Why Half of DIY Websites Get Abandoned, and What to Do If Yours Is Stuck

the numbers/

How many people abandon a DIY website?

The best figures we’ve found come from a survey of 1,000 US adults by All About Cookies in May 2025. It isn’t a UK study and it covers website projects in general, but the pattern is hard to ignore. Of the people who had started a project:

• 51%Gave up before finishing

  That’s made up of the two groups below.

• 29%Finished later, with outside help

  They got there in the end, but not on their own.

• 22%Abandoned it and never went back

  More than one in five walked away for good.

• 25%Had no significant issues

  Only a quarter had a smooth build. Another 24% finished, but it took much longer than expected.

Only 9% of those asked said no part of building a website was too challenging. So if you’ve struggled, that doesn’t mean you’re bad at this. It’s the normal experience.

So how many people give up on Wix?

Nobody outside Wix can say, and we haven’t found a reliable study that measures it. You may see claims that only a few per cent of Wix users ever publish a website, but those are estimates. They divide one published figure by another.

What Wix does say is useful. Its 2025 annual report counts about 304.2 million registered users, says that “many registered users never publish a website”, and reports about 6.1 million premium subscriptions. Those figures aren’t a drop-out rate, because many people run free websites and one person can hold several subscriptions. They do show that signing up is a long way from having a live, paid website. We should add that we’re a WIX Legend Partner, and we think Wix is a very good platform. The difficulty usually isn’t the tool.

why it happens/

Why DIY website projects stall

Website builders remove the need to write code. They don’t remove the need to plan, design, write and maintain. The survey and our own experience of picking up these projects point to the same sticking points.

the real cost/

What a stuck DIY website is really costing you

A website builder’s monthly fee is the smallest cost involved. The bigger one is your time. As a simple illustration, if your time is worth £40 an hour, 40 hours of learning and rebuilding has cost you £1,600 in time you could have spent earning, and you may still not have a finished website.

That’s why we think business owners do themselves an injustice by spending their time learning to build a website. You’re good at what you do, and that’s where your time pays back. The result can also perform poorly, for reasons you can’t easily see from the inside:

• Page titles and descriptions left on their defaults
• Pictures so large that pages load slowly
• Layouts that look right on a laptop but not on a phone
• No clear next step for a visitor to call or enquire
• Links from an old website that now lead nowhere
• Updates and backups nobody is looking after

Some of those are simple to put right, and our website maintenance checklist is a good place to start. The harder question is whether they’re worth your time to learn.

To see where your website stands, try our free website health check.

your options/

Finish your DIY website, get help or start again?

There isn’t one right answer. Here’s how we’d decide, and we’d give you the same advice if you asked us.

Five questions to help you decide

1. Does the website need to bring in work?

   If it does, the cost of it not doing so may soon outweigh the cost of getting help.

2. When did you last make real progress?

   If it’s been weeks or months, you’re unlikely to finish it without something changing.

3. What exactly are you stuck on?

   One missing feature can be a small job. If it’s everything, a fresh start may be better.

4. Who’ll look after it next year?

   A website needs updates, backups and fresh content for as long as it’s live.

5. What is your time worth?

   Compare the hours you’d still need with a written quote. Our guide to website costs explains what affects the price.

before you ask for help/

Five things to do before you hand over a DIY website

Whoever you choose, these will save time and protect you. They’ll also make any quote more accurate.

• Find out who owns your domain. Check that it’s registered in your name or your business’s name, and that you can log in to the account.
• Don’t cancel anything yet. Keep your plan, hosting and email running until any new website is live, as your email may depend on them.
• Gather your words and pictures. Your text, logo and photos can usually be reused. A Wix design generally can’t be exported to another platform, so it’s the content that moves.
• List your important pages and addresses. If your website has been live, these are needed to set up redirects so you keep existing links and search visibility.
• Share access safely. Add someone as a collaborator or give them their own login if you can, rather than passing on your password.

stuck on a platform/

Stuck on a Wix or WordPress DIY website?

The route depends on where you’ve got to. If you’re on Wix and it suits your business, you don’t need to leave. We’re a WIX Legend Partner with Wix Studio certification, so we can take what you’ve started and finish it properly.

If you’re on WordPress and the upkeep is the problem, Hydra offers a simpler route. It’s the content management system we write and look after ourselves, with no third-party plugins and updates that install themselves overnight. We build the website, and you just edit your words and pictures. Patchstack counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, 91% of them in plugins, so having none to manage is a real relief for a small business.

Our website rescue service covers both routes, and we’ll tell you honestly which suits you.

common questions/

DIY website questions

key takeaways/

The short version

• Giving up is common: 51% of people in one survey abandoned their website project before finishing it.
• Nobody has reliably measured how many people give up on Wix specifically, so treat any precise figure with caution.
• Design, security, custom features and writing are where DIY website projects usually stall.
• Your time is the biggest cost, and the finished website may still perform poorly.
• Finishing it yourself, getting help and starting again can each be the right answer.

sources/

Where our figures come from

• All About Cookies, web builder statistics: 1,000 US adults, May 2025.
• Wix.com annual report (Form 20-F) for 2025: figures at 31 December 2025, including Base44.
• Patchstack, State of WordPress Security in 2026: 2025 data, from a company that sells WordPress security services.