Why is it so hard to hire just a website designer?
Designers and agencies typically bundle visuals together with full web development, making it difficult to pay strictly for custom mockups without building the whole site. This forces business owners into a false choice between repetitive, cookie-cutter templates or trying to cobble together a distinct look on their own.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Using WordPress and asking an LLM to build the website
- 2building the website independently with AI or templates
- 3hiring a web agency to find a balance between custom style and familiar user experience
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“It seems like all the websites I see look the same. I'm not just talking about in my space, but in general, they all look super basic, certainly very clean and lean, but they look like corpo templates. It doesn't seem like any creativity went into them.”source ↗
“People who see my site tell me I should update it, but when they give me pointers, they point to the same sterile sites I dislike so much.”source ↗
“How can you stand out, if your website looks exactly the same? I don't want to pay for someone to give me what I probably could just copy myself, with an Ai's help and hate anyway.”source ↗
“So, I'm torn. Do I keep trying to update it myself to my liking? Do I pay someone to try and give me what I like or do I go with some boring, brightly colored, cookie cutter?”source ↗
“I don't need somebody to build the website, I need somebody to create the design.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 3Why are Shopify themes either too expensive or missing features?
- 6Should I use WordPress or Wix for a new business website?
- 2How to get a traditional Word-style post editor instead of the blank canvas
- 2How to secure a WordPress site with zero technical knowledge
- 4Custom ERP development vs customizing an existing platform
- 4Why am I spending more time on WordPress maintenance than publishing?