Your Durham biotech's Squarespace site looks sharp until a sponsor asks for the trial finder
A custom website for a Durham research or life-sciences organization typically runs $15,000 to $70,000 over 4 to 12 weeks. Wix, Squarespace, and templates are genuinely the right answer for a clean brochure site, and most Durham firms should use them. You cross into custom when the site needs interactive tools, a clinical-trial finder, a gated researcher portal, accessibility you can prove, or integration with the systems that run your science.
Squarespace and Wix make a beautiful brochure site, and if that's what you need, build it there and move on. The wall appears when the website has to do something: surface a searchable list of your active clinical trials, gate technical data behind a researcher login, integrate with your CRM (Customer Relationship Management) or study systems, or meet accessibility standards a university partner or federal grant requires you to document.
Template platforms aren't built for any of that. You end up embedding clumsy third-party widgets, your trial finder is a static table you update by hand, and when an accessibility audit comes, you can't fix what the platform won't let you touch. For a Durham organization whose credibility rests on rigor, a site that can't do the rigorous parts is a problem.
Where the off-the-shelf tools fall short
- A clinical-trial finder ends up as a static table updated by hand instead of a searchable tool
- Gating technical data behind a researcher login is awkward or impossible on a template
- The site can't integrate with your CRM or study systems, so data lives in two places
- Accessibility you must document for a university or federal partner is unfixable on the platform
Custom website: what Durham teams actually get
Custom web development gives you the interactive, integrated, accessible site a research organization actually needs: a real trial finder pulling from your data, a gated portal for researchers, clean integration with your CRM and study systems, and accessibility you can audit and prove. You build only the parts that need it and keep the rest simple.
Feature priorities for Durham teams
Durham website: the full scope
The engagements Durham teams bring us most often: SEO-optimized websites, website redesign, custom website development, web design, Next.js development, React development and responsive web design.
- You need a searchable trial finder or research-program directory
- Technical data must be gated behind a researcher login
- The site must integrate with your CRM or study systems
- You must document accessibility for a university or federal partner
- You need a clean brochure site and nothing interactive
- There's no data integration or gated content required
- Squarespace or Wix accessibility is adequate for your audience
- Budget and timeline favor a template you can launch this week
The honest cost picture for Durham
| Project scope | Typical cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Custom brochure site with light interactivity | $15k to $30k | 4 to 6 weeks |
| Site with trial finder, gated portal, and integrations | $35k to $70k | 8 to 12 weeks |
| Accessibility audit and remediation | $8k to $20k | 2 to 4 weeks |
Timeline: what happens, and when
Exactly what you get
A site that does the rigorous parts a research organization needs: a live, searchable trial or program finder; a gated researcher portal; integration with your CRM and study systems; and documented WCAG accessibility for your university and federal partners. The brochure parts stay simple. It connects to your CRM for contacts, helpdesk software for inquiries, and business intelligence dashboards for traffic and engagement.
How to choose a developer in Durham
Separate the brochure work from the rigorous work and make sure your partner does too. A good Durham developer will tell you which pages belong on a simple CMS and which features, the trial finder, the gated portal, genuinely need custom code. Ask how they document accessibility, because university and grant partners will ask you to prove it. A shop that builds everything custom, or treats accessibility as a checkbox, is the wrong fit.
- A live, searchable clinical-trial finder driven by your real data, not a hand-updated table
- A gated researcher portal for technical data and documents
- Integration with your CRM and study systems so content stays in sync
- Provable accessibility for university and federal-grant requirements
- Performance and SEO you control, which template platforms cap
- Higher cost and longer timeline than a Squarespace template
- You own hosting, security, and updates instead of renting them
- Content editing may need a CMS setup rather than a drag-drop builder
- For a pure brochure site, custom is unnecessary expense
- !A vendor who treats accessibility as an afterthought, ask how they'll document WCAG conformance
- !No plan to drive the trial finder from live data, ask how it stays current
- !They've never integrated a site with a CRM or study system, ask for an example
- !They push a custom build for a pure brochure site, ask why Squarespace wouldn't do
- !No CMS plan, ask how your team edits content without a developer
If website is on the roadmap, hr, accounting, business intelligence dashboards usually follow within the year. Budget them as one conversation.
Rohan advises mid-market and enterprise teams on ERP, CRM and custom software, and has led delivery on dozens of business-software builds.
Writes for Digital Heroes, shipping business software for 2,000+ brands across 55+ countries since 2017.
Frequently asked questions
Isn't Squarespace fine for our site?
For a brochure site, yes, use it. The wall is interactivity and integration: a searchable trial finder, a gated researcher portal, or syncing with your CRM. Those exceed what template platforms do well, and that's when custom earns its cost.
How does a trial finder work?
A custom trial finder pulls from your live study data so visitors can search and filter active trials, and it updates automatically as your data changes. On a template you'd be maintaining a static table by hand, which goes stale fast.
Why does accessibility require custom?
Not always, but template platforms cap what you can fix. If a university or federal grant requires documented WCAG conformance, you often need the control a custom build gives to remediate issues and produce the documentation auditors expect.