A free wedding website or a commissioned one: what you are choosing between

What a free builder does well

Free and low-cost wedding website builders are genuinely useful. You can have a page up in an evening, choose from a set of layouts, and add a reply form. For many weddings that is enough, and we'd rather say so than pretend otherwise.

Where the difference shows

• The look. A builder starts from its templates, and your names go into one. A commissioned site starts from your invitation suite: its palette, its type, its motif. Guests see one wedding, not two.
• The address. Builders usually give you a link with their name in it. A commissioned site lives at your own address.
• The work. With a builder, you are the designer, the writer and the support desk. With a commission, you fill in one guided form and approve what comes back.
• The guests. A site designed for your wedding is planned around your guests: relatives abroad, older phones, slow connections, a ceremony and reception in two places.
• After the day. A commissioned site can turn into a keepsake at the same address, rather than expiring with a plan.

The honest trade

A commissioned site takes longer, a few weeks rather than an evening, and it costs more than a free one. What you get for that is a site made once, for one wedding, by people who will answer when you message them in the week of the wedding.

How to decide

Ask yourself two questions. Will you have the time, in the busiest months of your life, to build and maintain the site yourself? And do you want the link your guests open to feel like it came from the same hand as your invitation? If the answer to both is "not really" and "yes", a commission is the better fit.

If you'd like to see what a commissioned site can be, our design studies each open as a working site.