Website design in Lisbon: Wix, WordPress or a subscription team?

There are three real ways to get a website in Lisbon today: build it yourself on a tool like Wix, have a freelancer put it together in WordPress, or bring in a subscription team to handle the whole thing for you. Each one has a very different price, timeline and amount of work that lands on you.

The part almost nobody explains is that the cost of a website isn't only in building it. It's in who keeps it live, who updates it and who answers when something breaks. Choosing the right route is really choosing where that work should sit: on you, or on someone else. Let's go through the three, no fluff.

What are the three ways to get a website in Lisbon today?

There are three: a DIY builder like Wix, a WordPress site built by a freelancer, or a subscription team. They differ in the entry cost, the time they ask of you, and who looks after the site afterwards.

1. Do it yourself on a builder (Wix, Squarespace, WordPress.com)

It's the cheapest way to get started. You pick a template, drag some blocks around, and you have a page live over a weekend. For anyone testing an idea or who just needs a simple presence, it works, and there's nothing wrong with that.

The real cost here isn't money, it's your time. You're the one designing, writing, sorting the domain, learning what SEO is and remembering to run backups. While the business is small, it holds up. Once it grows, that time gets too valuable to spend pushing buttons.

2. WordPress with a freelancer

Now you get a more tailored site. A freelancer sets up WordPress, picks the theme, installs the plugins and hands it over. You gain flexibility and a more professional result than a generic template.

The weak spot shows up after handover. WordPress runs on plugins and themes that update constantly, and someone has to stay on top of that. If the freelancer who built the site in January is swamped in June, you wait while your site waits too. The build got solved; the continuity, not always.

3. A subscription team (the Ankor model)

In this model you don't buy a website once, you have a team building and looking after it for a fixed monthly fee. Building, hosting, updates, maintenance and small improvements all sit in the same price, and there's always someone responsible for the site.

It's the route for anyone who wants the site working for the business without it becoming one more task on the list. At Ankor, plans start at 229 €/month, with no lock-in contract, and you can see what each one covers on the plans and pricing page.

Wix, WordPress or a subscription: how do they compare?

They compare best across six criteria: entry cost, time to go live, who maintains the site, support, security and who handles SEO. That's where the differences show.

Lisbon already has other monthly subscription models for websites, with hosting and maintenance included, so this isn't a route that's foreign to the market. The difference is in what's included and who answers when you need it.

Is it worth building the site yourself on Wix or WordPress?

It's worth it if you're just starting, you have time, and you need something simple. A DIY builder does the job. It stops being worth it when the site becomes important for sales and the maintenance starts competing with your actual work.

Be honest with yourself about your time. Building the site yourself feels faster because you don't wait on anyone, but you're doing all of it, and what looks fast on day one drags out over months of small changes. If the site is your business's shop window and not a weekend project, DIY usually turns out expensive in hours, even when it's cheap in euros. And there's a part that gets ignored until the day it breaks: once it's live, someone has to keep it running, a topic we wrote about in full in website maintenance in Portugal.

When is a subscription team worth it?

It's worth it when the site has to bring in customers consistently and you don't want, or can't be, the person on the hook technically. A subscription takes the build, the maintenance and the SEO off your back for a fixed monthly fee.

The maths is simple. A stalled site doesn't cost zero, it costs the customers who never arrive. If you're in a competitive market in Lisbon and the site has to show up on Google, load fast and stay current, it makes sense to put that in the hands of people who do it all day. You can learn more about this model on the Ankor websites service page and talk to us whenever you want to move forward.