Wedding website builders vs a done-for-you service
We’re not neutral here, so let’s be straightforward: the DIY platforms are good, most couples use one, and plenty of couples should. This page is about where the line actually falls.
What follows is a fair account of what Joy, The Knot, Zola, Bridebook, Hitched and GettingMarried do well, and where a done-for-you service like ours is the better answer.
What the DIY platforms genuinely do well
Joy has the strongest free wedding website of the group: clean designs, solid RSVP handling with per-event questions, a good guest-list tool, and a companion app guests actually use. If you want a free site and you’re happy to build it yourself, this is usually where we’d point you.
Zola is excellent at the registry side — gift lists, cash funds and thank-you tracking joined up with the website. It’s US-centred, which matters for shipping and currency if you’re marrying in the UK, but the product itself is polished.
The Knot pairs the website with a large planning toolkit — checklists, budgeter, vendor marketplace. If you want everything in one account, it’s convenient.
Bridebook and Hitched are the UK-native options, and their real strength is venue and supplier discovery with British pricing and locations. The website is a sensible add-on to planning tools you may already be using.
GettingMarried is a UK independent with genuinely lovely design templates and a more personal feel than the big directories, with reasonable paid tiers.
All six give you a working wedding website for free or close to it, hosted, mobile-friendly, with RSVPs. That’s not a small thing, and no one should pay for a done-for-you service without knowing it’s the alternative.
Where the DIY route costs more than it looks
The price is the easy part. The three things couples tend to underestimate:
- Writing it. The design is chosen in ten minutes. The wording — how you met, dress code that’s clear without being stern, asking for contributions without it reading like a shop — is what takes evenings.
- Maintaining it. A wedding website is not finished at launch. Timings shift, a supplier changes, a shuttle gets added, accommodation sells out. Each update is small; there are a lot of them, and they arrive when you’re busiest.
- Template edges. Multi-day itineraries, guest-specific invitation scopes, two languages, unusual RSVP questions — these are either not supported or supported awkwardly, and the workaround is always more of your time.
Where a done-for-you service is the better fit
A concierge service isn’t buying you a nicer template. It’s buying you the removal of a task. You answer questions in your own words; someone else designs it, writes it, sets up the RSVPs around your actual day, and makes every change from then until after the wedding. Nobody in your household has to open a builder or remember a password.
It also means judgement rather than options. Instead of choosing between fourteen fonts, you get a considered answer — and a straight response when you ask whether your invitation wording is clear enough. Ours runs from £99 on the Founding Rate up to £895 for fully bespoke work; the full breakdown is on the pricing guide.
A quick comparison
| DIY platform | Done-for-you | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | £0–£250 | £99–£895 one-off |
| Your time | 5–15 hours, plus ongoing updates | A questionnaire and approvals |
| Design | Template, lightly customised | Built around your wedding |
| Writing | You write it | Written and edited for you |
| Updates after launch | You make them | We make them |
| Complex RSVPs / multi-day | Limited or workarounds | Built to match your day |
| Second language | Rarely supported | Written properly in both |
| Someone to ask | Help centre | A person who knows your wedding |
How to decide
Choose a DIY platform if your wedding is one day at one venue, you have some free evenings, and you don’t mind being the person who keeps it current. Start with Joy for the website itself, or Bridebook or Hitched if you want UK supplier tools alongside it.
Choose a done-for-you service if your wedding has moving parts, if you’ve already run out of planning capacity, or if you simply don’t want another login. If you tell us about your wedding and a free platform would serve you just as well, we’ll say so — we’d rather you heard that from us than found out afterwards.