Wix, Squarespace, WordPress and a custom build can all run a roofing company’s website, and Google’s help pages on ranking name no preferred platform. Choose on who in your company will update the site and on what you keep if you leave the builder or the designer. If you start from a template, its stock photos and placeholder text have to come out before the site goes live.
Google’s local ranking page names reviews and links, and no website builder
A roofing owner on r/Entrepreneur asked, “can wix do the same job as Wordpress?” and said ranking high in Maps mattered most.
Google’s help page on local ranking never mentions a platform. It says Google ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence, and judges prominence partly by how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have.
On the site itself, Google’s starter guide says that with a site builder you might not need to do anything technical to your page titles beyond writing good ones. Google’s sitemap page adds that WordPress, Wix and similar builders have likely already given search engines a sitemap, the list of your pages that Google reads.
Choose the builder on the points below, and put the effort you’d spend on ranking into reviews and links from other websites. Google Business Profile for Roofers: Setup and What Moves Maps Rankings covers the profile side.
Whoever updates the site should try the editor before you pay for a year
A marketer on r/SEO described trying to move a roofer off GoDaddy and onto WordPress. The roofer stayed with GoDaddy because he and his wife found it easy to edit.
Here is what each one charged in October 2026:
- Squarespace: $19 to $99 a month billed yearly, or from $25 a month billed monthly.
- WordPress.com: from $4 a month billed yearly, or $9 billed monthly.
- WordPress.org: open-source software you install on hosting you pay for and manage separately.
- Wix: a free plan that keeps Wix branding and a wixsite.com address, and four paid plans whose listed prices are for a full year paid up front. Wix lists a 14-day money-back guarantee.
The yearly plans on Squarespace and WordPress.com, and every paid Wix plan, include a domain free for the first year. Squarespace says the domain then renews at the standard rate.
Before you pay for a year, have the person who will add job photos and fix a wrong phone number build a test page in the editor.
The builder and your own uploads can both slow a page on a phone
We ran Google’s PageSpeed test three times each on a roofer’s Wix homepage and on our rebuild of the same page. The Wix page scored in the 70s every time and the rebuild in the 90s.
The number that held on every run was total blocking time, how long the page can’t respond to a tap while it loads. It was 790 to 1,050 milliseconds on Wix and zero on the rebuild, though that is one Wix site against one rebuild.
Google indexes and ranks the mobile version of a site, so the phone results are the ones to read.
Your own files can slow the page as well. On a site we built, the logo was a 579 KB image shown small in the phone header, and it was the slowest element on the mobile homepage. Once we cut it to 26 KB, the page’s largest element showed within 2.5 seconds, the target Google sets.
Before you commit, run PageSpeed on the template’s demo page several times and compare the mobile blocking time. Run it again once your logo and photos are in.
When you leave, the domain can go with you and the design may stay
Wix’s help center says a Wix site can’t be exported to another host, because it runs on Wix’s own technology and servers. It also says you can’t switch templates once you start editing one, so a different template means a new site with your pages and media brought across. Pick the Wix template you’ll keep before you fill it in.
Squarespace’s help page says you can export layout pages, one blog with its posts, and text and image blocks to a file WordPress can import. Store and portfolio pages, product and video blocks, style settings and custom CSS stay behind, so the design never leaves Squarespace.
An agency can keep a custom site too. A marketer on r/SEO wrote that a roofer’s former agency owned “the website, the code, the design.” The agency did not own the domain, yet after leaving, the roofer had to build a new site from scratch. Before you pay for a custom build, get the files and every login written into the contract as yours. For more on vetting an agency, see How to Hire a Roofing Marketing Company Without Getting Burned.
The domain is the part you can take with you, as long as it’s registered to you. ICANN, which sets the rules for domain names, makes whoever registers a domain responsible for it and for keeping its contact details accurate. The registrar must hand over the code that moves the domain elsewhere within five calendar days of a request.
One roofing owner’s site was down, and he had no login for it and wasn’t sure whether it ran on Squarespace or GoDaddy. Register the domain in your own name and email, and keep every login where the office can find it.
Email on your own domain needs settings that keep it out of spam
A roofing co-owner on r/smallbusiness wanted one service for both the website and professional email, and found the choice overwhelming. The email can come from a different company than the site: Google Workspace, which puts email on your own domain, starts at $7 per user per month.
Since February 2024, Gmail has required everyone who sends to it to set up SPF or DKIM on their domain, the settings that keep your email out of spam folders. Whoever sells you the email, get one of them set up on the domain before you send an estimate from the new address.
Templates go live with stock photos and placeholder text unless someone swaps them
Of 21 images on one roofer’s Wix homepage, seven were photos of their own work. The rest were Wix’s shared stock photos, Unsplash images and AI-made blog headers.
Another roofer’s site was an unedited template from Lovable, an AI site builder. It printed the placeholder phone number (555) 123-4567 twice and said it served “the greater metropolitan area.” It claimed the company was licensed, bonded and insured, with comprehensive warranties and years of experience. A link to the site shared online showed Lovable’s own preview image.
The same goes for sample testimonials. The FTC’s final rule, announced in August 2024, bans fake reviews and testimonials, including AI-generated ones from people who don’t exist, and lets the FTC seek civil penalties against knowing violators.
For finished roofing sites to compare a template against, see Roofing Website Design Examples: Real Contractor Sites and What Each Gets Right. Before launch, run this list on any template.
Swap these out before the site goes live
- Phone number. Search every page for “555” and any number that isn’t yours, then tap yours on a phone to check it rings the office.
- Service area. Replace any stock line about the area you serve with the towns you work in.
- Photos. Replace or delete every image that doesn’t show your own jobs, blog headers included.
- Reviews. Delete every sample testimonial and keep only reviews real customers wrote.
- Claims. Keep “licensed,” “bonded,” “insured” and each warranty line only where it’s true for your company.
- Logo. Upload a copy about 900 pixels wide, and keep the full-size file for print.
- Link preview. Text the site’s address to yourself and check that the picture that comes up is yours.
Someone has to check the site after launch, custom builds included
Someone injected casino spam into 25 of the 38 pages on one roofer’s site and linked its service pages to gambling sites. Its Testimonials page, on a business with 242 five-star reviews, held casino copy and no testimonials. Before launch, agree who installs updates and who looks over the live pages.
Tracking can break on a custom build. A bug in our own site template stopped form fills and phone taps from reaching Google Analytics, so on one roofer’s site it logged 715 visits from August 1 to mid-September and not a single form or call. We found and fixed it in September 2026, and checked the fix by triggering a tap on the phone number in a preview copy.
After launch and after every change, fill in your own contact form and tap your own phone number, then check that both show up in your analytics.
Check these before you pay for a builder and after you launch
- Have whoever will update the site build a test page in the editor.
- Run PageSpeed on the template’s demo page several times and compare mobile blocking time.
- Register the domain in your own name and email.
- Get the files and every login written into any build contract as yours.
- Set up SPF or DKIM before you send email from the new address.
- Run the swap list before launch, then test the form and phone number.
Your Google profile sends people to whichever site you build, so see where the map ends for you with the free Google Maps heatmap. Pick your profile and a search, and in a few minutes you’ll see your rank at 49 points around your office.