Platforms like Wix and Squarespace make it easy to get online, but they often come with hidden limitations. We believe your business deserves a site that is built to perform.
When you build a site on a platform like Wix or Squarespace, you are essentially building on borrowed land. Your content lives on their servers and is locked inside their proprietary system. You are not just using a tool, you are tied to their business decisions.
If the platform decides to raise its prices, change its terms or discontinue a plan you rely on, you have very little choice but to follow along. You cannot simply export your site and host it elsewhere. If you want to leave, you usually have to start again from scratch.
A custom coded site from ICENI belongs to you. The files can be moved at any time and are not tied to the whims of a third party corporation. This is a significant difference for a New Zealand small business looking for long term stability and growth.
Every builder site starts from a template used by thousands of others. Even with customisation, there is always a ceiling on how unique your site can truly look.
Because your site lives on their platform, you cannot take it with you if you decide to move. All that time and effort in building your content is essentially locked in.
Drag and drop builders generate a lot of bloated code that often performs poorly on mobile devices. This is something both your visitors and Google will notice.
Generic platforms load excessive scripts that can slow down your site. This limits your control over the technical aspects that actually affect your search engine rankings.
Introductory prices often rise as a platform matures. You may find that essential features are eventually locked behind more expensive monthly tiers.
These tools are built for millions of people rather than your specific business. It is very common to see competitors using almost identical templates and layouts.
When we talk about hand coding, it means Ben writes every line of your site specifically for your business. We do not use templates or bulky drag and drop frameworks that generate messy markup. Everything is built to be as lean and efficient as possible.
The practical result is a site that is faster and more flexible than what a builder can produce. Our custom sites consistently achieve top scores on Google PageSpeed Insights, whereas many template builders struggle to perform well on mobile. This performance gap is something Google considers when deciding where to rank your business.
On the ownership side, the code belongs to you. While we are happy to look after the hosting and maintenance on your behalf, you are never locked in. If you ever wanted to take your site elsewhere, you could. That is a level of freedom that website builders simply do not offer.
We also provide Directus as your content management system. This ensures you still have a simple dashboard to update your own text and images without needing to touch any code. You get the ease of a builder combined with the high performance of a professional custom build.
They can seem cheaper at first, but any plan that removes their branding and allows a custom domain will cost money. When you consider you are paying for a site you don't own, the long term value is often much lower than a custom build.
Webflow does produce cleaner code than most builders and is a step up in quality. However, the same platform lock-in still applies and the pricing can be quite high for a small business once you add in the necessary features.
Certainly. We can take your existing content and rebuild the site from scratch with custom code. We make sure your search engine rankings are protected during the move, and you end up with a professional site that you actually own.
Not at all. We use Directus specifically to make updates easy for you. It is a clean and simple dashboard for managing your content. We set it up so you only see what you need, making it very straightforward to use.
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