In reply to Faydra Deon (@faydra_deon).

It appears that the bottom line for many developers/companies selling these building-block tools is to give people the perception that they can have it all for almost nothing, and it’s the creators of the page builders or site builders or drag-and-drop builders who are making big money off the ignorance (ignorant doesn’t mean stupid/dumb; it just means you don’t know any better) of people who think professional web designers/developers are just trying to rip them off.

Great point! That's one of the big things I'm seeing and one of the reasons for this post. I wonder how many people have purchased a page builder only to be disappointed with the results.

People won’t hesitate to hire an electrician or plumber when the wiring goes bad or the toilets back up in their homes, but they don’t see the benefit of hiring a web design/developer to create their “home on the web” because of all the “you can do it yourself” ersatz-tools that exist.

Well, it took a few years and playing around with all these tools for me to realize the benefits of going with a good web designer outright.