Does web design business still work?

There are still many business owners out there that don't have time to build their own website with squarespace or wix or maintain it.

Sell them on you building and maintain their website while they do what they do best, run their business. You can handle the design, setup, adding content, updating content adding new content, handling updates and monitoring uptime.

Expand to offer custom web applications (rails/laravel) most businesses can use something custom for their business/data, a simple stripe ecomm setup, surveys, CRM, allow customers to customize and/or price services/products, email/sms alerts for customers, appointment reminders, there are lots of things you could do with businesses and custom web apps.

Talk to them about their business, what are their pain points, how can you solve them with technology, website, forms, web app. Three is still lots of opportunity out there.

I think there's a big market out there for custom Web designs, but some part of it has been excluded (thanks to Web builders you've mentioned).

I think small companies that doesn't want an astonishing, unique website has gone to these, as in short term it's cheaper solution.

Most designers I know are no longer searching for I-need-simple-web-design but for clients that need complete design project/guidelines (that includes public facing website and internal admin panel etc.)

My last client uses both Squarespace and my current site. Squarespace is great for static information. But it's also lacking things like states. For example, you can't make a habit tracker with it or a marketplace or a condominium management system.

I think the various builders and tools out there actually made the market bigger. * Building various themes and designs and plugins for various platforms like Shopify and Squarespace and others are a major business, and can provide recurring revenue for an initial investment for a developer * Those builders, no matter how sophisticated, require custom development to reach their potential. The opportunities for consulting are immense. * A custom platform is and will always be superior than a mass produced one. There is always a market for custom work, and today more companies understand how this might benefit them.

There are still plenty of people literally living only from web design.

Just because you have access to good Drag&Drop builders does not mean web design or web design programmers (CSS etc) are out of business.