How we got to £7,200
This isn't theoretical from Tilda's marketing page. It's what our clients actually paid before they came to us. We pulled 12 invoices from companies running 50-300 leads/month who used Tilda for 2-3 years.
The real business stack on Tilda — not "Personal at £10/mo," but Tilda Business + Tilda Pro + add-ons:
- Tilda Business: £20/mo (your domain, no block limits)
- Pro blocks (forms with validation, multi-step): included in Pro at £30/mo
- Zapier integrations (Tilda is narrow natively): Zapier from £30/mo
- Analytics + GTM setup: ~£0 (manual)
- Paid templates/blocks from Tilda Market: £50-£200 one-time
- SSL + CDN speed: included
- Technical consultant (because something always breaks): £50-£100/mo
Average across 12 quotes: £180-£220/mo. Let's say £200/mo.
Over 36 months that's £7,200. For that money you could have bought a custom site twice, with budget left over for a year of support.
What £7,200 actually buys you
A template site with limited customization that:
- Loads in 2-4 seconds on mobile (custom — 0.6-1.5)
- Depends on Tilda's platform — if it goes down, your site disappears
- Has limited SEO (full schema.org control, server-side rendering, programmatic SEO — unavailable)
- Has no "your code" — export gives static HTML without server logic
- Can't change URL structure without losing SEO
This isn't a critique of Tilda as a tool. Tilda is great for:
- Personal pages
- Promo pages for one campaign
- Hypothesis testing on a 1-3 month horizon
- MVPs before serious investment
Tilda is bad for:
- Businesses planning to operate beyond 2 years
- Sites with complex integrations (CRM, ERP, healthcare systems)
- Projects where SEO is the primary channel
- Multilingual sites with serious SEO
What happened to our clients who migrated
Of 12 clients who moved from Tilda to custom:
- 9 of 12 — main reason: "can't go beyond the template," "need an integration Tilda doesn't allow"
- 2 of 12 — slow mobile speed killed conversion (Google Search Console showed CTR drop after the Core Web Vitals update)
- 1 of 12 — Tilda broke custom JS after an update, and the owner decided they'd had enough
Average migration timeline: 4-6 weeks with SEO transfer (no traffic loss). Our standard migration runs £500-£2,000 depending on the number of 301 redirects.
We break this down on vs Constructors.
Can you export your Tilda site?
Technically — yes. Tilda Business gives you static HTML export. But it's not a solution, it's a trap:
- Export is HTML/CSS/JS only — no form backend
- Forms stop submitting until you wire up your own backend
- Dynamic elements (booking, cart, accounts) — not exported
- If you used Tilda Zero Block — the JS can break post-export
Of our 12 migrants, none could effectively use the export. They all rebuilt on the new stack.
What if I'm on Tilda Personal at £10/mo?
Different math. £10/mo × 36 = £360 over 3 years. Less than our cheapest Landing tier (£1,000).
Question: is Personal enough for a business?
Personal is 1 site without your domain (URL looks like yourbiz.tilda.ws), 500-block limit, no multilingual. A serious business doesn't live there. As soon as you want a custom domain — that's Business £20/mo. As soon as you want real SEO + integrations — Pro £30/mo.
The cost for a business setup on Tilda always lands at £40-£80/mo after add-ons, even without the agency tier.
What about Wix? Webflow?
Same math with small differences:
| Platform | Business plan | Over 36 mo | Code export |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tilda Business + Pro | £50/mo | £1,800 | HTML without backend |
| Wix Business | £32/mo | £1,152 | No export |
| Webflow Business | £39/mo | £1,404 | HTML+CSS, no CMS |
| Squarespace Business | £33/mo | £1,188 | No export |
All of them — rent, not ownership. Each one costs more over 2-3 years than a one-time custom site purchase in our Industry Pro tier.
When a builder is still the right call
Honestly:
- Demand validation for a new product. If you don't know if the idea will work — Tilda in a week is cheaper than a custom site in a month.
- Promo page for one campaign. If the site lives 3 months and gets thrown away — no point coding.
- Personal page or portfolio. If you're a photographer or designer — Tilda is enough.
In every other case, the math kills the builder.
The hidden cost no one counts
Beyond money, there's your time:
- Fix a form that won't submit — 1-3 hours
- Figure out why SEO tanked after an update — 4-6 hours
- Maintain plugins/blocks after updates — 2-4 hours per quarter
- Find a contractor "who knows Tilda" — 1-2 weeks of searching
That's 30-50 hours/year of an owner's time, which averages £50-£150/hour. Add another £1,500-£7,500/year to your Tilda tab.
A custom site doesn't demand those hours. We run weekly security checks and updates — included in the warranty year. See Pricing.
