There is no universal right answer here, and anyone who gives you one is selling something. A website builder is cheap, quick, and entirely in your hands. A web designer costs real money and takes real time. The question is not which is better, it is which is right for the site you actually need. Here is an honest way to decide.
If you need a clean, professional presence, a few pages, who you are, what you do, how to get in touch, a website builder will do the job and do it well. A local trade, a small shop, a freelancer, a club: these are exactly what builders are good at. You drag, you drop, you publish, and you are online the same afternoon for the cost of your hosting. You do not need to pay someone four figures to put your opening hours on a page.
The other quiet advantage is control. You can change the text, swap a photo, or add a page yourself at midnight without emailing anyone or waiting three days for a quote. For a lot of small businesses, that independence is worth more than a bespoke design.
Some things really are worth paying for. If the site has to sell, rank well in search, integrate with other systems, handle bookings or payments at any scale, or carry a brand that needs to look genuinely distinctive, a good designer pays for themselves. The difference between a template and a site built by someone who understands conversion and performance shows up directly in the results, and a builder will only take you so far.
The honest test: if the website is a nice-to-have, a builder is almost certainly enough. If the website is how the business actually makes money, that is when professional design stops being a cost and starts being an investment.
A builder is the cheapest and fastest route, with the trade-off being that the work, and the limits, are yours. A designer costs more and takes longer, and in return you get something tailored and someone accountable for it. Neither is wrong. A common and sensible middle path is to start on a builder to get online quickly, then bring in a designer later once you know what the business actually needs from the site.
Whichever route you take, the rule does not change: your domain and your hosting stay in your name. With a builder that is automatic, it is your account. With a designer, insist on it. The thing you are building has to be yours to keep, move, or hand to someone else later. That is non-negotiable regardless of who clicks the buttons.
If you genuinely cannot tell which camp you are in, ask someone with no stake in the answer. Tell us what you are trying to do and we will give you a straight read, even if the straight read is that you can handle this one yourself with our website builder. And if it turns out you do want a pro, we can point you to a vetted designer we host.
Our website builder is included with hosting if you want to have a go. If the job calls for a professional, ask us for an honest recommendation instead.