San Diego, California
The Ledger
1 August 2026
Hosted store platforms are good software with a fee stack most owners never total up, and there are two honest alternatives depending on whether you want to own the site or hand off the work.
The honest arithmetic of running merch yourself, from platform fees and blanks to the hours nobody invoices for, and what the managed alternative actually pays.
What actually drives the price of a website, what most San Diego businesses genuinely need, and why a hand-built site can start at $500 once agency overhead comes out.
Speed, ownership and cost are pushing San Diego businesses off template builders and onto custom-coded websites, and the reasons are practical rather than aesthetic.
Core Web Vitals measure three ordinary human experiences, and template stacks fail them by construction rather than by accident.
