An honest breakdown of DIY builders, freelancers, agencies, and niche platforms, plus who Prism is actually built for.
share this post
stay in the loop
When we publish new experiments or playbooks, we’ll send you the highlights so you can apply them faster.
Your feedback helps us improve how we deliver practical playbooks.
Productized execution
Search behavior is changing, but the fundamentals remain: clearer intent, stronger proof, and consistent technical quality. Prism operationalizes that into predictable results.
Keep learning
More experiments and playbooks from the Prism team.
work with prism to apply these steps to your brand—fast, focused, and measured.
By Enzo Sison, Founder of Prism
I'm going to be honest with you.
If all you need is a basic website (opens in a new tab) that says "we're open" and shows your phone number, you probably don't need Prism. There are cheaper, faster options out there, and some of them are genuinely solid.
But if you're reading this, I'm guessing that's not your situation.
You're probably a practice owner, a consultant, or a service business (opens in a new tab) operator who's already tried one or two of the "obvious" options and walked away frustrated. Maybe the website looked fine but didn't actually bring in patients. Maybe the agency sent you a monthly report full of metrics that meant nothing. Maybe you built something on Squarespace and realized you'd traded one job for two: running your business and now managing a website.
This post is for you. I want to walk through the main options on the market, tell you exactly what they're good at, and explain who Prism is built for (and who it isn't).
These platforms are genuinely impressive for what they are. Squarespace templates look beautiful out of the box. Wix gives you a drag and drop editor with hundreds of integrations. GoDaddy can get you live in under an hour.
Who they're great for:
If you're a freelancer, solopreneur, or creative professional who enjoys tinkering with design (opens in a new tab) and doesn't mind spending a few hours a week managing your site, these tools are a smart move. They're affordable ($16 to $36 per month for most plans), they handle hosting, and the learning curve is manageable if you're tech comfortable.
Where they fall short for local service businesses:
The thing nobody tells you about DIY builders is that the website is maybe 20% of the work. The other 80% is local SEO, Google (opens in a new tab) Business Profile optimization, structured data, page speed, conversion focused copy, and making sure AI (opens in a new tab) search tools like ChatGPT (opens in a new tab) and Perplexity can actually find and recommend you.
Squarespace doesn't do any of that for you. Wix has some built in SEO tools, but they're surface level: meta tags and sitemaps, not the technical architecture that actually moves the needle for local rankings. And none of these platforms will manage your Google Ads, optimize your local listings across 40+ directories, or build a content strategy that compounds over time.
The real cost of DIY isn't the $30 per month subscription. It's the hours you spend every week on something that isn't treating patients, consulting clients, or running your operation. Your time has a dollar value, and for most practice owners I talk to, it's somewhere between $200 and $500 an hour. A "free" website that takes 5 hours a month to maintain is costing you $1,000 to $2,500 in lost productive time.
Bottom line: Great for getting started. Not built for growing a local business that depends on being found and chosen online.
I actually have respect for talented freelancers. Some of the best designers and developers I know work independently. And platforms like 99designs can deliver a solid brand identity at a fraction of agency pricing.
Who they're great for:
If you have a specific, well defined project like a logo, a one time website build, or a landing page, and you have the ability to manage the process yourself, freelancers can deliver quality work at competitive rates. Especially for startups who need to stretch every dollar.
Where they fall short for ongoing growth:
The challenge is that marketing a local business isn't a project. It's a system.
You need your website, your Google Business Profile, your ad campaigns, your review strategy, your local citations, and your content all working together. A freelance web designer builds you a site and moves on. Who's monitoring your search rankings next month? Who's adjusting your ad spend when a competitor enters the market? Who's making sure your site loads in under 2 seconds on mobile after that plugin update broke something?
I've inherited sites from freelancers dozens of times. The pattern is almost always the same: the site looks decent on the surface, but under the hood there's no schema markup, no conversion tracking, mobile performance is poor, and the Google Business Profile hasn't been touched since it was created. The client didn't know any of this was important because nobody told them.
The other issue is continuity. Freelancers get busy, take other projects, or disappear. When you need something fixed on a Saturday because your booking widget broke, that freelancer is on vacation. You don't have a team. You have a contractor.
Bottom line: Great for one off projects. Not designed for the ongoing, multi channel work that actually drives local business growth.
These are the big players. WebFX has 500+ employees. Thrive and SmartSites have been around for years and serve thousands of clients across dozens of industries. They have proprietary platforms, massive teams, and impressive case study pages.
Who they're great for:
If you're a mid size company with a marketing director who can manage the agency relationship, review reports critically, and hold the team accountable, these agencies can deliver results. They have the resources, the tools, and the talent pool to execute at scale.
Where they fall short for small practice owners:
The problem for most of my clients is that they're not managing a marketing team. They're running a dental practice or a consulting firm or a nonprofit. They don't have a marketing director. They don't have time to sit on weekly status calls and decode a 30 page analytics report.
At agencies this size, you're typically assigned a junior account manager who's handling 15 to 20 other clients. The senior strategist who pitched you in the sales meeting? You'll rarely talk to them again after the contract is signed. Your account gets the playbook treatment: the same general approach they run for every client in your vertical, with your logo swapped in.
I've heard this story from nearly every client who comes to Prism from a larger agency. The retainers are $3,000 to $5,000+ per month. The results are generic. The communication feels transactional. And the worst part is, when things aren't working, you have to fight through layers of account management just to get someone who can actually make a strategic decision.
