You win some, you lose some.
Yes, as a web designer running a web design and web hosting service, inevitably you find that over a period of time you will always lose a proportion of clients. Whether the reason is a business closure, or changing over to a different service, in the end it's just swings and roundabouts. Losing clients can be frustrating, but when you gain new clients it takes up the slack and business remains good.
2018 was not a particularly good year and I did lose more clients than I did in previous years, but I attribute this more to the increasing competition from the big firms who promote their services aggressively on television and internet advertising. For example, companies like 1 & 1 who offer web hosting and domain registrations at low prices then hike up their price a year later when the customer is tied in.
Also, more 'build your own website' companies are cropping up and now offer attractive features that only good website designers could previously provide.
However, the one advantage that a good web designer still has over these automated services is the experience that they can provide with their knowledge of design and more importantly SEO.
A website designed by a good web designer will easily outperform those set up by someone with little experience of web design or Search Engine Optimisation.
So if getting good search results is important for gaining more enquiries for your business, or if you don't want the hassle of learning how to put together a good website (it's not always as easy as they make it out to be) then my advice is go with the web design expert every time.
