £25/hour (well below a heating engineer's rate), that's £625 to £1,000 of your time. Most engineers value their time at £50+/hour, which doubles the number.

The "I'll fix it later" tax. Almost every DIY site has fundamental issues the engineer never gets around to fixing: missing services pages, no proper SEO, contact form that doesn't send, no SSL on a sub-page. The site looks fine on the surface and ranks nowhere. You'd never know unless someone told you. Most customers don't tell you, they just go elsewhere.

The annual-vs-monthly trap. The headline prices on both Wix and GoDaddy are annual-plan prices. The flexible monthly price is dramatically higher. GoDaddy's Premium tier is £11.99/month on annual billing or £29.99/month on monthly. The "free custom domain" and "free professional email" they shout about are only included on annual. On monthly billing both are struck through on the plan page. Most people pick monthly to "try it out", forget about it and end up paying double for five years. We've all been caught by this on something. With these builders it's structural, not accidental.

The migration cost when you eventually want a custom site. Most engineers who start on Wix or GoDaddy move to a custom site within 3 to 5 years because the DIY route hits a ceiling. Migration means rebuilding from scratch on the new platform because Wix and GoDaddy don't let you export the site. Whatever you've put into the DIY site is sunk.

Which one should you actually pick?

Honest version, no spin:

Pick Wix if:

• You have 25 to 40 hours of evenings spare to build it properly
• You're confident with design and will keep editing the site over the years
• You don't care about a marketing video or the schema.org SEO stuff
• You're happy paying £20/month forever

Pick GoDaddy if:

• Same as above but you want the cheapest of the two builders
• You already have a domain with GoDaddy and want the bundle
• You're prepared to live with a slightly less polished editor than Wix

Pick a custom Syntorak site if:

• You'd rather spend 1 to 2 hours sending details than 25+ hours building
• You want a marketing video on the home page
• You want 10 pages properly written rather than 3 you scraped together
• You'd rather pay £295 once than £15 to £25 a month forever
• You want the site you own, on a domain you keep, with no lock-in

The 5-year maths is the deciding factor for most engineers. £595 vs £800 to £1,700 on the builders isn't close. Monthly billing only widens the gap. The time saving on top makes it harder still to justify the DIY route unless you genuinely enjoy building websites.

A word on the cheap-builder trap

A separate problem worth flagging: there's a tier below Wix and GoDaddy that sells "complete heating engineer websites for £150 one-off". These usually use the same handful of templates, no real SEO, no proper hosting, no support. The £150 looks great until you realise you've got a generic Wordpress site with no domain, no email and the "designer" disappears after three months. We've written separately about that trap (post coming soon).

What to do next

If you're sitting on the fence:

1. Look at three live examples of Syntorak heating engineer sites. They're not templates, they're real sites tailored to real businesses.
2. Read the 10 pages every heating engineer website needs post if you want to understand the spec we build to.
3. Read whether you should have a marketing video on your home page. Spoiler: yes. It's included with the £295 build.
4. When you're ready, send your details. We build the preview on a link first. You see the finished site before you pay. No deposit, no lock-in.

The 5-year cost is decided in the first hour you spend choosing. Spend it well.