Convincing clients

I would say that price probably isn't the only thing your clients are considering in this decision. It's important to realize the goals your clients may have. Some questions they may be asking internally may include:

• How often will this website need to be updated?
• Do any of our employees know how to edit a site outside of a CMS?
• Will we have to pay someone every time we need to make a change on our website?

If your client does plan on updating content regularly, does not have anyone on staff that knows how to edit the site outside of a CMS, and cannot afford to pay for ongoing support for simple changes, these may also be reasons besides price as to why they are looking at a CMS.

I think with this client, the best solution in your case is to offer some custom templates that integrate with a CMS like Ghost or Wordpress (as Aaron suggested above). Perhaps when they see the limitations of a CMS, they may come back to you for a more custom solution. In that case, you would have an initial sell of your custom template, and perhaps a repeat customer afterwards.

Other than that, it may depend on the clients you are reaching out to. For a lot of small businesses, a CMS can do just about everything needed. It's usually larger clients that will be asking for more custom designs. That being said, you have to start somewhere, so take small clients when you can to build up a presence that will start to attract larger clients. This is exactly the strategy I am personally following with one of my clients right now (and I am by no means a very experienced web designer/developer). Hope this helps!