vs hiring an agency
What you are buying when you hire people
You are buying judgment and hours. A good agency brings taste, a plan, and somebody who has done this particular job before.
That is worth real money when the work is one-off and important. A rebrand, a launch, or a site that has to carry a big campaign all qualify.
The catch is rhythm rather than quality. Small changes travel through an email, a queue and an invoice, so most owners quietly stop asking for them.
A site that stops changing starts drifting away from the business it describes.
What a platform gives you instead
A platform trades taste for speed and repeatability. The same steps happen the same way every time, whether it is your first site or your fortieth.
You make the change at the moment you think of it, and nobody has to fit you into a schedule.
The honest limit is bespoke work. If you need an unusual layout or a custom booking flow, hire someone who builds those.
Platforms are built for the common shapes, done carefully and done the same way twice.
For most owners with a handful of domains, that is the trade they would make anyway. Speed on the small stuff beats perfection you have to wait a fortnight for.
Questions worth asking either way
The same five questions expose both options quickly, and neither one should struggle to answer them.
- Who owns the domain and the account when the work ends?
- How does a small text change get made, and how long does it take?
- Where do the messages from the contact form actually land?
- What happens to the site if the relationship stops tomorrow?
- Can you see what the page says before it goes live?
How Microsite Generator handles this
The Ask AI panel sits on every screen and does the small jobs an agency would put in a queue. Change the copy, set the brand and logo, add a hero video, add a page, start an A/B test, or read your own leads.
Pricing is a plan rather than a quote. Starter is $99 a month and Platform is $399, annual billing is 20 percent off, and every plan starts with a 15-day free trial.
Before anything publishes, the compliance gate checks the page — a step that runs first, every single time. Pages are individually built for your business and checked against Google Search Essentials and modern web standards.
Site numbers are capped by plan, which keeps the work pointed at sites people find genuinely useful.
Updated September 2026
Frequently asked questions
When is an agency the better choice?
When the work is one-off, unusual, or needs design judgment you do not want to make yourself.
When does a platform fit better?
When you need many small sites, or you want to make changes the moment you think of them.
Can I use both?
Yes. Some owners have an agency handle the main brand site and run their smaller domains on a platform.
Who owns the site I build here?
You do. The domain stays in your name, and your leads export to a spreadsheet file whenever you want.
See it built for your business
Every plan starts with a 15-day free trial — build a site in conversation and watch it pass the compliance gate before you decide.
See plans — from $99/moBuild it compliant from day one
Every page is checked before it goes live, by checks that draw on Google Search Essentials and on our own quality rules.
Start your 15-day free trial →Check a site you already have
Free: is your site safe with Google? Get an SEO + compliance score.
Try the Microsite Compliance Grader →