[wdfifteen]

I know next to nothing about the present-day landscape of web site development. One of our recently acquired properties came with a newish web site. The previous owner paid $20k to have the site built. Apparently the code is proprietary or something. My people have access to it, but are unable to make changes, due to its complexity. The site needs a lot of work.

My options are:
1. Continue with this web site and pay the original developers a "change order" every time we want something updated. They charge $150 an hour. The site is an ugly POS and needs a lot of updating.

2. My graphic arts people make web sites for their churches, themselves, even some of our clients on Squarespace and Wordpress. I've looked at their work and they look great to me. They say they can do an new site in a week. We would have full access to make updates for free.

I'm of the old school "you get what you pay for" belief, so I'm thinking the $20k site should be a lot better, but I'm wondering about this. Is a custom $20k site really better than a building-block Squarespace site that will cost $2k? Or did the custom site developers just see this dumbasz coming and ream him for the site?
My wife can look at a woman's purse and know the brand and the approximate cost. I just see a purse. A Walmart sale item looks the same as a Gucci to me. Similarly, could someone more sophisticated about web sites than me look at a site and know the owner is a cheapskate Squarespace user?
This is for a high-end product and it wouldn't do to have users thinking we do anything on the cheap.