Your mate who does websites

Why it is so tempting

The agency you rang wanted £1,200 and a monthly fee. Your mate wants £200 and a curry. He is a decent bloke, he has built sites before, and you can see them. On paper it is not a hard decision.

And the favour economy is how trades work. You did his mum's boiler at cost. He does your website. That is a reasonable way for two people to live. The problem is not the arrangement. It is that a website is not a one-off job, and both of you are treating it like one.

The website is not the work

Building the pages is the part that looks like the job. It is maybe a fifth of it. The rest is the stuff nobody sees: pages for each service and each town you cover, so Google has something to rank; wording that says what you do in the words customers search for; a phone number that is tappable on mobile; speed; linking it to your Google Business Profile; keeping it alive as your services change.

Your mate builds the fifth he knows how to build. It looks fine. It never produces a call, because the parts that produce calls were never on his list. He does not know they exist, and neither did you, so nobody is lying. It just does not work.

The three things that go wrong every time

First, the timeline. He is doing it in evenings, for a favour, and favours slip behind paid work. 'Nearly there' lasts months. Meanwhile you have told customers to look at the site.

Second, ownership. He registered the domain on his account because it was quicker. He set up the hosting on his card. The site lives in his login. None of this is malicious. All of it means that when he gets a new job, moves away or you fall out, the site goes with him. We rate agencies on exactly this point in agencies that build before you pay, and a mate can fail the test as easily as a cowboy agency.

Third, there is nobody to ring. The contact form breaks in September. You notice in November. He is busy. You cannot exactly complain, you paid him in beer.

• Favours slip; paid work does not
• Domain and hosting end up in his name
• No one is responsible when it breaks
• The pages that would actually rank were never built
• You cannot sack a mate

The cost nobody counts

You saved perhaps £800 against the cheapest fixed-price builder. Against that, count the months without a site that works, the customers sent to a half-finished page, and the awkwardness. If the site would have produced two extra jobs over those months, which is a modest expectation for a decent trade site with the local pages in place, the favour cost you money.

The point is not that your mate is bad at it. It is that a working trade website is a specialised thing, in the way that a Gas Safe boiler install is a specialised thing, and 'knows WordPress' is roughly 'owns a spanner'.

When the mate is fine

Be fair. There are cases where the favour works. If he does this for a living, charges you a proper if discounted rate, puts the domain in your name, and you treat it as a job with a deadline rather than a favour with a vibe, you may get a very good site cheaply. The difference is that it is a paid job with a scope, not a favour.

It is also fine if you genuinely just want a brochure: a page that says who you are so that people who already have your number can check you exist. That is a small, finishable job. Just do not expect it to ring the phone.

How to not fall out

If you have already said yes, salvage it with a conversation, not a row. Ask him to put the domain in your name and give you the hosting login. Agree a finish date and a scope: these pages, this phone number, done by this date. Pay him properly for it, in money, so it becomes a job he can prioritise.

If you have not said yes yet, thank him and tell him you have found a fixed-price firm and you would rather keep the friendship and the website separate. Any decent mate understands that. Then ask him to look over what the firm produces, which is a favour he can actually do in an evening.

What to do instead

You do not need to spend £5,000. There are firms building trade sites for a few hundred pounds, fixed price, with the domain in your name, and systems that bundle the site with the Google listing and the review tools for a monthly fee you can cancel. Our comparison of best value trade website builders and our sole trader agency round-up cover the sensible end of that market.

Whoever you use, do the free groundwork first, because the site is only as good as the reviews and photos it has to work with. The list is in seven things to do before paying any agency. Your mate can help with that bit over a pint, and nobody has to own anything.

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