You can absolutely seal your own driveway. Plenty of people do it well. It is worth knowing what the job actually involves in this climate first, because the two things that ruin a DIY coat in Georgia are heat and impatience, and both are avoidable.
The pails on the shelf are formulated to be survivable by someone who has never done it, which means thinner and more forgiving. That is a reasonable trade for a first timer and it does mean the film you end up with is lighter than a contractor grade coat, so plan on it lasting less time.
Buy for the area you measured, not the area you guessed, and buy it all at once so it is the same batch. Two batches on one driveway can finish visibly differently.
This is the difference between a DIY coat here and one in Ohio. Dark asphalt in a Georgia summer runs far hotter than the air, and sealer on a hot surface skins over before you have worked it. You get a crust with soft material under it, lap marks where one pass had set before the next reached it, and a finish that looks streaked when it dries.
Start at first light. Work in sections small enough to keep a wet edge. If the surface is too hot to hold a hand on comfortably, it is too hot to seal, and waiting until seven in the evening is not the answer either because then you are curing into the night.
Then check the radar. A storm three hours after you finish will undo the whole day, and in high summer here that is a normal afternoon rather than bad luck.
Sealer bonds to what you leave for it. A blown surface with a film of red clay still on it gives you a coat stuck to clay, and clay lets go.
Sunny drives need the loose oxidised grit off. Shaded drives need the algae and moss actually killed and lifted, not brushed, and that is a treatment with a waiting period rather than something you do the same morning. Oil under where a car parks needs degreasing or the sealer will not take there and you will have a pale patch in the middle of your new black driveway.
Then the cracks, filled and given time to set before anything goes over them.
Pour a ribbon, pull it across with the squeegee edge, then back over it with the brush side to work it into the texture. The aim is to fill the surface, not to lay a layer on top of it.
Two thin coats beat one thick one every time, and the second goes on after the first has properly cured rather than when it stops looking wet. A thick coat in Georgia heat is the classic way to trap moisture underneath a dry looking skin.
Cut the edges in with a brush first so you are not trying to be neat with a squeegee against the grass.
A steep drive is the main one. Working a squeegee backwards down a slope while the material wants to run is unpleasant and it is where people slip. If yours drops to a basement garage, think hard.
A long drive is the other. This is a job measured in hours bent over, and the quality falls off as you tire, which is why DIY coats often look good at the road and poor at the house.
And if the tests on the other page say the drive needs repair rather than sealing, doing it yourself does not change that answer, it just makes it cheaper to be wrong.
Material for a normal suburban driveway, a squeegee, a stiff brush, crack filler, a degreaser, and a treatment if the drive is shaded and green. None of it is expensive on its own and together it is real money rather than pocket change.
Then the part people leave out of the comparison, which is the day. Preparation is most of it, and preparation is the half that decides whether the coat lasts. A drive that needs the algae killed has a waiting period in the middle, so realistically it is a weekend rather than a morning.
Where the sum goes wrong is a coat that fails early, because then you have paid for the material twice and stripped nothing back in between. Coat on coat is how driveways end up with a film thick enough to crack on its own.
Do it yourself because you want to, or because the drive is small and simple. It is a reasonable saving on a flat two car drive in good condition. It is a poor saving on a long, steep or badly oxidised one, which is where the work is hardest and the margin for getting it wrong is smallest.
Tape or sheet the garage threshold and the concrete apron at the road. Sealer on concrete does not wash off, and the joint between asphalt and concrete is where a squeegee gets away from you.
Trim the grass back off the edges first. Long grass overhanging the asphalt wicks sealer off the edge, leaves a ragged line, and hides where the drive actually ends.
Move every vehicle off, including anything on the apron, and shut off irrigation near the drive for the day. A sprinkler head that comes on at four in the morning onto an uncured coat will undo the entire weekend, and on a timer nobody remembers it exists.