I'm not saying these agencies are bad. Some of them do excellent work. But the model is built for scale, not for the kind of focused, personal attention that a single location practice needs.
Bottom line: Powerful machines. But if you're a small business, you might end up feeling like a small fish in a very big pond.
These companies offer all in one platforms specifically designed for local businesses, usually combining a website builder, CRM, review management, and marketing tools into a single subscription.
Who they're great for:
If you want a single login where you can see your reviews, your website, your ads, and your patient communications all in one place, and you're willing to learn and manage the platform yourself, these can be efficient solutions. Adit, for example, is built specifically for dental practices and integrates with practice management software.
Where they fall short:
"All in one" usually means "okay at everything, great at nothing." The websites are templated. The SEO is basic. The ad management is automated but not strategic. And you're still the one logging in, making decisions, and managing the system.
Scorpion is the exception in terms of quality. They offer genuinely sophisticated technology. But their pricing reflects it. Common project costs run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. For a solo practice or a small multi location business, that's not realistic.
Hibu targets small local businesses at a more accessible price, but the tradeoff shows up in quality. The websites tend to look generic, and reviews consistently mention high pressure sales tactics and underwhelming results.
With all of these, you're ultimately buying a platform, not a partner. The platform doesn't know your market, your competition, your patient demographics, or why your practice is different from the one down the street. It runs a playbook. And playbooks work until they don't.
Bottom line: Useful tools. But if you want someone who deeply understands your business and builds a custom growth strategy around it, a platform isn't the same thing as a partner.
I want to give a genuine nod here. Agencies like Wonderist, specifically in dental, do beautiful branding work. Custom photography, authentic storytelling, websites that actually look and feel like the practice they represent. If brand identity is your primary gap, these agencies deliver.
Who they're great for:
Practices that have a strong operational foundation and need a brand overhaul. If your biggest problem is that your marketing doesn't reflect the quality of care you provide, a creative focused niche agency can close that gap with real artistry.
Where Prism sees things differently:
Branding matters. But in my experience, the practices that consistently win in competitive markets aren't just the ones that look the best. They're the ones that have the strongest technical foundation underneath.
I come from an engineering background. I think about websites the way an engineer thinks about infrastructure: What's the load speed? Is the schema markup telling Google exactly what services you offer and where? Is your site architecture set up so that every new piece of content compounds your search authority? Are your Google Ads campaigns feeding data back into your SEO strategy?
This is where Prism's approach diverges. We're not just designing a beautiful storefront. We're building a growth engine, one where every component (site, SEO, ads, listings) feeds into and reinforces the others. The result is a system that gets stronger over time, not one that needs constant reinvention.
Bottom line: Great agencies for brand transformation. Prism focuses on building the entire technical and strategic system underneath.
After walking through all of that, here's the honest answer.
Prism is built for a specific kind of business owner. Not everyone. Not most people. A specific person.
You're a practitioner who owns your business. You're a dentist, a consultant, a healthcare provider, a service business operator. You're incredible at what you do. Your clients and patients love you. But marketing? It's either something you've been doing yourself (poorly, you suspect) or something you've outsourced (with mediocre results).
You've tried at least one of the options above. Maybe you built a Squarespace site that looks okay but hasn't generated a single lead. Maybe you hired an agency that charged you $4K per month and sent you reports you couldn't understand. Maybe you're using a platform that technically "works" but feels generic and disconnected from what makes your practice special.
You're not looking for the cheapest option. You understand that real results require real investment. You've been burned by cutting corners before. What you want isn't the lowest price. It's the highest confidence that your money is being spent by someone who genuinely knows what they're doing.
You want a partner, not a vendor. You want to hand the keys to someone you trust and say, "make this work." You want to talk to the person actually doing the work. Not a salesperson, not a junior account manager, not a chatbot. You want a founder to owner relationship where your growth is their growth.
You think in systems. When I talk about compounding SEO, about building a search visibility asset, about creating a flywheel where your website, your content, your ads, and your local listings all reinforce each other, that doesn't sound like marketing jargon to you. It sounds like common sense. You run your practice the same way: build good systems, deliver excellent service, and let the results compound.
If that sounds like you, Prism was built for exactly this.
I'll keep this simple because the specifics depend on your situation. But broadly:
A custom built, high performance website designed to convert visitors into patients or clients. Not a template. Not a drag and drop page builder. A site engineered for speed, structured data, mobile performance, and AI search readiness.
Done for you local SEO and listings management. Your Google Business Profile, your citations across 40+ directories, your review strategy, your local content. All handled.
Strategic paid advertising when it makes sense. Google Ads, Meta Ads, managed and optimized by someone who understands your market and your numbers.
A direct line to the person doing the work. Me and my team. No layers. No runaround.
Prism isn't for everyone, and I'd rather be upfront about that.
If you want a $500 per month retainer, we're not the right fit. If you want to manage everything yourself and just need a tool, one of the platforms above will serve you better. If you need a massive, multi location enterprise operation, a larger agency with a bigger team is probably the move.
But if you're a successful practice owner who wants to stop worrying about marketing and start watching it work, with a team that treats your business like their own, that's exactly what we built Prism to do.
If you want to talk about whether it's the right fit, I'm at enzo@design-prism.com. No pitch. Just a conversation.
Prism builds high converting websites, manages paid ads, and optimizes local listings so local businesses consistently attract qualified customers. Learn more at design-prism.com (opens in a new tab).
