Should you hire a web design agency? Here's what Reddit actually says

Search for web design agency advice with reddit in the query and you'll mostly get design-inspiration galleries and pay-to-play directories. What you won't easily find is what business owners on Reddit actually say when someone asks whether to hire a web designer. We went and read those threads. And since Eventara builds websites for a living, disclosure up front: we have a horse in this race, which is exactly why the anti-agency quotes below stay in.

The advice splits 50/50, and the split is honest

The biggest thread on this is from r/smallbusiness in early 2024, 432 comments deep. The advice splits close to 50/50, and some of the strongest DIY advice comes from people who build websites for a living.

One programmer wrote: "As a programmer, I recommend wix or wordpress for small businesses. It's not worth hiring a developer, since you're most likely just going to need a template and not much custom work." Another developer agreed: "Speaking as a developer... I'd typically recommend against hiring a developer. You'll want some ability to make changes yourself."

The pro-hire camp is just as blunt. The most upvoted version: "While platforms like Wix or Squarespace make it easy to publish a website, the websites being published are usually garbage." And on the lead-generation question specifically: "Do you want a site that generates leads? Your going to need to pay someone who knows what they are doing."

The horror stories are specific, and worth learning from

In a second large thread, one owner shared the experience that sums up Reddit's distrust: "I had a squarespace website, then I decided to get a professional website. It was 5k.. it was nominally better than my square space site." The follow-up is worse: "I wanted to add two pages and they wanted $1800.00."

And in a pricing thread from January 2025, one commenter delivered the accusation and the punchline in the same breath: "I've learned they All use standard website makers that cost $10-20 a month. Then they up charge you $1000-4000... It's all a scam!!! Just DIY. Having said that, I will make your website for $4000 all in."

He's not entirely wrong, either. Some agencies really do resell a $20-a-month builder at a 100x markup and charge four figures for edits you could make yourself in ten minutes. If an agency won't tell you what you're actually paying for, that's your answer.

What a fair price actually looks like

For all the scam talk, the threads keep landing on the same numbers. An agency owner in that same pricing thread: "Generally GOOD websites cost $2k-$4k for a standard 5 page site." A commenter in the 432-comment thread drew the ceiling from the buyer's side: "If you hire, don't pay anything over $2K for a small business site." Between those two numbers is where most of Reddit lands for a professionally built local business site.

One more comment from that pricing thread stuck with us: "A prefab website design with great content outperforms a beautiful website with average content – every time." We build custom sites and we still agree. What the site says, and whether it loads fast and answers real searches, matters more than how clever the design is.

The one thing every thread agrees on: never hire from a DM

Ask about websites on r/smallbusiness and watch your inbox. The top answer in the big thread warned the poster immediately: "Oh man, you are about to be bombarded by solicitations. I highly recommend you ignore them all." Another commenter put it in one line: "All the DMs you get are the scammers you were talking about."

There's a related warning worth passing along even though it stings our industry: "Do not let your web designer 'do SEO' because 95% of web designers are absolute dogshit at it." Harsh, but the underlying point is fair. Design and search visibility are different jobs, and you should ask any agency to show you measured results for both, not just pretty screenshots.

Our read, as a company that builds websites

The DIY camp and the pro-hire camp are mostly answering different questions. If you need an online business card, a page with your services, photos, and phone number, Reddit's DIY advice is correct and even a lawn-care thread reached the same conclusion: "Doesn't have to be a big thing just 1 page with all the info and a couple pictures."

If the site's job is to win you customers from search, it's a different project, because the work that makes that happen is invisible in a template: page speed, page structure, one page per service and per town, and the data underneath that tells Google and AI assistants what you do and where. That's the difference we measured on a real cabinet shop's site, with the before and after numbers published.

So use Reddit's checklist on anyone you consider, including us: know what job the site has to do before you pay, don't pay a monthly retainer for a parked template, ask what happens when you want two more pages, and never, ever hire from a cold DM. If you want to see how your current site is doing before deciding anything, the free visibility report is exactly that, no call required.